Tuesday 31st - New Years Eve
Waking up on Sydney Harbour was a pretty special moment. Fantastic views of the Opera House and bridge.
The girls were keen to get off the boat onto shore, and Trent had a full day of exploring Sydney planned.
The Cremorne Point jetty was only 5min away and a good place for pickup/drop off. I dropped the four of them off and went back to do boat jobs/cleaning.
Cremorne Point Lighthouse - built in 1909.
The Meade Clan turned up after lunch. Jo and the kids went for a swim, while Justin and I took the gear back to Lazuli.
J and I then went back to ferry Jo and the two youngest back to Lazuli, and then made our way to Maccallum Seawater Pool for a refreshing pool.
We got a bit of a distress call from Jo who was on board and concerned about all the boats that were around us.
Once all back on board we settled in for sip’s ‘n dips. I collected Trent at 5pm after he’d been off exploring.
The kids did some crafting whilst we waited:
Bubbles to bring in ‘25:
We had dinner and a few drinks and sat back for the first wave of entertainment: watching the all the boats coming in and jostling for the best position, trying to find space between boats and not be over the exclusion zone.
To our surprise, boats were still coming in around 8pm trying to find spots. I can’t imagine trying to do that in Lazuli.
Nelly took a screenshot of the AIS traffic and sent it to us:
The first round of fireworks kicked off at 9:30. We had fireworks going off just near us, and then closer to the bridge.
These “warm up” fireworks were probably better than any other fireworks I’d seen before (well since I was in Sydney nearly 20 years ago with Dan and Fiona).
The kids were all up on deck snuggled up in sleeping bags. Kristina and Emma went to sleep up on deck, and Alex downstairs.
Quite a few boats left after these fireworks.
We tried to tune in to the entertainment but with so many people in the harbour there wasn’t enough bandwidth (papers the next day reckoned 1 million people were gathered around the harbour).
The main fireworks were spectacular. Fireworks were everywhere, it was hard to know where to look!
As soon as the fireworks were over, the exodus began: boats leaving and going in all directions. We had no intentions of going anywhere.
We stayed up to about 1am watching the boats and then hit the sack.
With 9 onboard we had a full boat! I chose to sleep on the seat/cushions up on deck!
Wednesday 1st - New Years Day
With a 9am flight to catch, Trent was up and ready to be dropped off to the south side of the harbour at 6:30am.
We had to dodge a few party cruises that were still doing laps around the harbour with loud dance music still blasting, and many tired looking guests sitting down and waiting/wishing to get off!
We had a lazy morning then picked up the anchor go move closer into to Athol Beach. We eventually had breakfast and kept an eye on a spare mooring.
Eventually we saw one boat getting ready to leave, so Kristie zoomed over in the tender to claim it. She had to fight off several other boats who were steaming towards it to claim it for themselves.
A few were ok with it, one boat was a bit pissed off and dropped anchor quite close to the mooring. We turned up and picked up the mooring and got a few dirty looks from them.
With the boat hooked up we swam into shore for a swim.
We kids were keen to go to Luna Park, so we got ready for that and did few runs to the beach to get to the jetty so we could get to Circular Quay, and then over to Milsons Point.
It was about 3:30 by the time we got there. We got the ride passes and spent the afternoon/evening there making the most of our time there.
Jo and Kristie catching a drink while the rest of us were busy on the rides:
We left when it shut at 8pm, and got an Uber back to the steps at the top of Athol Beach.
We were all shattered after quite a few long days and went to bed early.