Twin Spirit 14th July Bastille Day 2008

Too loose La Trek!!!!! (As your Froggy Matelots are wont to say.) We have just anchored in la belle ‘Fame Cove’ on the Northern side of Port Stevens after an extremely eventful two days, with the express intention of celebrating the French national day (pardonnez moi…jour national!)
Yesterday we took off from our mooring abeam that celebrated architectural triumph ‘The Swansea RSL Club’ at Lake Macquarie bound for Port Stevens, 40 nautical miles to the north.
There we were motor- sailing along minding our own business all ship shape and aadd, that a vulgar outburst from the Admiral was in anyway unusual, rather the cause of his distress: One of the many whales we’d seen leaping around us throughout the morning turned and came at the boat diving beneath us at the last possible moment. All hands were nimbly up sensing imminent crisis. Some grabbing cameras, some sedatives, some, over priced knives from Marine Stainless in Harbord ready to repel borders. The Admiral was actually grabbing himself. It was high tension on the high seas.

When the Admiral had recovered his colour, (Harvest Gold) and stopped making strangulated guttural noises he related to us his story of looking up from his task at the very moment a leviathan intersected our path less than 4 feet in front of us, at 9 knots the collision would not have been pretty. The Admiral felt he might have to alter his stance on whaling and agree with the Japs for the first time since they decided to discontinue production of the Nissan Cedric.

Calm was only briefly restored as we picked up a distress call from the Coast Guard only moments later asking for any boat in the vicinity of a 28 foot half cabin cruiser out of petrol and drifting towards the rocks in Fingal Bay on the south side of the entrance to Port Stephens. “No fuel, no radio and failing batteries in his mobile phone,” said the Admiral who’d contacted the Coast Guard to offer help. “Fuckwit,” said Sparrow his unerring ability to assess character demonstrated to perfection once again.
We looked but could not find any evidence of a vessel in distress and so continued on our way into the beautiful, almost Hawaiian entrance to Port Stevens. The Coast Guard was later seen towing said boat back past us into the bay from God knows where; “Fuckwit!” we all shouted feeling smug and slightly superior.

Poseidon it seems forgives the sin of Hubris as we found the only public mooring in Shoal Bay directly in front of the ‘Fisho’s’ and more importantly an exquisite Italian restaurant named Gianni’s. It’s not widely known that the adrenalin rush one get’s from a near miss with a colossus of the deep brings on a three bottle thirst. Please note that we only dined in an Italian restaurant so as not to annoy the Pope and punished ourselves for any unchristian thoughts with a hangover that would kill a Hump Back and as the Admiral will tell you … “Those fuckers are e-fuckin-normous, fuck it.”

I should also mention the scuba diver who swam under our boat in the fading light attaching a line to our mooring before swimming away never surfacing anywhere we could see. Not surprisingly half our time in the Fisho’s later that evening was spent satisfying ourselves that the Port Stevens area has only a small Muslim population. Mind you those Catholics are easily annoyed!!!!!