Stag do

Andy H's stag do was the big weekend event - and boy was it a laugh at times! Me, Tim and Paul met at Uncle Tom's place to pick up his boat, and despite our latish start we arrived at Whangamata before lunch, put our stuff in the bach, loaded the boat and headed down to the ramp where we met Andy and his bag of pillies. The wind was quite a stiff SW "gusting 30 kts" (who would have guessed?) from time to time. We headed north so didn't get too drenched, found the other bloke's boat and anchored upstream and upwind of them. We were bouncing a bit and while they seemed to have a steady stream of fish coming aboard, we struggled for a while. A few rig changes to stuff more appropriate to 20 m off ofshore as opposed to 14.5m of Rangi Channel, as well as letting out more anchor rope got us right into a patch of trevs. We all caught a few and then Paul's rod nodded deeply and stayed that way. He brought up a farkin horse sized Johnnie that had swallowed a baby snap - i told him to swing the rod tip to me so i could grab the Johnnie but he tried to lift the fish into the boat - it promptly spat the snap, momentarily floundered on the surface then dived away with a burst of speed that I had no idead a JD posessed. A few barely legal snaps tthen the other boys upped anchor and took off. We headed in-shore to flick a few flies, Tim caught some baby snaps then it was golf time. Back ashore a quick change of clothes, a divvy up of various ancient golf clubs and we set off. 4 teams of 2, Ambrose rules, and ample ale. Andy by now was in his stag regalia, a nice white dress with red dotty flowery things, a nice shade of red lipstick, hand bag, diamante tiara and a veil - quite fetching! General hilarity broke out as we burned up the course - worse for me was that even though i was relatively sobre I was the worst player by some margin! Whangamata golf course on a Saturday afternoon in March is a nice place to be, especially with a raving homo in a dress running around for entertainment. Back at base the evening progressed with games like "3 man" (involves a funny hat, rolling dice and the 3 man getting hammered as the rule book gets developed along the way), "what the f*ck" (involves the person being questioned to give a yes/no answer to a question that the group has to answer. Those in the group who answer the same as the questionee escape drinking)and regular shots of Jagermeister (sp) which tastes like sweet gear box oil with lots of alcohol content. The poor stag was getting obliterated, and there my tale ends because "what happens on tour..."

Needless to say that Sunday morning was a quiet affair. Nice to get on the water and spend time with the lads.

That southerly will have killed the marlin fishing dead though I reckon.