Your scribe was a little late up on Saturday as he suffered from ‘man flu’ and Mrs Scribe and the forward Tasar Committee member were not sure that sailing was such a terrific idea. Your scribe was pretty sure that going to IHYC and, at least, looking at the water was a feasible suggestion. All this came to an end as the OOD called sailing off in the light of 30 kn winds.

This gave your scribe the opportunity to pull out his golfing weapons in readiness for the annual game supporting Rotary at Keysborough on Monday. Fortunately there was not much rust and what spiders were there disappeared fairly rapidly. They have an interesting scoring system at Keysborough. They explained when I arrived that you count your shots, as normal, but when you get to twice par you are allowed to pick up your ball and sit it out. Apparently this is called Calloway, or some famous golfing name, scoring. Of course I immediately offered to fill in the card and head for the bar, but my playing partners thought I should at least hit a few balls.

The system does have some advantages. At the fifth hole I drove magnificently for the distance of, maybe fifty metres or so, to the front of the smallest dam on the course which I knew would not trouble my trusty 3 iron, which easily hit the ball into the middle of the smallest dam on the course. I elected to pack up my clubs and walk the hole; I was not upset, I merely chose to walk despite various brothers suggesting I could have another go. One brother continued from tree to tree and putted for an eight, but missed, meaning I matched his score for the hole with only the effort of two shots and much less consternation.

At the end of the day it turned out that actually hitting golf balls saved me three shots over the whole course, but at a cost of sore hands, legs and general tiredness. And in the main competition of the day where we have been known to figure and despite our normal outlandish expenditure, we failed to win the raffle.


Coming up:

Saturday 15 November 2025.
1400 Ozone series continues (includes Commodore Cup).
0900 Junior and Senior L2S

Saturday 22 November 2025.
1400 Lady Nelson series commences (includes Boat Club Cup).
0900 Junior and Senior L2S

With no sailing over the winter your scribe had a bit of spare time which he put to use by borrowing a couple of books from the Club so he could learn to navigate. Here are some of the things he learnt:
A list of instruments that you might need:
Hand bearing compass, Sextant, Parallel Rules or Roller Rules, Douglas protractor or Portland protractor, Single arm protractor, three arm protractor, compasses, dividers, slide rule, charts, nautical tables 2B pencils and eraser.