Personally I love being out on the water and I was really excited about the One AM boat party but I’m always slightly panicky about departure times, so I arrived a bit early at Barrack St Jetty. It was still quite warm in the sun; I was hankering for a beer and couldn’t wait for the party to get started. We started boarding the MV Captain Cook around 7.15pm and Sketchism was already laying down some beats. There was an immediate throng of people queuing down either side of the decks, which had been set up quite close to the bar. I was immediately concerned that there was going to be a long wait for drinks all night, and imagined drunken people (mainly me) staggering into the equipment, but this proved not to be the case. In fact, after the initial rush to get a drink in hand there wasn’t really any waiting for the drinks during the remainder of the evening and the bar staff did an admirable job.

There had been some concerns expressed in the Perth ITM forum that the boat cruise would be crowded and become a bit of a shove-fest, but these were unfounded. The boat was huge, and there was ample room for a dance floor and for everybody to move around freely. As we pulled out from the jetty, pizzas and chicken wings were being distributed amongst the crowd and soon everybody was busy eating, drinking and enjoying the progressive breaks that Sketchism was playing. I made my way upstairs to check out the view and we were about 5 minutes into the cruise before the first boat went past with a topless female stripper on board, much to the delight of the male contingent on our boat.

As we headed out from under the narrows bridge, a small metal dinghy was cutting sick through the waters next to us, bouncing off the wake of other boats. The three occupants appeared to be having a fantastic time and everybody on the Captain Cook was cheering them on, but little did we realise that they were pirates! They made a couple of passes close to our boat, and a few people tried to repel their approach by throwing chicken wings but this had little effect. On the third pass they got close enough for someone to hand them a pizza box and they raced off with their captured booty, much to everybody’s delight. Suckers didn’t get our beer though, phew!

It’s amazing how quickly time passes when you are enjoying some tunes and gazing longingly at the luxury houses that line the Swan River. The first hour seemed to fly by so quickly and before I knew it Jezzah was behind the decks and his electro-tinged beats immediately drew a few people to the dance floor. I think it was around this time that yet another stripper boat went past us, this time with two naked females out on the deck who were greeted with more roars of delight from the males on our boat. Um, who knew that the Swan River was such a hotbed of iniquity? I think most of the guys on board figured they already had their money’s worth; beer, pizza, quality tunes and naked chicks.

When we hit Fremantle waters there was a glowing orange sunset that was a truly spectacular sight. As we turned around to head back up to Perth the Mortal Realistiks came on and I soon found myself on down stairs on the dance floor enjoying a remix of the Beatslappaz’ Rogan Josh and shortly after that Lady Waks’ Minimal. I have to say that the boat cruise had a really fantastic atmosphere. The interior of the boat was mostly dark except for a few coloured lights around the dance floor which were complemented by the glow of the moonlight on the water. Everybody seemed to be having a great time. I couldn’t drag myself off the dance floor as the Mortal Realistiks cranked out yet another awesome set.

I went back upstairs to enjoy the wind in my hair and the moonlight while Fine China and Mali played back to back for the final leg of the trip. The fantastic tunes just kept coming and a personal highlight from their set was Underworld’s Born Slippy. It seemed all too soon that we were back at Barrack St and the boat was docking. I really wished the Swan River was a bit bigger so we could have cruised around for longer and I’m sure I wasn’t the only person feeling like that. The One AM team have definitely thrown down the gauntlet for other promoters to come up with some innovative gigs during 2008 after staging the boat cruise. I had a blast and I hope we can do it again soon!