Barbecuing on a boat with my big boys

We didn’t get cinnamon sugar or icing on our butts, because this donut wasn’t actually made from dough and sweet toppings.

It was an Aquadonut.

Not an inflatable tube, or a water-filled ring, rather, a round boat with a round table in its centre giving it a donut-like appearance.

For years I’d been trying to convince various circles of friends to get ’round it and hire one of these party boats at Melbourne’s Docklands, but we never arrived together at a sweet synchronisation of blank calendars and favourable weather.

One designated skipper, one assigned barbecue chef, one bread butterer, one DJ queuing tunes on the BYO Bluetooth speaker, one drink dispenser keeping everyone hydrated, up to 10 people to split the cost, and a couple of scouts to keep us off collision courses with much bigger and quicker boats in Victoria Harbour.

There would have been important jobs for everyone on board.

These are the reasons I didn’t particularly fancy doing this activity with the kids back when I first learned of Aquadonuts.

The pressure of being the only adult wearing all those hats while bobbing in the busy city-side waters, as well as having to watch that no-one leaned too close to the hotplate, lost their hat in the wind or leaned so far over the edge looking for fish that they went overboard would have been more than I could handle.

But now, one of my kids is 18, which meant there were now two of us in the family qualified to skipper the boat (no actual boat licence is required).

Another one of my kids has been getting paid to flip burgers for some time, which meant there were now two of us in the family well equipped to cook the barbecue in the middle of the boat.

And, given the price of eating at any novelty restaurant in the big smoke would cost far more for the five of us (my son’s girlfriend joined us) than the Aquadonut hire and barbecue supplies, I bit the blunt bullet of bravery and booked one.

Water and boats still make me nervous, so I was not entirely comfortable with my decision, but I was emboldened by my babes at my side.

We can do it, I thought, as a montage of memories marking many testing moments materialised in my head.

And we did.

As it turns out, my 18-year-old — who loves operating vehicles on land too — took control of the boat straight up and maintained it until the end of our two-hour voyage, where my 17-year-old jumped off and secured us to the jetty with ropes.

It was a sunny day and a pleasant temperature in the low-20s, but there was too much wind to put the boat’s umbrella up.

We might still have lost our hats to the wind if we’d been wearing any, but the difference between teens and toddlers when that happens is quite a few unsettling decibels.

Teenagers know things like that are replaceable. Toddlers want to replace you if you don’t dive in on a retrieval mission.

And they’ll cry about it.

Loudly.

The wind also played a part in extinguishing our barbecue’s flames one too many irritating times to make the whole trip relaxing, but this activity on a warm and still summer’s evening as the sun sets over the city’s most central tidal basin with the Bolte Bridge its backdrop, would be beautiful.

Not being city-siders though, trips to Melbourne and plans within it often require forward-planning and pre-bookings for us regional residents.

And who ever knows what this four-seasons-in-one-day city is going to throw up weather wise? Not us. Not even the Bureau of Meteorology most of the time.

If only there were donut-shaped dinghies on Victoria Park Lake, too.

The water would be calmer and free of big intimidating boats or disoriented sharks.

A goodbye to a hat wouldn’t have to be for ever.

And if you ask me — a self-proclaimed sunset specialist — any less obscured country sunset would give every city sunset a run for its money.