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It was an absolute fantastic day, even though it wasn't exactly incident free.

I was initially a bit concerned about the distance of the trip (approx. 150 kilometres) as I was not exactly an experience skier, especially when it comes to choppy conditions. I checked the whether forecast in the morning which didn't appear too good for a beginner (10-15 knot winds and seas/swells up to 1.5 metres). It did worry me a bit, but from the time I hopped on my ski at the beginning, I enjoyed every minute of my ride. Even on choppy water, my ski handled the conditions extremely well and I have felt more confident on my ski as the day went on (well, for most of the day).

Approx 10 minutes before we reached Tipplers Point (South Stradbroke Island), I had a fall. I was skiing at a moderate speed through a fair bit of choppy water and for a split second, I lacked the confidence which resulted in me letting go of the throttle on the choppy water. My ski slowed down very quickly, but my body continued to travel resulting in me falling off my ski and there were no other skiers with me at the time of my fall. I slightly injured my right shoulder and I lost my goggles in the fall. I was very lucky that my contact lenses stayed on, however, it was difficult riding without eye protection after the fall. Also, it was difficulty swimming back to the ski with an injured shoulder, especially when the ski was approx 15 to 20 meters from where I landed.

When we reached tipplers, I looked for another pair of goggles at a souvenir shop, which only had children's swimming goggles on their shelves. I fueled up my ski, then continued to the Gold Coast with the group and with some difficulty without my goggles. I figured the best way to overcome the problem of not wearing goggles, was to stand up whilst riding my ski to avoid water splashing in my eyes. When we arrived at the Gold Coast, some skiers decided to do some wave jumping on the Ocean side of the bay. We had to return to our stop over point within an hour before we had to head back to Cleveland. So instead of wave jumping with most of the other skiers (which I wouldn't have done anyway), I started searching for a shop that sells goggles. I ski'd to a beach which had a shop near the shore, and a friendly gentleman approached me to asked questions about my ski. After a short discussion, I asked this gentleman if I could be excused as I only had a short time to find a pair of goggles. He let me go and I headed to a shop that turned out to be a restaurant. I headed back to the water to continue my search, when the gentleman I spoke to earlier, stopped me and gave me a pair of his work goggles. Although they were not exactly what I was looking for they did their job for the rest of the trip, as I had no luck finding a shop that sells goggles on a Sunday afternoon.

It was time for us all to head back to Cleveland of which we did, and we stopped at Tipplers again on our way back to fuel up. Some of us were a bit worried about the weather conditions as large dark clouds were heading towards us, so several of us decided to head back home early. Unfortunately, little did we realise, that nobody knew how to get back home, and we realised this when we were lost. The difficult thing about this situation was that the tide was extremely low, and it appeared that most of the areas where we rode our ski's that morning, the water was less than a couple of feet deep. Most of us got bogged at least once or twice and one of the Kawasaki riders was extremely low on fuel.

I had my mobile phone with me, but I couldn't contact any of the other riders who had a mobile phone with them. We continued to look for a way out of our mess, when we finally spotted the rest of the group. From that point on, we joined them and headed back home.

I mentioned before about the low tide. Being with the rest of the group didn't stop a lot of us being caught in shallow water. When our fearless leader tried to assist a young skier who had inadvertently became stuck on the mud bank, most of the group followed and ended up becoming stuck in the mud bank also. It was a real funny site, seeing a bunch of PWCers, walking their ski's (including myself) well offshore in the low tide.

In the last leg of our tour, we experienced some more chop, very low visibility and a downpour of rain. We were all wet anyway so the rain really didn't bother me. It was nice getting back to where we started though, and it was fantastic in the way everybody helped each other mooring the skis. A handful of us had a quick drink at the pub nearby and starting talking about future trips. {END}

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