Day Sail

On Thursday 8 October I took Paul Jr and his uncles Stan and "Celi" for a day sail to Garden Island.  Stan and Celi were over from England to attend the funeral of Paul's father, the man who had renovated the interior of my house and had died suddenly from a massive heart attack.

My master stroke was to book one of the Club's moorings on garden island.  The club owns 8 moorings, freely available to its members, with 2 each at Garden Island, Woodman Point, Rockingham, and the Swan River (which is unavailable to me because of the bridges). 

Paul, Celi at the Helm, Stan on Right

Lunch Time

Paul and Stan

On the Mooring

We met at Fremantle for breakfast at 7 AM (on Paul) then motored out of the marina in light airs at about 9 AM.  Soon we had the headsail up, sailed to the shipping channel, then motored into the wind along the channel to clear the Parmelia and Challenger Banks.  Before clearing the channel we dropped all sail and motored to the mooring, locating it by the its GPS coordinates and photographs provided by the club. 

Once we were secure on the mooring we had a splendid lunch the while Celi and I stayed on the boat dozing off the other two swam to the island for a visit.  The photo will show how close mooring is to the island, perhaps 50 meters. 

To get back we rolled out a bit of headsail for a downwind run in front of a moderate sea breeze and were back in the marina at about 6 PM.

That was the first time that I had used a club mooring and I must say that it was enjoyable to get that close to the shore and feel secure.  The moorings can be booked for several nights and I plan to visit them all in the near future.  Naturally there is a high demand for these moorings during the summer months, particularly during weekends and when school is out, but I'm banking on being able to book the moorings at mid week, one of the perks of being retired.