The Ferry to Freo

This entry is kind of out of chronological order as this is about the journey to the 3 masted schooner SS Leeuwin. At the end of Barrack Street is the wharf where you can catch ferries that go up and down the Swan River, no not Swannie River. At the mouth of the Swan River is Fremantle, about a 20 minute drive from Perth but on the passenger ferry, takes about an hour and a half. I think most of the time is in avoiding all the sailboats that are out in the constant trade winds off the Indian Ocean.

Fremantle or Freo as the natives refer to it is a great sailing capitol. I hope I can get there to explore this weekend as there are plenty of marinas, sailboats and a new Maritime Museum that you can see the silhouette in the sunset shot in a previous blog entry. The SS Sea Sheppard is located there as well, which is a more radical anti-whaling vessel than Greenpeace sporting several Imperial Japanese flag decals on it’s bridge. Apparently one for every whaling ship they’ve interfered with their operations. My joke about “I suppose no Frenchmen are allowed on board?” wasn’t met with laughter.

The ferry trip to Freo, the sail aboard the SS Leeuwin made for an incredible day. Even some of my pictures from the trip made it onto the company’s homepage where company business and social activities are mentioned.

As you can hopefully see from the pictures, there must’ve been over 200 sailboats out that Saturday arvo (‘afternoon’ in Australian). The Fremantle Doctor (tradewinds that usually blow in the arvo. Of course, they shorten it to “The Doctor” which sounds better than the Freo Arvo) was blowing strong and steady and made the heat of the day bearable. Hopefully in one of the pictures, you can see the 3 dolphins that were riding the bow wake from the ferry.

It was just a damned fine day!

Another guest has committed to visiting the land down under. James, who took over for me in Seattle when I left, and very good friend Dawn will visit the last 2 weeks of January. They have friends in Sydney as well and are looking forward to thawing out from the Korean winter as they’re both now teaching English there. You too, could have excellent adventures in Oz. Your room awaits.