Well, it’s done and dusted for another year, and what a success!

46 club boats, 74 visitor families with 169 children who attend Perth Children’s Hospital, and many excited Club members went together to make a splendid day for our guests.  About 400 people in all gathered after a breezy sail and motor cruise on the Swan to enjoy the BBQ lunch, listen to the 10-piece Ukelele Band from Kalamunda, play with the beautiful ‘Ambassador Dog’ from Guide Dogs WA, and also be entertained by the balloon blowing magic. Was great to see so many of our members and friends gathered, enjoying the dress-ups colourful tutus dresses, butterfly wings, port and starboard stockings (wow) and blowing bubbles, and just simply having fun.

We set up our “CB” teams, all well-rehearsed for the event at 7am, expecting our visitors around 8am to 8:30, but there they were, pouring into the Club beginning at 7:10am. The chaos continued with hundreds of excited children milling around the Promenade Marquee, looking to hook up with their skippers: yes, a bit of confusion was reigning, but for every glitch, there was always a solution.

Our partner was ‘ Kiind’ who are the conduit with Perth Children’s Hospital.  Kiind takesthousands of families under their wing who travel this difficult road of serious health issues and provide help, understanding, friendship and activities for the children and their families. Kiind had several of their staff on hand, and we especially leant on their Office Manager, Kerryn Harper, to sort out the many moment-by-moment issues that arose.

After speeches by Commodore Dalglish, Kiind’s Chairperson, Cristian Rapanaro, and MLA Kim Giddens, Phillip Draber, the current President of Rotary Club of Melville made a special Rotary Club “Paul Harris Award “to Bert Gianancristafaro for his tireless efforts over many years organising all the previous “Cruising Butterflies” events. This award is the highest accolade made by Rotary International and it acknowledges the huge amount of work Bert undertook for SoPYC.

The “thank-you list” is too long to name the many folks who put in such a great effort, so I will just name a few: 

  • To Gordon Dunbar who arranged all the Rotary Club of Applecross car parking attendants, the BBQ trailer, and all the cooking of hundreds of snaggers enjoyed by the masses! 
  • To David Staniforth-Smith who took on the job of boat organiser and helped coordinate the children and families into each and every boat. 
  • To all the Rotary Clubs of Melville and Applecross for the many volunteers who manned/ womaned the Registration and Clothing desks, and guided our visitors, 
  • To Michael Sassella who went far and beyond the regular duties of a General Manager, by attending to every aspect of the function, to physically moving partitions, tables and chairs. 
  • Michael was always ready to roll up his sleeves and pitch in to help. And to all the SoPYC staff who assisted in making this day inspirational. 
  • To Bernie Kaaks, who clicked his shutters on more than 100 happy family groups and printed, then presented nice keep-safe pics to the kids and their parents, 
  • To the Cruising Butterflies committee, our chairperson, David Barton, assisted by Lynne Newton, Stephen Winter, Marilyn Barton, Michael Cook, Mark Popham, Gordon Dunbar and David Staniforth-Smith. 
  • Our sponsors were SVN (Joe Rapanaro), Wilson Marine (Chris Pearson), Lexie Soklicht of Soklicht Jewellers, Stephen Winter of Nebo, and of course, financial help (as always) from both the Rotary Clubs.

Most importantly, all of the Club members who generously supplied their own time, and their boats for an event that South of Perth Yacht Club can be truly proud of, which will now be established as one of our ‘signature events’.

The smiles on all of the guests faces sealed this day as an unforgettable day!

With many thanks for a great day

Ralph Newton.