Passengers:
Peter Bauerle, Luke Hynes, Simon Tait, Philip Rosevear, Stuart Sutherland, Mark Steel,
Lewis Durham, Craig Abbott, Steven Camp, Phillip Camp.
The Juc crew - Peter Bauerle (birthday boy), Stu Sutherland, Mark Steel, Louis, Simon Tait, Phil Rosevear, Luke Hynes and The South Coast crew - Sticko, Phil and Steve Camp
Can't say enough good things about this trip and the crew of the BJ (both on-board and leading up too). I have been on a few indo trips and this one win's hands down. The crew not only did what they had to do on the boat but also treated us all with five star service. You couldn't even get out of the water without someone taking your board and handing you a drink. And the food, wow, I didn't think it was possible to surf that much and put on wait.
As for the surf there was plenty of it every day from overhead to double over head indo perfection. Hillsy and the crew were always able to get us to the name breaks with minimum crowd and into great waves. Then there were all the secret and lesser known spots to surf with no one out except us. Having the lambo able to ferry 10 surfers at speed away from the crowd can't be matched by the other charters from what I could see.
There were so many highlights and we all had a ball. Here's just a few....
Overall I think Stu-bomb gets the coolest barrel for his drop at HT's. Full stand up for a guy 6'3 (in Taito's words, he looked so cool I thought he was going to go to sleep).
Hynes obviously get the most barrels at HT's, you pick your favourite. We stopped counting at 85 kegs and no wonder he had 3rd degree sunburn after 5 hours out there. (For those out there wondering 85 is not an exaggeration)
Steve gets the off your dial award for needing an interpreter at dinner because after too many binnies his mouth stopper working.
Steelo gets the captain's award ("had a bit to drink Steelo"). You guys know the rest…
Phil R is a gimmie for the fishing award and still smiling. Enough GT for 14 hungry boat dwellers to have sushi of one side for snacks and steaks for dinner of the other side.
Sticko gets the silverback award but he had this covered before he got on the boat. This was reaffirmed when he got chased by a monkey at the little bar we stopped at that looked like it was on "Gilligans Island"
Louie gets the spear a pensioner award for taking out a 150 year old parrot fish that couldn't swim out of sight in a bucket of mud and charging solid thunders.
Taito gets the "Sally award" for the expertise he exhibited in paddling an indo canoe, not.
Philly - I reckon he gets the water time award a short half head in front of Stu. These guys made the most of being away from the kids, good on-em, its reflected in the photo's
And me - well, it was my 40th Birthday trip and I can't think of anything I would rather have done. Great boat, great crew, GREAT WAVES EVERYDAY WE WERE THERE, great times.
When we upped anchor and head for port we did it under the light of a full moon earlier greeted by a pod of dolphins which just capped off 2 of the best weeks of my life. Like they say life begins at 40.