Good grief ultralights...in 1970 odd I used to trudge across the hill to that little beach behind the strut with my family most weekends. It was the site, effectively a private beach, of the Hornsby Police Boys Sailing Club.
Old wooden sheds with VJs, VSs, MJs, Moths and two Rothmans Class dinghies...anyone else ever sailed a Rothmans Class? I haven't seen another from that day to this and no-one I ever met in sailing ever did either...to the extent I am starting to doubt my memory.
Just off the bottom of that photo I was shipwrecked the very first time...when an out of control ski boat (one of those old clinker hulled type with a converted V8 mounted inboard-well it wasn't old then I suppose
) T boned us amidships at some horrendous speed and completely took out the boat from the waterline up...4 nine year olds, two diving off the bow and two the stern...not a grownup within a nm. We bobbed around until picked up by the rescue boat...seemed like hours but was probably 5 minutes
...the marine worlds version of Stirling Moss sat alone in his boat 100 yards away..we weren't gonna swim to his boat-he was scary-the prop shaft twisted all about by our ropes and sails
Ahh a simpler time...when 9 years were taught to be self sufficient...or drown quietly...still two laps of the beach fully clothed was the swim test you had to pass before getting in a boat so drowning probably wasn't all that likely...and it generally took longer than 5 minutes for those crap old lifejackets to become waterlogged