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Published: April 6th 2013
Easter weekend marked Trish and the girls' last weekend in Perth and we wanted to do something special.
It was glorious weather and so we managed to charter a yacht for a twilight cruise on Easter Monday for all of us.
It was a beautiful 4 berth sailing yacht called 'Alphee' and operated out of Hilary's boat yard.
Alphee is a 14m yacht - "Fully equiped with all the trimmings, Alphee offers great flexibility to enjoy yourself for an afternoon cruising in the beautiful clear waters of Western Australia".....
http://www.alphee.com.au/ It was a glorious day and very busy due to the bank holiday. We met at Hilary's and boarded the yacht at 2pm - John & Andrea, Tash & David, Trish, Shauna, Kelly and Lauren and Annie and I.... and enough food and drink to sink a ship!!
We had bottles of champagne from the visit to Jacobs Creek to celebrate my 50th, Trisha's 40th, Tash's 21st and Kelly's 18th so it was going to be a day of celebrations!
The skipper, 'Ernie' was a lovely old boy... he was cool about the alcohol and warned us that according to Aussie custom, any alcohol left on-board at
the end of the trip had to be left onboard for the skipper! Well, we were determined that that wasn't going to happen!
Ernie was a smashing bloke with a great sense of humour and was able to get everybody interested with his tales of sharks, capsizing and people falling overboard!!! He mentioned to us that the following day Ewan McGreggor & film crew had hired Alphee for a new movie to be released later this year called 'Son of a Gun'. The girls were disappointed that Ewan hadn't joined us on board today.
He was 72 years young but was so sprightly and active. He'd bought his 10 year old Grandson 'Jacob' along as a second in command and he did all the errands, running around and was keen to learn the ropes. (Literally)
Ernie stowed everything away, gave us the safety briefing and then handed over control to ..... Annie!
He was a lovely, helpful little lad and eager to help .....but there was however one job that he wasn't prepared to do ...... when someone emerged from the small toilet and quietly announced that she couldn't flush the handpump toilet, she tried to get
the little lad to go into the loo and do it for her! But, he was having none of it... There was no way she was going to get him going in there!She then steered the yacht out of the marina and out onto the open sea. He cut the engine, lowered the sails and we were off.
First stop was a small beach and an opportunity to swim although I think the talk of sharks had put everybody off swimming apart from me. We had a picnic and a few beers and then we set sail properly.
Whilst we had been stationary there had been a few of the crew looking a bit white (Andrea, Tash and Lauren!) but thankfully there was no repeat of my sea sickness when we went on a ferry trip to watch the whales in NZ.
Ernie had us all winding the sails and steering the yacht, he was very trusting with his beautiful boat which is worth several hundred thousand dollars. Annie, Trish & John were given the helm & took instruction from him throughout the day. The sunset whilst out at sea was beautiful and he then handed control
to me to take the boat back into harbour and its designated berth..... He obviously didn't know that I struggle to park the hired Toyota Corrolla, let alone a big yacht!
It was a great day and we all left the boat on a high ..... I hope the pictures give some indication of how much everybody enjoyed it...
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Yacht Charter - Hilarys, Perth
