Sailing around Australia; Straya Day

Sunday 24 January 2016

Sailing around Australia; Straya Day

Jumpinpin Bar, South Stradbroke Ilsand, Gold Coast

We are proudly flying the flag. WA flag too.

25/1/2016 Straya day

Here we are spending Australia Day 2016 aboard our catamaran Easy Tiger at the Jumpinpin Bar near the Gold Coast Queensland.

Of the 200 or so boats anchored between us and the horizon, I think at least 3/4s of them are flying the Australian flag, as we are. Just to be different we are also flying the West Australian flag too, which is attracting many a quizzical look.

What a terrific day to celebrate our good fortune of being born in country that has so much freedom. We have the freedom to take opportunities that are presented, freedom to earn money and the freedom to use that money to buy a pleasure boat if we so choose.

Then we still have the freedom to use that boat in any way we choose to. Like taking off from our home port and sailing around our continent. We also have the freedom to choose taking our big power boat to Jumpinpin for the Straya day weekend, where we anchor up nice and close to someone elses sailing catamaran, then we have the freedom to crank the stereo so the whole anchorage can listen to the soothing sounds of Jimmy Barnes.

Of course what good would that freedom be if you couldn’t shout and swear a bit especially when the little kids are swimming at the beach no more than 50 metres from where you anchored your big power boat.

The best part, is that we are all here to celebrate living in a country where we are free to have our mates bring their big power boat over and tie it on to the side of ours, then while jimmy barnes is shouting about working hard for a living on our boat, we can have drinking, burping a weeing over the side competitions on their boat.

Then when we are all drunk enough, we are free to jump off the roof of our boat into the current that is so strong one of our drunk mates has to come pick us up in the dinghy. We are free to be so drunk that we can’t climb into the dinghy and we get towed back to the boat.

By this time we are free to be really drunk and obnoxious so when someone suggests we move our big power boats further down stream we think that is a good idea. Naturally, we have the freedom to roar off in our power boats at such a speed that all those little yachts and catamarans are rolled violently from side to side, cos hey, they are free to rock and roll too.

Not that I am saying this happened, mind you. I am just saying that we are free to do and behave like this if we choose, while so many others are just trying to live, or spend days trying to find their next meal. That’s why I celebrate Straya Day.