Australia Day is one of the hardest holidays to be away from home for us, we are used to not seeing family and friends around Christmas and New Year but Australia Day has always been one of the big ones in our social calendar. The same group of friends get together every year to compete for the coveted Captain Australia trophy, there are Australian flags as far as the eye can see, there is much eating of lamingtons and iced vovo's, the obligatory barbie, much drinking and the subsequent and various forms of nudity that go with it!! Well, we've seen the facebook photos and we are proud to say that our friends have kept with tradition, all of the above was covered and the winner of Captain Australia this year was Aaron Rodd, complete with mullet, nudity, Australia flag as a cape and the Union Jack over his rude bits!! Congratulations Aaron!

As for us, last year we put the word out to the boats in the anchorage and only 2 turned up, this year we put the word out and 13 came over! With nearly 30 people on board the Makani Kai was a little down in the stern as we tried to escape the fierceness of the sun, luckily there was a fair bit of breeze to keep us cool. The barbie got a work out as everyone threw their prawns on and I must say, the yachties know how to cater a party, the table on the Makani Kai was overflowing with all forms of salads, vegemite concoctions and desserts including meringue with passionfruit and cream (thank you Glynis and Grant!) As for Captain Australia, this wasn't exactly the type of crowd to nude up and go for it so we had an 'Australian of the Day' Quiz, the crew from 'Two Up' walked away with the champagne and the title. This was followed by Bruce from 'Envy' reciting 'Clancy of the Overflow', rousing renditions of 'Skippy' and 'Home Amongst the Gum Trees' from all the yachties, battle of the jokes between the Kiwi's and the Aussies before 'Land Downunder' drowned them all out and we got back to the drinking!!

As the party was ending and Aurelia and Soul were about to leave we let a lantern off the boat, our wishes for this Australia Day floated off into the air and out to sea.

We would like to thank the following yachts for joining us and making this Australia Day less lonely, 'Raku', 'Truest Passion', 'Muscat', 'Envy', 'Bach & Byte', 'Two Up', 'Braveheart', 'El Misti', Investigator II', 'Nowadays', 'Soul', 'Aurelia' and 'Lazy Bones' (the token Americans who downloaded pages of Australian slang and tried valiantly to use them on the day!)