Sailing Sydney Harbour - Jan 2006

OK, I have to do this quietly so Maggie doesn't get too upset. The following shots are from a weekend we spent on Sydney Harbour in January 2006. It started out with a group sail on a 42ft Hunter and then we spent the night anchored in Balls Head Bay in a Hunter 38, while Sarah looked after James (as it turns out we anchored less than 1km from Sarah's place in Greenwich).

The conditions were a solid 10knots (gusting to above 15??) - roughly out of the E to NE if I've got my bearings correct. The seas were generally slight as you would expect - the harbour traffic probably to blame for most of it. A nice swell was however coming in the through the heads, which meant for some great sailing from Watsons Bay across to Manly hard into the wind.

So here we are prior to boarding in Darling Harbour - lovely day in Sydney.

Claire relaxing whilst under way with North Head in the background..

Me at the helm going under the Harbour Bridge - did I mention it was Saturday afternoon, which is a particularly busy time in Sydney Harbour with racing fleets and ferries absolutely everywhere!
The amount of data from the instrument panel was amazing, too much to look at - so I didn't bother. I did note however that we were comfortably cruising at 10 knots!

Heading for the Harbour Bridge - we are probably somewhere between Bradley's Head and Fort Denison.

Claire enjoying being anchored - with Champagne!

The sun setting through the rigging over Berry Island Reserve (i think).

Claire enjoying our seafood feast.

A very pleased Claire then next morning, as the yacht hadn't sunk and the anchor hadn't dragged!

Meeting up with James the next morning, so he could inspect the yacht.

All in all a great experience, helming through the racing fleets was interesting - you know (or is that hope) that they going to miss you, but sometimes they cut it awfully fine.Anyway, that's enough dreaming of bigger boats - I have enough trouble keeping my small one clean!