July
16th
2014-
Sydney
The trip to Sydney was, in itself, not very eventful and we were very happy when we could finally see the heads.
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| 'twas a cold, cold day on the ocean blue! | | | |
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| Just a few of the carriers waiting at Botany Bay. |
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| Seriously.... what a fabulous cemetery! |
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| The Heads at Port Jackson (better known as Sydney Harbour) . Yay!!!! |
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| Leavin' on a jet plane....... for New Zealand perhaps? |
We
arrived in Sydney on a Wednesday, but it was as busy a day as if it
was a weekend. Boats of all shapes and sizes and numerous passenger
ferries darted up and down and across Port Jackson (aka Sydney
Harbour), making navigation a nightmare and vigilance an absolute
must. A few yacht races were happening, with boats surging towards
us, expecting us to get out of the way. The ferries cut close in
front and behind as they heedlessly made their way to their various
destinations across the water. Tiny catamarans and trimarans
zigzagged about like wasps around sugar pots. It felt as though we
each needed three pairs of eyes and taking photos was kind of tricky.
Our closest encounter was just
before we neared the Sydney Harbour Bridge. Whilst keeping our eyes
peeled for errant ferries and yachts, we noticed a large racing
catamaran heading our way with apparently little intent of changing
course, despite the fact that we seemed to be right in their way.
Dave said hold ground, so we did even as they cut across only feet
from our rear. They were so close, we could almost have reached out
and shaken their hands if we hadn't been ever-so-slightly panicked
about a collision (well I was anyway). Of course these guys were
obvious professionals and to them it was possibly not close at all.
In fact they seemed absolutely oblivious to the fact that they could
take our back end off with no problem, and seemed more concerned with
not letting their own boat heel too much, but still.....!
Whilst there we caught up with
our newest yachtie besties, Selina and Dave (who I shall name Dave2
for the sake of confusing anyone) who invited us aboard their yacht
Quintessa for a lovely dinner, good wine and fun conversation. It was
a late night. A couple of days later, Dave2 and Selina came for a
visit, just in time to watch Dave ascend the mast to fix a broken
light bulb and to straighten out the bird bent wind-vane. Later that
evening it was our turn to play host and another late and somewhat
boozy night was had. Another evening of total fun and relaxation. :D
Every
now and then things happen that are very interesting indeed, such as
the racing of remote controlled yachts from the front of the yacht
club. It was really fascinating to watch, as these little yachts
still had to mill about just as their full sized cousins have to
before a race and then when the starting gun sounded, negotiate the
breezes and go around buoys. It was totally full on racing, with
tactics and skill brought to the fore, and all in miniature. There
was cheering and all sorts coming from the shore and it seems to be a
very regular thing. From what we could gather it was totally serious
business. No 'toy' references thank you very much.
Another
very odd thing happened one warm afternoon when Dave spotted an
object bobbing along near the boat. We watched it for a while and
initially thought it may be a weird, kind of scary looking turtle,
until it got closer and we realised it was metallic. Okay, our
imaginations were piqued enough for Dave to get out into the dinghy
and take a look. It turned out, after fishing it out of the briny,
that it was a roof ventilator, the wind driven spinning type, inside
which someone had placed a small, empty gas cylinder that was used to
keep the thing just floating on the surface. By the rust on the whole
thing, it had been in the water for some time. It could have
presented quite a hazard for the wrong vessel but no longer. It's now
somewhere in a recycling yard waiting to be crushed up and turned
into something else.... we hope.
On day 5 we motored around to
the fish markets at Pyrmont where, because their docks weren't busy
at that time of year, we could tie up all day for free. We then
hopped the free train into the city and did some of the touristy
thing. The Bridge, the Opera House, parks, stuff....as with
Melbourne, because Sydney is so big, with so many activities and
places for visitors, I'm not going to go too much into what we did. I
will, however, remark on how much walking we did and how much the
knee goblins played up. The little sods were intent on partying under
my kneecaps, setting off teeny tiny explosions every time I took a
step. Beware goblins, your time is coming.
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| One of the huge Morton Bay fig trees near the Opera House. |
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| Urban Cocky right in the city centre. :D |
After getting back to Venture
after our super cheap day trip, we moved around to Farm Cove, which
is right between the Botanic Gardens and the Opera House, and is
completely free to anchor in. I mean WOW! Prime views, central to the
entire city, a 2 minute dinghy trip to the Man O' War landing steps
at the Opera House and costs not one cent. That's got to be the
absolute bargain of the century. The only concession to perfection is
the fact that it's very rolly during the day due to the wake caused
by all of the water traffic, but when the ferries stop and all of the
boats have gone home for the night, it's beautiful. To get to shore,
we had to take the dinghy to the Man O' War Steps and its small
floating dock near the Opera House. This was, by far, the scariest
dock we've come across. The noise as it moved up and down against the
pylons was horrendous, with almost constant unearthly Kraken-like
groans and creaks and shrieks of metal against metal. It didn't seem
to bother the old guy who was fishing off the edge. He just moved
with it. I hope he managed to catch a few.
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| The Bridge and Opera House from Farm Cove at dusk |
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| Farm Cove Panorama from Venture. |
Whilst at Farm Cove, we did a
bit more of the touristy bit around the city centre to look at a few
things we'd missed out on the first time in and we also partook of an
obligatory trip to Manly on the ferry. I think there's some kind of
law where, if you're in Sydney, you have to take that ferry. It's so
famous that it is a line in a song by Australian Crawl. Good song!
Manly itself was really lovely, with a wide shopping mall that
stretches between Manly Cove and the open ocean.
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| Just one thing I'll mention about this... what's with the upside down sign?? |
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| A navy ship on the way to Manly.... bathed in light against a slate grey sky |
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| A couple more Navy ships. We've seen a fair few already on our travels. |
After our third night in Farm
Cove I was really ready to move on. Though the million dollar view
was gorgeous, the $1 seasickness pill became more important to my
flagging countenance as I found myself becoming increasingly queasy
when we were aboard our anchored vessel. It's pretty bad when you
have to pop a pill and you're not even going anywhere! It was time to
finally move on.
On the evening of the 25th,
we headed over to Little Manly in order to get a good start to Broken
Bay. The evening departed in a glow of fire fingers that lit up the
opulent, money oozing cliff-top homes that towered above us. It was
nice moored there though and I was once again struck by the realism
that, when in a boat, you can basically stay anywhere in the harbour
either cheaply or free, sitting in the cockpit in your daggy casual
clothes, drinking red cask wine out of plastic goblets right
alongside the well-to-do. Awesome!! Cheers Sydney!
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| Moored at Little Manly. |
Location:
Sydney Harbour NSW, Australia
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