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.