White knuckle ride

Well the day was pretty fine, if a bit windy, so we decided to give the old sea legs a go. Well “Bay legs” would have been more accurate if it wasn’t for the relative size of the boat to the waves.

Yes it has to be said from the comfort of our apartment the whole idea seemed pretty clever. Spend a half an hour on a boat crossing Wellington Bay over to a small town known as Days Bay.

So we bought the tickets and hopped onto the upper deck where it was open to the sun. Time to catch some rays…..UV rays…..but we said enough about that. We had our factor 30 on the face and the heads covered. As we set out, our Kiwi captain mentioned that there were tea, coffee and other refreshments downstairs and that the people on the upper deck might experience the odd splash along the way. Taking the odd splash into account and old faithful, the Wellington wind, our captain suggested that we might have a few interesting hair styles by the end of our journey. Incidentally here’s a picture of Sharon and me as we left the harbour and a few views from the boat. We were happy enough it has to be said.

Everyone on the upper deck looked surprised at the comments thinking that our captain was prone to exaggeration. It wasn’t long before we realised what he was talking about.
To say it was a bit choppy was understating the point somewhat. There were times that my bum left the set for what appeared to be seconds at a time, while we were washed with sea spray from all sides. One gent to our left did not fair well at all and got completely soaked from head to foot. Here’s a picture of him but he looks dryer than he actually was. His wife incidentally went down at the beginning of the journey for what I can only imagine were some “refreshments”. She never returned.

All through the journey we were wondering if we could make a dash for the lower deck which was completely enclosed, but it was just too risky. We had to see our journey out top side. Our informative and it would turn out, understated, captain advised the people in the lower deck to try sitting on the upper deck on their return journey as they would at least get some fresh air. It turned out that the people on the lower deck, the ones that had commanded a certain amount of jealousy for the duration of our trip, had not faired much better. As we disembarked our least favourite captain of all time suggested that we should come back again and experience it on a really bad day. From the safety of his cabin it has to be added. Here’s a pick of us just before we left.

We disembarked found our land legs and tried to re programme our hands to stop clutching everything in site, and in particular timber seats. We strolled through Days Bay, a stroll was enough, to Eastbourne where we got a nice cup of coffee and some friands? They looked and tasted suspiciously like muffins. If it looks like a dog and barks like a dog……Anyway here’s a photo of Days Bay beach and one of Eastbourne.

Needless to say we got the bus home.

Cathal

Sharon here, just jumped in to add to Cathals post - although these pictures don't exactly paint me in the best light I'm willing for them to be included for the purposes of illustration! The things I do for ye people - I hope it gives ye a good laugh. By the way, we have got a lot of feedback over Christmas that we have a merry band of readers to this blog but ye are very quiet on the comments front and poor Cathal is getting very paranoid that he's not hitting the right tone so to speak with his blogging, so go on make his day - stop lurking and start commenting!!!!