Vice

What a man of leisure, such as myself, needs more than anything else is additionally vices to fill his time.  I guess I could do golf like untold millions of folks that wander onto grass tightly mowed by others and use a club to smack a ball in one direction or another several times before tapping it into a plastic cup buried in the ground.  But I’ve done that and found the beer cart much more interesting.

That is not to say that golfing in the Port Douglas area wouldn’t be exciting.  An older couple told Lisa about a course they had just played on where a ten foot crocodile had been on the loose for almost a month.  At first they thought he was hiding in the pond by hole 9, and then found out he was at hole 12’s pond.  They went to 12 and he showed up at 9 again.  The course owners posted signs at both holes alerting golfers not to try to find the errant balls in the pond areas on these two hole.  Take the stroke and save you leg, I guess.

Sailing

In Australia, they have the Yachting Australia (YA) courses and the RYA courses that I mentioned in a previous post.  I completed my C1 course and have now started my C2 course.  Each course is about 13 hours of boat time followed by 6 hours of classroom time.  After I complete my C2 and my C5 Boat Safety course from YA, I will have the RYA Competent Crew knowledge according to Ben of the Pacific Sailing School.  From there, I can work on my RYA Day Skipper certification that takes 5 days practical and 5 days theory.  With that certification, I should be able to rent yachts in most of the world.  So far all of the instructors at the school have been top notched, save one.  Here is a snap of me working the main sheet, while Jennifer manning the helm,  and the instructor Tony sailing on Sydney Harbor.  Crew and instructors changes every outing.

In my first C2 course lesson today, we got to work both the helm and the main sheet at the same time.  We practiced stopping at a mooring buoy, picking up a man overboard, and Gybing.