Bay of Islands Sailing Week

I’m recovering from the last week’s hectic schedule helping out with the regatta they have here every January.  I found out last Monday they were looking for volunteers at the cruising club to help out cooking breakfast Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday for the event.  I stuck my hand up and ended up in the kitchen at 06:00 with 6/7 other people preparing a full cooked breakfast for about 100 people a day.  It was great fun.  We each had our jobs to do and we all got stuck into it really well.  I worked with a lady named Jane, and between the two of us we prepared scrambled eggs and beans.  We had three other guys on bacon, sausage and hash browns, three people serving plates and Carla, our German lady washing dishes.  Heidi was on toast out in the club and Graham (commodore) and his wife as well as Murray (past commodore) and another gent who’s name I didn’t get, provided support and cleanup throughout the morning rush.  All in all we averaged about 100 breakfasts a day for three days.  We did the eggs, a dozen at a time, in the microwave.  They were great!  So that took care of the mornings on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday.   I also decided to help out in the evenings tending bar under the big marquee they put up on the pier.  David, the bar manager was great to work with.  He’s organised the bar for the past 6 years and has a great system down pat.  We had a trailer the size of a horse trailer that was actually a cold store.  That held all the beer, around 300 dozen or so.  There were 7 cases of rum, maybe 20 cases of mix (coke, sprite, ginger ale etc.) and wine.  They have a purpose built bar that they use year to year and with a staff of 6-8 of us, we poured drinks and served beer from 4-10 Tuesday and Wednesday night.  Thursday we hired one of the old car ferries and loaded up the chiller trailer, a generator, an old dinghy full of beer and ice, and headed out to a small island for an after race beach party,  The ferry was able to pull up to the beach and drop his ramp so people could get on and off.  We set up the bar on the ferry, there was a catering company doing lamb sandwiches, and we had a band playing for a few hours as well.  The party went from around 15:00 to 19:00 then we pulled up the ramp, backed off the beach and headed back to Opua.  It was a great time.  The sailors were pretty impressed with the whole thing.  We had loads of compliments from everyone.  Friday was the big finish with prize giving etc. We closed the bar about 23:00 and sent the last remaining die-hards out.  It was a great week and everyone was pretty well behaved, at least in the marquee, not too sure how they were outside of it.  All I know is that I had a great time volunteering, got a couple of new shirts and met a lot of really great people.