The Voyage of Spectacle

We’re working hard to get ready to leave Sydney, and it’s very difficult since we like it here so much.  I could easily live here.  But we’ve got a good weather window coming up, so it’s time to get going.

After checking three different chandleries, I finally located a shackle for the headsail that will probably be acceptable.  It’s not perfect, but it should do fine.  This shackle attaches the top of the headsail to the furling drum.  The shackle needs to be sufficiently strong; the pin needs to be small enough to fit into its slot in the furling drum; and it needs to be big enough to contain the loop of the sail which is quite bulky.  Unfortunately, gusty winds are forecasted for today and tomorrow, so we’ll have to delay hoisting and refurling the headsail until we get some lighter conditions. 

The sail loft was successful in repairing the staysail, and will be returning it on Monday.  I don’t know how much it will cost since the secretary has “gone crook,” which in Australian English means that she’s sick.  Two cultures separated by a common language, as they say!

We hired a rigger to go up the mast and follow up on the furling drum that I was unable to retrieve.  He tightened the connections on the forestay sleeve, and the furling drum just slid right down exactly as it was supposed to.  He also removed and brought down the burned out bulbs of the tri-color and anchor lights so I could buy new ones.  He also confirmed my suspicions that the forestay was a bit too loose, and he tightened up the backstays.  Unfortunately, the backstays are adjusted as tightly as the adjustable backstay can be tightened, so if we need to tighten more in the future, a more significant rigging change will be required.

The refrigerator guys have dropped the ball so egregiously that we’re beginning to think that they just didn’t want to take the work in the first place.  This happens in areas where there are a lot of really nice yachts.  Apparently, the refrigerator job is either too small, or not small enough.  It might be too small in that the opportunity cost of delaying a job on super yacht is too high.  Or, the complexity of our refrigerator problem makes the job not small enough … they don’t see an easy 3-billable-hour solution so they don’t want to waste time figuring it out, especially when I will resist paying a guy to take it all apart and stare at it like it’s from outer space.  Hopefully, we’ll find someone more motivated and less expensive by the hour to take a look at it somewhere up the coast.

I was a little disappointed in the trimming guy as well.  I see him around the marina very frequently and he’s always walking fast and frantic as if he’s late for a big deadline.  He said that he would have a quote for me weeks ago, and he finally delivered it yesterday.  I would see him in passing and he would promise to meet me in an hour or first thing tomorrow morning or whatever, and he would never show up.  So, too bad for him.  I’m not going to beg him to take my business if he won’t show up when he says he’ll show up.  Well, for cosmetic work anyhow.  If I need a diesel repairman, I beg.

Otherwise, everything is fairly cleaned up and ready to go.  We just mailed a huge box of books home which freed up some storage space.  I purchased paper charts from Port Jackson to Brisbane.  I made a reservation at the marina in Newcastle.  I need to return our borrowed space heater and extension cord.  Pay the marina bill.  And that’s about it.

About a week ago, we had dinner at a fantastic restaurant called Billy Kwong.  Billy Kwong is not an actual person, but the first name of one owner and the surname of the other owner.  Kylie Kwong is a celebrity chef in Australia specializing in Asian fusion cuisine, and she was there that evening standing in front of the semi-exposed kitchen at the service pass-through expediting orders.  The food was outstanding.  As we left, Andy waved and gave an effusive thumbs-up towards her, and she gracefully stepped to one side and gestured a bow to the uniformed chefs in the kitchen.  So incredibly classy. 

Anyway, Billy Kwong’s is quite a small restaurant, and as such, the tables are small and very close together.  In these types of scenarios, I always know that we’ll be making new friends since Andy just can’t not talk to the other tables … he’s very outgoing, he can’t help himself!  So, we met a lovely couple … Chris and Angela who live in Dubai and are visiting family in Sydney.  Suffice it to say, they are engaging people with very interesting and unusual life histories, and we got on like a house afire.  We had dinner together last week at a restaurant called Buzo, which was very fun because of good company but less successful for the cuisine.

Chris and Angela invited us for Yum Cha and after a delicious and super fun lunch, we decided to play hooky from boat preparations and take a drive to the northern beaches and Broken Bay.  We were especially interested in seeing Broken Bay since we had already decided to skip it by boat and head straight for Newcastle.  Those suburbs of Sydney are very beautiful, and the car tour turned into pitchers of beer by the water, and grill-it-yourself steak dinner and wine.  We didn’t get much done today, and we’ll probably delay our departure by one day at least, but who cares.

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.

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.

I woke up fairly early and headed out to get a flat white takeaway and rent a car.  Unfortunately, the Europcar office conveniently located about a block away from the marina is closed on Sundays.  I returned to the boat, jumped on the internet, and found a reasonably priced car available at the airport. 

I failed to note the location of the airport, however, and after a taxi ride where I wondered if the driver was actually taking us out to a deserted pasture to rob us and kill us, we finally arrived to the tune of a $60 fare.  We got the rental car, started driving, and while looking at the map and the road signs, we were overcome by suspicion of a taxi scam.  Oh well, live and learn.  At the very least, Europcar is letting us return at the local rental office so we don’t have to endure another cab ride to oblivion.

Hunter Valley is the wine producing area of New South Wales.

The road to Cessnock, the jumping off point for the Hunter Valley wine country, is rural.  We got lost several times, and the signage is pretty bad … none of those huge and reflecting traffic signs with bunches of grapes to show you the way.  Most importantly, we were really hungry having skipped breakfast and then stuck in the taxi. 

After passing several Macca’s (the Australian nickname for McDonald’s) and Hungry Jack’s (the Australian Burger King), we came across a couple of small take-out cafes that were just too sketchy to venture into.  I’m not being stuck up, but I just can’t eat a sausage roll from an establishment called Smelly’s, and the thought of out-station Australian Chinese food was just too much to bear.  We finally happened upon a hotel pub and restaurant, and ordered soup and chicken fingers thinking it to be fairly safe.  Unfortunately, the chicken wasn’t cooked all the way through – seriously, how can you screw up chicken fingers?  We left still hungry but armed with plenty of jokes about our upcoming bout with salmonella.

We drove into, and promptly out of, the rather charm-free Cessnock within a few minutes and missed the tourist office all together.  After a rough day so far, wine-tasting was exactly what we needed!  So Andy directed us to the nearest cellar door…