January 2007
Goodbye to the 30’s….
I am here in Miami sailing Stars at the Miami Olympic Classes Regatta with Iain.
I have spent my last 6 Australia Day’s here in Miami. It’s also my birthday. This year is the 40th!! I have three more hours to go in my 30’s.
So, there goes another decade…… Where did that go?
By the way, the regatta here is going ordinarily…. Coming 21st with a day to go. 67 boats. Pretty hot competition.
Big day today with a fair bit of wind. Masts over the side, collisions and a boat nearly sank. Thankfully none of that happened to us. But we did finish 19th….. So it could have been better.
It has been a good trip though. Last week I had the pleasure of joining Lang Walker’s Team Kokomo for some Farr40 coaching in Key West. They ended up 4th in a pretty hot fleet of 17 boats from the USA and Europe. Nice bunch of people on Team Kokomo and working hard to get to the top of the class. Always a pleasure in that sort of environment.
The next time I update this blog I will be an old bloke in my 40’s. After seven days of Star sailing, I feel a hundred years old, so 40 is an improvement.
Home Renovating – Danger!!!
Over Christmas, we packed the tribe into the car and went to Metung on the Gippsland Lakes. Great time with our good friends Alby and Rocket, who have just bought a house there and are settling, after a couple of years working charter boats in the Bahamas. They are marrying in Metung in March and were planning to have kids in the near future. After having our three kids stay at their house, the plan to have children may have slipped back a bit on the to-do list…
Upon getting back to Avalon, I decided it was finally time to build the front fence properly, so I took to it in a big way. I enjoy working on the house with the cricket on the radio and the kids running around. The fence has become a priority, due to the issue of pint-sized escapees finding their way off the property and too close to the road.
Anyway, on Day 3 of the project (would have been day 5 of the Melbourne test match if the English could actually play cricket), I put the wood saw through my hand and went straight to hospital for an operation. After nearly 40 years, I had my first general anaesthic and my first plaster cast. (more…)