buter's BABY blog

We have a guest poster today. The man behind the grander spanner and co-producer of the story of my life that is buter's blog.

Yes folks, it's time for (drum roll please) D™'s first story.

So it was another tri-annual, super fun, Super6, waterskiing weekend last weekend. The story being 3 couples, of whom a disproportionate third supply both the place to stay and the boat to ski behind whilst the other 2 thirds supply alcohol (not while boating of course), good company and good looks. The favourite spot is the Wisemans Ferry area of the Hawkesbury river north of Sydney. Through several years of trial and error we have discovered that the best time to ski there is March, towards the end is better for cooler days but the water is a fairly consistent 24°C and extremely pleasant for a dip or a ski. The middle of the day also coincided with the ebb tide for the river and some of the finest water anyone had ever seen. Michael helpfully stated that if anyone had trouble skiing it can only have been due to their complete lack of talent.

The flavour of the weekend this time was wakeboarding. It's usually a mixture of 1 and 2 ski waterskiing with some wakeboarding. This time it was pure wakeboarding and with spectacular results. Great leaps were made by the 3 n00bs with Nicko actually landing the aforementioned great leap. Michael maintained the grade with wake clearing leaps (from a the toe-side approach) and mastered both the mid-air and cross-wake switch. D™ made lots of holes in the water with his head and is on the waiting list for a new spleen. The People's Choice award went to Vic (Vodkatoria) C. After a previous wakeboarding effort which ended badly with a cranium-first-entry and ringing ears, she sucked it in, got up first go and made great strides towards wakeboarding greatness. Other on-water entertainment included two girls mudwrestling in the black mud exposed by the low tides of the weekend and the extraordinarily good conditions.

The downside of the weekend was the affirmation that a weekend of boating is great for everyone except the owner of the boat. A dislodged accelerator spring made for interesting boarding for Michael when the boat took off with much-gusto before unceremoniously dumping him when Vic killed the engine to prevent him trying to wakeboard at 80km/h (the boat's top speed). But more was in store the next day when a suspected overheated engine stranded Power Play on the quiet side of the river, 3 km from the boat ramp and against the tide. Paddling provided extremely trivial headway and after 45 minutes of failed attempts at flagging, help arrived when we were rescued, Bundaberg-Rum-style, by a boat of beauties and enough engine to get us back to the ramp in 20 minutes. Our saviours refused payment upon condition of upholding the boat code and returning the favour if required, and we were as always happy to oblige. We found a really nifty use for plastic money too. You can swim with it.

And to round off the day, the electric winch on the boat trailer conked out with the boat halfway out of the water. Thankfully the backup hand winch came to the rescue but left Michael with quite a to-do-list and more proof that boats are fun, but they are also money pits.

.... or as I like to put it, we were just messing about in boats.

For the record, the mudwrestlers were not the two girly girls whose complete lack of talent at wakeboarding was entirely due to not even trying.