Beltana II - Day 15 Update - and who is this JR guy?

Following winds all day ranging from 11 to 22 knots.

Oops – on one of the gusts Beltana heeled over and Graham was having some relaxing (snoozing) time on his top berth when woosh a batch of water came scoopiing into hi porthole and soaked him, the lined and the bunk!!  He came out wanting to know who the driver was – but was disappointed it was me and not O’Grady – he could have yelled at O’Grady.....

 

Who is Me?  Also known as Joe be Possum, Jonny Rom, Jon Romcke (at Work); Jono to family and good friends; Jonathan Romcke MIEAust CP, MAusIMM, GAIDC as formally noted.

I grew up in Melbourne, Port Macquarie and Central Coast NSW (Green Point near Gosford). I started sailing on a Mirror Dinghy that Dad built when I was about 4 years old. Down in Mornington dad would take us out and the whole family learnt to sail.  he would even use a little anchor and just me and my Brother Daid (aka Rocka) would practice sailing, fighting, tipping the boat over and getting it upright again. Great fun.  We learnt to race in Mirrors when dad built a second one called Pasnip – the first was had since bee christened Macquarie Mirror as by then we were living at Port Macquarie and sailing on the Hastings river – it was all about the wind current/tide in the those racing. Daid and I were about 10 and 12 then, and we tricked up the Mirrors with spinnakers and even trapezes and we always just wished for blowy days.  We even won the club championship in the miscellaneous class one year.

 

The next lot of sailing was on an old timber H28 a famous Herroshoff ketch that we sailed on Port Phillip Bay after my parents split up, but Mom had the sailing bug and so spent what she had on a boat! After that we moved to Gosford and there we motor boated for a while, Daid was given a little dinghy with a 4 HP outbord to musk around in and then he won a little tinny also with a four HP so we biys used to put both outboards on the one tinny and race around the waterfront and up the little creeks with our dog Corky standing right up the bow.  Mum and frank traded in the stink boat for a Compass 29 which we raced on the Broadwater at Gosford. great fun too.

Then I met Anna ... sparks flew and my life changed for the better – never thought I might get another chance. Anna was even bought up sailing a Mirror Dinghy too – we had so much in common – anyway long story two more beautiful daughters later, and more career moves than we care to remember,  for Anna and myself, the girls now old enough to enjoy sailing, we bought a little Contessa 26 called Angelique in Manly and started sailing Moreton Bay. We liked it, and Anna found out I still did remember how to sail, so we then went on the journey that resulted in the purchase of Beltana II. We had planned to leave work for a couple of years and sail the Med for one or two years and then get back into the rat race to put away some more superannuation (as you do), BUT Xstrat had other ideas and asked me if I would move to Switzerland to be part of a small team starting up an Iron Ore business for the company, and would facilitate the family moving to for at least three year – well who could say no, so instead of sailing full time, we moved to Suisse and learned to live in Europe (tough) and put up with me working half the time in West Africa (Mauritania and Congo) and half the time in Suisse.  Sailing Beltana then still became an annual holiday when we sailed around the Turkish south coast near Marmaris  and a couple of Greek islands.  All our other holidays we spent seeing different parts of Europe and Africa.