The Rescue
A big day for JayJay............a trip to Mt Martha to rescue the buoy turned out to be a major exercise. We'd headed off up to Sandi while the Yachties ran the second event of the Longbeach Challenge weekend. However as the leading boat arrived at where No1 was supposed to be - there was no Buoy to be seen. They'd called off the race and had since received a call to say the buoy was on a beach near Mt Martha. Now we'd been called on to retrieve it.
As we headed of to the rescue and being low on fuel after our sandy trip, we had to stop of at Patterson River to fill up and then head off to Mornington.
The buoy was spotted sitting on rocks close the Naturalist's Beach but we were not able to get close enough to attach the long anchor rope off Mark's boat that he had lent us. So me being a quick thinker, i got the crew to wave down some young guys that were in a small boat obviously veiwing the "sites" on the beach- along with David and Caroline on our boat of course. (one complaint was that we had no binoculars !!)
After the distractions and some rock balancing, the guys were able to tie the rope to the buoy, roll it into the water and then tow it out behind their boat to the Mother Ship. We hauled it onto the duck board and with 1st mate Liz at the helm, we headed back to Mordi. Many thanks to the lads in the Power Boat and to my crew - Dave, Liz, Caroline and Greg.
Nice to see Power and Sail getting on so well !
