12 midnight – I come on watch and stay on for the rest of the day as we will be reaching landfall by 6am. The AIS system and radar show up to 12 ships waiting for pilots to guide them into the harbor.

 

6am: Sydney Heads as the sun came up a narrow entrance with south flowing current. Arriving by boat in a city is much more enjoyable than by 747. Sydney Bay is narrow with many coves to explore.

 

6:15: Harbor cruise – the Opera House (smaller than I imagined), Kirribilli point, the Prime Ministers residence, Circular Quay, the Royal Botanical Gardens and under the Harbor Bridge. The stewardess is afraid we aren’t going to fit and the mast is going to come down. I tell her to go up the rig with one of the fenders!

 

6:30: We manually let down the bow thruster and attempt to engage it. It starts kicking back up into the hull so we rig a line strapping it in place. We dock at ….. to clear customs, quarantine and immigration.

 

7:00-9:45: Customs, Immigration and Quarantine. Searched by the yellow Customs labs the dogs were cute fitted with little socks so as not to damage anything. The dogs work for 15 minute shift so their attention doesn’t wonder. Up on the dinghy cover, inside the dinghy cover with only their tails showing, down into the chain locker, on the teak and varnished dining room tables etc!

 

9:45am – 6pm: We have a full day of work on the boat cleaning up after the delivery and getting ready for the owners trip.

 

6:00-10:00pm: Dinner at the Cruising Yacht Club of Australia where a large pre race (Sydney Hobart) party rages on. I spot a friend who raced on Yeoman with me in the Fastnet. The wind has come up and the Rolex flags flutter off the forestay in the wind. We go for a walk along the docks boat spotting and come across Shogun the IRC46 hull 3. I see many differences to the boat which solve some of the issues we found after our miles on Yeoman.

 

8:00-12 midday: A late wake up for me make the crew a breakfast of English pancakes as we had no lemons for me to make them during the delivery – something I normally do. Rigging chores before going into town – the main halyard needs to be shortened and reloaded on the captive winch.

 

12:45-3pm: Drop the chef and stewardess in town and park in the Domain. Carols in the Park is that night the stage is set, people stream into the park and a little village of tents has sprung up on the grass in front of the stage. It is humid everyone tucks into their picnics I grab an ice cream. Quick walk through the Art Gallery and then onto the Botanical Gardens walking along the water front to the Opera House. Bats are hanging in the trees, many different birds fly around the gardens and there are lots of interesting plant species to look at. It is a Saturday and the gardens are teeming with people. Back in the car around Hyde Park and navigate myself back to the boat 20 minutes out of town.  

3pm: Change into airplane cloths, leaving my uniform onboard, eat yet another beautifully prepared lunch by our chef and off to the airport for a 24 hour flight.

 

4pm: In a very long queue at the airport to check in don’t get to the ticket counter until 10 minutes before the flights scheduled departure of 6pm. The flight is overbooked I am told I am on standby (along with 7 others) not something I want to hear. I find the supervisor and tell her I am happy to go on QF31 via Singapore (overbooked as well). I tell her I have flown standby for 25 years and would love to make it out that night but understand the flight is in an oversold situation. My concern is my ticket says not eligible for denied boarding compensation – not something I want to read I keep silent about this. The check in agent is under pressure one seat and she has to choose who goes everyone stands in front of her listening to her conversation. She picks me saying I deserve to get on after 25 years of standby but says can’t guarantee a good seat. I am happy to sit in the worst seat in the plane I just want to go home. She hands me a ticket – joy of joy it is a business class ticket all the way back to London I run through customs, security and sweating arrive at the gate. We sit on the plane at the waiting for a connecting flight with 40 passengers to land. We take off almost 2 hours late I look out the window (very happily I am seated in business) and am able to spot the yacht I sailed in on at her dock in Balmain – thank you for a safe trip I murmur in her direction. Goodbye Sydney.

I am sitting in Sydney Harbor got in this morning at 6am local time. The delivery from Auckland to Sydney was altogether uneventful which was great for catching up on paperwork and indicative of the high standard of work done on the boat at ORAMS. The most excitement was when the freezer started to defrost and the ice cream went runny! This was the result of one of the levers (controlling the water to the cooling pump for the freezer) being turned off in the bilge when the hydraulics guys were working on the vang adjustments. The only wildlife we saw were a few dolphins as we made our way up the east coast towards Cape Reinga.

The picture shows Poor Knights Islands Marine Reserve just before sunset established in 1981 and rated as one of the top diving spots in the world it is 24km off the east coast of NZ’s northland. The two large islands Tawhiti Rangi and Aorangi are sacred to Maori’s as they were the scene of a massacre of the Ngati-wai tribe in the early 1800’s. You can’t land on the islands but can anchor off of them and dive.

It is a continuous learning experience for me on how to balance this boat it is very different from a racing boat. Before the winds really picked up we had a small amount of the main up and some jib however, on the waves the boom (despite the preventer) would move in and then flop back out putting a large amount of strain on the rigging. I decided the best thing was to center the main and then was going to get Tim up to do something with the main. He was sitting in the pilot house when I came in as the commotion had got him up. Basically the weight of the boom was such that we needed more main to keep the boom out there however, with the forecast for higher winds we decided to be conservative and furl the main in completely. We spent the night with a handkerchief of a jib out, no main and engine at 1600 rpm.

That night we had the predicted high winds (gusting to 40 and continuously high 30s) and big seas (the spray was blowing off the top) leaving our new stewardess Sally shrieking at a few of the large rolls. Tim mentioned these were the worst conditions he had been in on this boat. On one particular roll the boom touched the water and there was a wave that broke over the cabin top. I was fully interrogated about why the boat would not roll on its side seeing as the mast is so much longer than the keel. I assured her that this boat is built like a ˜brick s*** house being an aluminum hull. I went to bed thinking about the kids rowing the Tasman hoping for their sake that they had cleared the area that we were in see http://www.crossingtheditch.com.au/ . A guy had attempted this crossing two months ago and died in the attempt it is not really somewhere to be in a row boat.

See a picture taken by a friend of Albatross. We saw a few on the trip they are such graceful creatures. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albatross for more about them.

A week before our departure from Auckland the bow thruster motor had packed it in and a new one was hard to find so the guys at Holton Engineering fabricated a come along system allowing us to manually bring the bow thruster up and down. We checked every hour along with our engine checks to insure that the bow thruster was in the up position. One night we had some heavy pounding from the seas and we grew concerned about the bow thruster door being properly sealed. Luckily for Tim the seas died down so he didn’t have to suit up in dive gear and go over the side to visual inspect the door.

This was my first time to Australia and as we made such good time across the Tasman I was actually in Sydney for 36 hours. Enough time to see the famous Opera house as we entered the Bay and to go for dinner at the CYC the club who runs the Sydney Hobart Race.

It seems silly to have left only 3 days before the start of the Sydney Hobart Race. It is a race that I have wanted to do for a long while however, my family has the Christmas tree all ready in the UK so time to get on a long plane trip home.

Happy Holidays everyone.