Up a bit earlier today to get to the Wakeboard Park by10am to sign in for the 2 hour session with the first hour of instruction on the beginners lake followed by an hour on the main lake.
Although I have done some wake boarding before as has Jan, it was behind a boat and is a little different to being towed on an overhead cable. Azzy has water skied before but not wake boarded. There will be some interesting video posted soon of our first hours instruction with Jan and Azzy both showing that the start off is not so easy though both made terrific improvement - not necessarily depicted in the video's by the end of the first hour. Blowing my own trumpet, after a couple of dodgy starts, I cracked it and even made the turns and return back to the start. Definitely depicted in the uploaded video.
After a brief rest for a coffee, it was onto the main lake with the experts and posers and a cable that runs in excess
Of 30 knots with 4 right handed turns which is not so easy for a goofy stance (right foot forward on the board). This was going to be a challenge to get round. Jan took the sensible decision to watch as the start is quite aggressive and most of the beginners were crashing out on the start and spending most of their time swimming. Azzy did well on the starts but had most of his problems after he got going. He did however continually improve with his best run fittingly his last at the end of the hour. I also mastered the starts from the beginning. I fared somewhat better by mostly completing the lap, but my nemesis was the last turn which always seemed to get the better of me. It was a very enjoyable morning, we will feel the effect on our arms and legs tomorrow no doubt. There will also be some good GoPro video to upload when we get time to sort it out.
Onwards then to Rockingham, and to the beach opposite Penguin Island for a swim, snorkel and wander on Penguin Island. This was a very enjoyable afternoon but there was a less savoury twist to the end of the day.
Whilst in the water somebody took a liking to our white plastic carrier bag that had our clothes in it and sunglasses. There was nothing of any value to be worried about but we did have to put the hire car key in Jan's jeans pocket. This meant that at the end of the day when we came out of the water we had no clothes except our swimwear and our towels. Everything else was in the car locked away safe. For every baddie there does seem to be 10 Samaritans. We were inundated with offers of help from so many strangers. Special mentions to the Island Park Ranger who lent us his mobile and found Petes number at work, to the lady who spent a lot of time tracking down the car hire company to talk to, to the lady who appeared with bottles of cold mineral water for us and especially the Cafe Manageress who fed and watered us, provided warm blankets and left the lights on after work for Jan and Azzy whilst waiting for me to return with the replacement car key from Perth Airport, a 2.5 hour round trip. Having managed to speak to Pete at work, he was able to call Jen at home who arranged for Checkez to come out to collect me to do the airport key pickup trip.
The meal that we had booked at Cottesloe to thank Jen, Checkez and Pete for putting up with us for our stay went out of the window as did the intended presy; our backup plan of a meal back at the Byford Tavern disappeared into the time scale, so we all enjoyed a super take away curry once back and showered, which was probably best anyway as we were all together around the table for the last supper. Then the boring bit - packing and bed for the 4.30am start to go to the airport for our flight to Melbourne.