The Steamtug Blog

You can’t plan anything to do with your boat with a specific date attached. It happens almost everytime when a date on the calendar is selected, the weather will be fantastic the day before, crap on the day, and good again the day after. Take for example the underwater hockey break up party where we recently upset everybody’s plans by moving the date to the day before when the weather was perfect. It happened again with the family Boxing day sail down to Portarlington, and now again.

With perfect weather the day before new year’s eve, the big important day saw winds from the North West at 30 knots, gusting up to 50, driving temperatures up to 43 degrees and making not white caps on the water, but almost surf! But undeterred, we ventured down to the boat and set up everything ready for the big New Year’s Eve party.

The boat was even rocking at her berth, as the North West wind is the worst possible direction for shelter in our marina, so much so that poor Anita felt sick when down below putting away the life jackets the kids used on Boxing day.

As the guests arrived, we soon forgot about the weather as the hum from the beer machine I had set up, soon had us in the right mood as we sat inside out of the sun and sipped a nice ale, mixed with some aromatic grain beer that I had made while waiting for the sun to set. It was a hot and thirsty night until eventually the wind died down and swung around to the South giving us a cool breeze, and some shelter from the land.

There was some commotion out on the water, as one of our cities tug boats passed with a large group of revelers on board, heading over to anchor off Eastern Beach. We eventually ventured out once the final passenger was aboard, and I headed Adaqua over to the tugboat to give my party something to look at. When we approached close enough, I recognised her captain who is a great mate of mine. (See the write up on towing the tug I was part owner in to the scrapyard at…. http://steamtug.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2010/04/LYTTLETON-II-RIP.doc)

I turned Adaqua around to the lee side of the tug and tied up on her huge tyres and we all went aboard to wish them all a happy new year. My passengers were all very impressed that I could tie up to a real ship, making comments like “oooh, I have never been on a tug before” and “I always thought they were so small, but I guess they are always next to something big!” Not wanting to gatecrash their party, we stayed on board about 20 minutes before heading back closer to shore, and get in position to watch the fireworks.

So safely anchored just off the shore where 1000’s of people were in waiting, Murray and Steve stripped off to their togs and jumped in for a swim. It was such a warm night I was tempted to join them, but having so many things to do onboard and keep my party happy, and the beer flowing, decided not to.

After the fireworks, Grumps got a phone call from an old mate of our who I have not seen for 20 years who was on the bay in his speed boat. So we invited him over and tied him up to the stern of Adaqua, brought him aboard to join the party. It was great to catch up with Rod and share stories of the crazy things we did when we were all younger.

We were then entertained by one of our funny lady passengers who had a wee too many drams and was talking like a parrot. I was worried she was going to fall overboard, so I put a life jacket on her. But when it was time to leave, I took my life jacket back, only to have her fall in the water while disembarking. It’s funny now, but we were all worried about her at the time.

The beer went down a treat, we caught up with old friends, talked about nothing, had a great time and saw the old year out. Wish you all could have been there! HAPPY NEW YEAR!!

Here is one of the nicest Christmas stories I have heard in a long while, and one that is close to my heart. It’s about 2 boys who steal their father’s Norton Commando, which has been in pieces in the garage for years, get it professionally restored and present it back to him for Christmas. A truely touching story…  http://vimeo.com/11285536

And finally some philosophical wisdom for the coming year…

We should all spare a thought for those people who don’t buy coffee from McDonalds, but instead make it themselves at home. Home coffee mugs do not come with a warning, so these people are all in grave danger, completely oblivious to the fact that “the contents may be hot”

HAPPY NEW YEAR EVERYONE!