The Voyage of Spectacle

 The alarm went off and we were all really dragging.  That little tease of sleep wasn’t totally satisfying, but after a caffeinated beverage, a slightly less intense adrenalin-high kicked in to assist us through this day.  We moved the boat over to Rushcutters Bay to the D’Albora Marina.  Once we arrived and tied to the dock, I suddenly became obsessed with bathing … a hot shower was my mission in life.  So we packed up the shower bag and headed up to the office to get the key to the facilities when the quarantine guy showed up.  He delivered a minor admonishment for leaving the boat without clearing quarantine, and I didn’t care.  I said something to the effect of:  “I haven’t showered in over 9 days so I need you to clear me and my person immediately because I am going to the shower right now.” 

Andy stayed with the quarantine guy as he looked for potential dangers, organic material, and introduced species.  His services cost AUS $416 making this the most expensive check-in process we’ve ever experienced.  He indicated that a good chunk of the charge was overtime to come on a Sunday.  We could’ve avoided overtime rates by staying on the boat until Monday morning, but that just wasn’t in the cards.  And he did take out all of the garbage in a fancy trash bag with official “Danger” and “Quarantine” stencils on it.  Whatever.  I didn’t care as I was luxuriating in a hot shower! 

Icebergs at Bondi Beach

As it turns out, Andy’s close friend from Mizzou was visiting Sydney on business travel from Bangkok, where he now lives and works.  As we pulled into the marina, Jason was waiting for us with hot flat whites and wow that was the most delicious coffee I’ve ever had!  After we cleaned up a little, we jumped in a cab and headed over to Icebergs, the famous restaurant with sweeping views of Bondi Beach.  We had a fabulous lunch with plenty of wine, and experienced the same “land sickness” episodes that we usually experience at our first onshore meal.  I started to relax a little, but I still felt like I was running pretty high on adrenalin.

After lunch, the boys went to check out the Cruising Yacht Club of Australia which is right next door to our marina.  The CYCA sponsors the annual Sydney to Hobart race which is both famous and infamous.  Since we had just crossed the Tasman, we were feeling a special affinity towards those brave enough to take on sailing in those latitudes!  Additionally, tenants at D’Albora Rushcutters are welcome to the private bar and restaurant so I’m sure we’ll be taking advantage of that in the future!  I, on the other hand, went for a relaxing lay down with my book.

Soon it was time to get up and eat again!  There’s so much great stuff to do in Sydney, and with Ryan on his last day, and Jason in town to visit, we were eager to get to it! 

We hopped in a taxi and went to an area called The Rocks which is right on the Bay and across from the Opera House and Harbor Bridge.  It’s a very cool part of town with all sorts of outdoor bars and restaurants and people milling around, so we decided to sit down and have an adult beverage.  We happened to be there during the Luminous Festival, and Sydneysiders were treated to huge, high-powered light shows with the Opera House as the canvas.  It was absolutely stunning and mesmerizing. 

Finished with cocktail hour, we headed to dinner at Quay, which is considered one of the very best restaurants in Australia.  It’s perfectly located also across from the Opera House so our viewing of the light show continued all evening.  The food was amazing, the wine was exquisite, and the company was fabulous … a truly magical night and a far cry from fighting the elements in the Tasman Sea!

We woke up this morning to gusty winds which is bad news.  We need to put the headsail back on, which is very difficult in windy conditions.  This chore should take about an hour, and we need to push off the dock by about one o’clock to head to another marina to fuel up, take some final pictures of the harbor, and get through the headlands and out of the bay by dark.  It’s not looking good for that schedule.  And it’s raining. 

Additionally, someone appears to have moved our lines as the stern has bashed into the dock several times this morning.  Getting the boat to stay put in a slip without hitting the dock or the neighboring boat can sometimes be tricky in areas with high winds, frequently changing wind directions, current, and/or wash from the wake of boat traffic.  The crew of other boats who are sharing dock cleats need to untie us to get their own lines free.  They mean well, but our boat is not the usual harbor cruiser sailboat that recreational sailors are used to.  A 20-ton vessel, ocean-worthy for along passages, behaves quite differently than a small recreational sailboat.  We were pretty annoyed to have to go out and fix the lines in the rain.

Imagine my surprise when this kayaker pulled up next to me to say hello!

Yesterday, we ate lunch, showered, paid our tab at the chandlery, paid the marina bill, and we were off.  We headed off to find a diesel dock since the D’Albora Rushcutters Bay Marina was remodeling its diesel dock rendering it unavailable.  We were referred to the Point Piper marina at Rose Bay, but when we called the port captain, he did not know how deep it was at his own diesel dock.  We were quite amazed at that, but we figured we’d head over and get a look-see for ourselves. 

As we entered the fairway, we noticed that most of the dock was occupied by power boats … that’s usually a sign of shallow water since power boats have much shallower draft than displacement boats.  I yelled to some guys on the dock and they were not optimistic about our chances of clearing the bottom at the diesel dock.  As they were giving me a rash of shit about my All Blacks fleece, the wind caught the bow pretty severely and everybody scrambled to fend us off of several huge power boats.  One of the guys suggested the Royal Sydney Yacht Squadron near the Opera House, so we set off back the way we came. 

RSYS was able to accommodate us, and we filled one of our two tanks with diesel in hopes of a cheaper price per liter outside of Sydney Harbor.  Then we went for our final pass through the Harbor, under the bridge, and by the Opera House.  We both felt really sad to be leaving.  As we went through the headlands exiting the fabulousness and safety of Port Jackson, I experienced some post-traumatic stress as well … we were voluntarily going back out onto the Tasman Sea which had beaten us up so badly on our previous passage.  But it was relatively calm.  I was suddenly shaken out of my thoughts by a hearty “G’ Day!”  There was a guy in a kayak right next to us!  We had a quick chat, and then he turned and went back into the Harbor.

The overnight sail was rather uneventful.  The East Australian Current is hard to predict and a very big consideration since it can be extremely strong.  It runs in a southerly direction, oftentimes up to 3-4 knots.  Since we’re going north, we will normally assume adverse current, but there are eddies where the current reverses direction.  The current effect is less pronounced closer to land, so that was our passage strategy.  And yes, we have been looking for Nemo!

We arrived at the Newcastle approach about two hours before dawn, so we puttered around in circles until the sun came up.  And since it was dawn, I was obviously on watch.  Right at first light, at least 20 freighters set off to sea all heading in various directions.  It was pretty neat.

I woke Andy up and we began our approach between the massive breakwaters into the well protected harbor in Newcastle.  We easily found the marina, tied up, checked in, had some breakfast, and settled in for a nap.

After our nap yesterday, we realized that the Newcastle Knights were playing the Canberra Raiders in rugby league that evening, and we felt pretty good and recovered enough from the passage to go out.  Andy bought tickets online, and we set off.

First, we went to the Newcastle Cruising Yacht Club for an adult beverage.  It’s a very nice place, and chock full of local boaters.  Andy and I were eavesdropping on the conversation going on at the table behind us.  They were in a heated discussion about the Gold Coast and how it is culture-free.  We hear this a lot, and of course, the same criticisms are frequently made about the United States.  And I think it’s all pretty harsh.  I mean think about it … places like Sydney and Los Angeles are just never going to be Rome or Istanbul, but that doesn’t mean that they’re culture-free. 

In a way, Australia has a much better excuse than the United States.  Captain Cook and the Endeavor landed in 1770, but the First Fleet didn’t arrive until 1788, and that was for the penal colony.  Plus, Australia is far more remote than the U.S., especially by the standards of early days.  And, exploration and travel across Australia was far harsher than the experiences of American settlers moving west.  To this day, large parts of Australia are still uninhabitable even with technological advances. 

Newcastle Knights Super Fan -- and much warmer rugby league spectator!

My point is that I think Australia has evolved into a very distinct culture given its youth as a society and its many geographical and topographical challenges.  As we further eavesdropped, one guy tried to make the point that China has no real culture either, just a long-standing civilization.  I still haven’t figured out what that craziness actually meant or what it has to do with Gold Coast, but I thought it was pretty amusing.      

We then went next door to have a bite at the local restaurant which happens to be one of the best in Newcastle, and it was really good.  We hopped into a taxi and headed out to the ground.  I immediately realized that I was going to be too cold, so we swung by the team shop and I instantly became a Newcastle Knights super fan by double bill-boarding with hat and scarf.  After a convincing Knights victory, we cabbed it home, had dessert and decaf at the local, and went to bed.  Tomorrow we’ll rent a car and head out to the Hunter Valley wine country.

Yesterday, we had big plans to leave Newcastle at first light since Coffs Harbor was about 175 miles away and the East Australian Current is always a concern.  Unfortunately, we slept in so soundly, and then suffered some separation anxiety with the marina’s cheap, fast, and reliable wifi.  But we managed to shove off around 10:30 with a flexible plan of making landfall at Port Stephens (about 5 hours away), Coffs Harbour (about 30 hours away), or Gold Coast (about 55 hours away).

As we made our way through the channel, we noticed a lot of traffic.  One tugboat was leading a container ship out, and another tugboat was leading another container ship in.  Several container ships were loitering outside the breakwater waiting to be taken in.  Since we usually see freighters from afar, seeing one up close is a weird reminder of how gigantic they actually are. 

We made our way through the breakwaters and found a nice, calm, flat Tasman Sea … just like we like it!  Andy went below to check our position, and then I heard a loud booming noise.  I looked in the general direction of the noise, and having grown up within a couple of miles of an Air Force base, I knew that some kind of fighter jet was headed in our direction. 

The trick to communicating on a boat is the delicate balance between notification with a sense of urgency and scaring someone to death with a tone of emergency or impending disaster.  I leaned into the companion way, and as calmly as I could, I said “military plane” in a flat but loud voice.  Andy shot up immediately to catch the show.  It made a wide loop out over the ocean at fairly low altitude … deafeningly loud and very exciting.

About 10 minutes later, we had a humpback whale sighting!  Again, I leaned into the companion way, and as calmly as I could, I said “whale” in a flat but loud voice.  Again, you have to be careful not to communicate a message of panic or emergency, but rather just a really cool sightseeing opportunity.  Anyway, it was a pod of at least three whales traveling up the coast together.  We mostly saw their spouts and backs … no flukes or fins or full breeches this time, but very cool nonetheless.

The rest of the day was quite nice and uneventful.  I’m reading a book called Gilead by Marilynne Robinson.  It won a Pulitzer Prize and I can definitely see why.  Andy’s reading The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich and constantly shaking his head at the disturbing tale. 

This storm, and the weather warning of high winds, chased us all the way into Coffs Harbour.

Unfortunately, we downloaded some weather forecasts and a weather warning had just been issued for high winds for our area around Coffs Harbour the following night.  As I mentioned, we had decided that if we didn’t make it to Coffs Harbour for a daytime arrival, we would try to press on to Gold Coast.  This new weather warning killed that idea promptly, so we had to pick up the pace a little bit to make sure we made it to Coffs Harbor with daylight to spare. 

And we just barely made it!  Literally, we had minutes to spare as a huge, angry-looking storm chased us in to shelter.  The slip was barely big enough to hold us and the neighboring boat already moored there, but, in his best performance yet, Andy perfectly threaded the needle.  Oh, bowthruster, how do we love thee?  Let me count the ways!

We grabbed the shower bag, stopped at the marina office, and per their instructions, opened the lockbox to obtain the keys.  We had dinner at the closest restaurant, and it was actually pretty good.  I had yellow fin tuna that was probably just a few hours fresh, although, I felt Andy’s brother, Erik, also known as the Seahadist (the seafood Jihadist), breathing down my neck for not eating something else (Artic Char?).  His overwhelming knowledge about, and activism to stop, overfishing are really cutting into my enjoyment of seafood!