"Hands Across the Blue" and Swinging Sixties Party

Saturday 29^th August 2015

Today is the main day of the rendezvous and the official part. The morning activity is called “Hands across the Blue”, and involves assembling dinghies from the attending boats arranged in the shape of the Prostate Cancer Foundation logo in close proximity to Shag Islet. The main function of the rendezvous is to raise prostate cancer awareness and money to donate to the foundation.

Dinghies being put in position, all wearing Vice Commodore blue polo shirts

Once in place, some Vice Commodores settled in for the long haul

As you can imagine, it was quite a task to get everyone in place in a brisk breeze. Eventually they were happy with the result and the media were given the word to fly over and film it all in a helicopter. We are told it will appear in the media over the next few days.

The official party are based on a huge motorboat, called the Norseman, anchored nearby. They have a full PA set up to address all of the anchored boats to give instructions and deliver the official speeches, and have a live band on the marlin board !!!! Norseman is owned by the owner of Abell Point Marina

Norseman with a live band on the marlin board

There were some brief speeches from local dignitaries and representatives of the Prostate Cancer Foundation, some pretty generous donations to the charity from some of the sponsors, and then the live band provided some great music.

Eventually proceedings ended and the dinghy raft up dismantled, as Norseman had to get out of the area whilst there was still water under the hull.

This evening is the main dinner and entertainment, with a ‘Swinging Sixties” dress theme. Some of the shaggers really got into the dress theme, where a lot of us made a token effort. There was a group aerial photo taken on the beach, late afternoon, before that band fired up and it was non stop entertainment from then on.

Ken and Rhonda. founders of the SICYC

We had drinks with Phil and Wendy Jobe for the first hour or so, and caught up with Bill and Linda for dinner.

Bill and Linda embraced the 60's theme

Dinner was a buffet, with great seafood.

We headed back to the boat at around 9pm.

We received an update on the Magnetic Island race week results for day 2. It looks like they had very little wind and Koonya finished 5^th on handicap, having to give up an hour in handicap to the boat that came 1^st. Two boats ran out of time and didn’t finish. They are now running 4 th in the series.