Morning woodys, as you will see from the above photo gallery the weekend woodys cruise up the Wairau River to the Clevedon Cruising Club was a great trip – had the 3 F’s that always make for good times – Fun, Friendship & Fraternity.

To hit the right tide window it was a very early start for most i.e. 6am at the marina – the smart ones, left Friday night.

We assembled at the river mouth around 9.30am and were met / piloted up the river by Barrie Abel, and woodys I have to say – just as well Barrie volunteered, because if you believed Navionics at times we were traveling over dry land, when in fact we had 3m of water under us. So a big thank you Barrie. Barry owns the 1912 woody – Matira, I will do a WW story on her on Wednesday.

Several boats missed the rendezvous but still safely made their way up the river.

After arriving at the clubs jetty late morning, the group split up – some went walking, some snoozed, and the rest hopped in the dinghies and ventured to the upper reaches of the river. We got very close to the Clevedon township before the fuel starting running out. Luckily a few had spare fuel so it was passed around like a good wine and everyone took a slip. I was aboard Dave Gidden’s dinghy and we had about 1cm in the tank when we switched off. Spotted a few interesting woodys along the way – Nathan Herbert and I would love to hear more about the launch – Liberty (tagged below).

Some wowser decided that 5pm would be drinks time, so a few of us had to retire to Dave Giddens floating man bach – Allergy for a cup of tea…..

The evening centred around a BBQ at the CCC, which is a fantastic set up and the members hospitality was first rate.

As a thank you for hosting us, we presented a donation to the club and rewarded Barrie Adel for his services with a bottle of Appletons finest Jamaican Estate golden rum. Club Commodore – Bruce Robson also now sports a WW T-Shirt 🙂

In return we have a CCC burgee for our virtual clubhouse.

On a personal note I would like to thank all the woody boat owners for ‘opening’ your boats up for the club members to inspect thru-out the day. Good chat was had.

We must have behaved ourselves, as we have been invited back – so woodys, more details to follow, but we will be repeating the cruise early 2020 e.g. April.

🙂 a visit to the GENTS was amusing – the uninitiated were in for a foot wash – the system was good old kiwi DIY at its finest 🙂 I can report that the LADIES was Regent Hotel standard.

Now I’ll bore some of you with the below video of my Raindance, taken by Nathan Herbert aboard Jas Prew’s launch – My Girl. I think it’s the only time Jason has ever let me pass him 🙂