Geocaching Australia

caughtatwork wrote:

Toriaz wrote:For sailing, would Sydney Harbour count as a 'beach'? I'm wonderding if this cache would count - http://coord.info/GCKKTY

Sorry, I'm going to have to say no. There is no swimming. There is no sand. It's at waters edge, but it's not a beach I'm afraid. UNLESS ... if you head down there in your swimming gear WITH a beach umbrella AND a beach ball (inflated) AND zinc cream on your nose AND you set up as a beach AND you take a photo of yourself there ... then it looks like you're at a beach to me

That depends... the harbour has a good number of proper beaches (Some where pants are optinal... ). While most are small they are still used as swimming/sand/play beaches like any other.

Zalgariath wrote:(Some where pants are optinal... ). While most are small they are still used as swimming/sand/play beaches like any other.

You are talking about beaches right?

caughtatwork wrote:

Toriaz wrote:For sailing, would Sydney Harbour count as a 'beach'? I'm wonderding if this cache would count - http://coord.info/GCKKTY

Sorry, I'm going to have to say no. There is no swimming. There is no sand. It's at waters edge, but it's not a beach I'm afraid. UNLESS ... if you head down there in your swimming gear WITH a beach umbrella AND a beach ball (inflated) AND zinc cream on your nose AND you set up as a beach AND you take a photo of yourself there ... then it looks like you're at a beach to me

Yeah. And we can all enjoy the photos

Well things are getting pretty interesting at the pointy end of the competition. I suspected who one of the most competitive people would be on day one. Turns out I was right. Well done, gd__!!

Thanks Team Wibble, although I have known for about 7 weeks that I was only competing for second place because Marcus was going to be near impossible to beat. now just have to hang on for the next couple of days.

Well Done to everyone who has finished so far.

Soooooo..... Things are looking just fine + dandy now !!!

GJMMelb wrote:Soooooo..... Things are looking just fine + dandy now !!!

mm, for some I did know that I was pretty well out of the running for a place as I got a late start to the important 25 pointers. But I hoped by publishing my events fairly early that I'd bluff a few others out of going for the top places maybe Obviously didn't work.

Oh well, I would probably have donated my prize to GCA anyway!!

Well done those who've pushed me down

Come on red tag and themd!!! I'm counting on you guys finishing!

blossom* wrote:

GJMMelb wrote:Soooooo..... Things are looking just fine + dandy now !!!

mm, for some

It's funny how we think being pushed down to 10th place is fine and dandy lolol

blossom* wrote: I did know that I was pretty well out of the running for a place as I got a late start to the important 25 pointers.

This being our first GeosportZ we didnt know anything about the importance of doing any 25 pointers early ... OR work out that we needed to low pointers to be able to "fit" the Marathon in lol and anyway there were some caches that were the only ones available for that particular sport and they happened to be reasonably highish points so we would have been in trouble anyway even if we had known lol

Anyway the main point was we had fun !!!!!

I (JMelb) had the MOST fun hearing about G&MMelb's aquatics expeditions (couldnt go to watch them as I sprained my shoulder that morning - oh SOOOO painful!!!) and then another Saturday watching them paddle in the blow up boat to get the canoe requirement.

And then meeting up for the 4x4 was very cool too!!

11 GJMMelb Australia VIC 29 Finished 350.00 12.07

ohhhhhhhhhh lol!!!!

Come on themd!!!! You can get to the 350 points!

Weeeeeee I made it to 15th (gee that sound like an odd thing to say)
Thanks again for organising a most entertaining competition. I have enjoyed it immensely!!

Thankyou, thankyou, thankyou once again for a well run, fun and challenging competition.
This time of year (particularly this year here in SA, although that could have been my imagination) tends to be dark, dreary and cold and wet, which can put a dampner (see what I did there? ) on caching.

This competition added extra incentive to get out there and challenge yourself, to find some caches you wouldn't otherwise and to strategise, re-assess your strategy, and re-assess again as things go wrong, you miscalculate your points, forget the marathon was worth 100 points, or that perfect cache for requirement X has gone missing.

As always, it improved my spreadsheet skills and GSAK skills and my lateral thinking skills - a handy by product of these games.

No secret we were in it to win it this year, but with major illness the challenge became to complete all 30 requirements. We're stoked to come in third. Given that we made sure we got the two 25 pointers on the first day and that still wasn't enough showed that the competition was rightfully fierce this year!

A few memorable moments from our experience:
[*] Making Mr Wibble swim in Westlakes on a frosty morning (5 degrees at the time), and nearly getting run over by some rowers who seemed to come out of nowhere
[*]Being seen unloading a kayak from the car on the side of Main North Road, which must have looked odd to all the non cachers driving along there who have no idea there's a beautiful billabong hidden behind the trees right on the side of one of Adelaide's major roads.
[*]Going for a wander in a little known conservation park to find a coffee machine in the middle of the bush
[*]Standing at a busy intersection at night, wearing fluoro vests as cover, to extract a cache and then trying to convince Mr Wibble that the whole subterfuge is not going to work so well if he insists on holding hands as we walk back to the car
[*]Realising that the cache we were going to end up logging for the marathon was one called "Let's hang around public toilets" which kind of sums up how dodgy you can feel while caching sometimes

Well with Geosportz over, I wanted to firstly say a big thankyou to caughtatwork for once again providing a great competition to keep us busy for the past two months, and for his time and effort in putting all of this together...as well as answering forum messages and emails, approving 1096 claims, and of course...the generosity of the gift vouchers. It is these people in our caching community that we should be thankful for!

Well done to all of those who participated, and to those who were lucky enough to finish in a prize position...especially gd__ and Team Wibble who I always knew were going to be right up there.

As far as the competition and challenges itself...I thought it was great. I know personally I had several strategies planned out in anticipation of what the challenges might be, and headed out on the first day to log some high scoring caches (Three 25 point caches and one 20 point cache), but the mandatory point categories threw me a bit at first, so needed to rework some of the caches I had planned for the rest of the competition, and lucky enough it all worked out well in the end. I think the structure of this years games worked well. I enjoyed it a lot.

Look forward to the next one.

Cheers

M.V.

Thank you C@W for organing a great game. We really enjoyed it, so we will be sure to be doing it again next time!