Thursday 9th

Our stay at CYCA was up today. A few boat jobs in the morning before Kristie and I snuck off to the clubhouse by ourselves to get a Bacon and Egg roll and a coffee.

It was raining when we left so didn’t bother fueling up there.

We were aiming for Bantry Bay up in Middle Harbour. We’d have to time our passage to coincide with the opening times of Spit Bridge, which for us was either 1:15pm, or 2:15pm.

Given it was 10am, we decided to head over and grab a mooring at Rose Bay and wait out the rain there; I was also keen to have as much high tide as possible before going over the shallow area before we got to the bridge.

We took the opportunity to fine-tune the side walls for the rain. The poles didn’t have a great way of being fixed at one end, so out came the drill.

We had an early lunch and aimed to get there for the 2:15pm opening. The B14 (sailing dingy) were now having their World Titles and their start line was in the bay just north of our mooring.
I tried sneaking around the eastern side, but they were all sailing close to the headland, so we took the long detour around to the west to avoid the fleet.
(sadly we don’t have a flashing orange light so can’t just steam through the middle of them like the massive ferry did!)
Some good entertainment - fast sailing with their kites up, also lots of capsizes!

We picked up one of the two courtesy waiting moorings (2hr limit) just to the east of the bridge and waited 15min for it to open.
You could just about spit onto land from the back of the boat, but we still had 10m underneath us!

They let the boats on the western side come through first, then us.

We were the last of four boats going through from ourside, and the bridge started lowering more or less as we went through!

It’s only a short trip around the corner to Bantry Bay, but we enjoyed checking out the amazing houses/units built into the steep hills of Middle Harbour.
(Quite a few had chair-lift style access to the jetty at the bottom of their land/cliff).

There are eight public moorings up there, and it was quiet so we had no trouble getting one (we won’t talk about the botched job I did of getting us onto it!)

Bantry Bay feels like a million miles from anywhere as you can’t see any houses/civilisation, however it’s smack in the middle of Sydney and only about 5nm north from Taronga Zoo.

I tried fishing, but still I’m only good at catching small silver fish.

Friday 10th

We took our time to get ready in the morning and then set out to do the walk to the lookout on the Bay Track.

Quick tender ride to the landing, toilet stop, then off we went.

We’d only gone about 20m when the first leech struck.

Then they continued smashing us until we got to higher/drier ground.

The path isn’t that well-used, and lots of wet/overgrown spiky trees. I ended up carrying Emma on my shoulders for most of the walk up, and quite a bit of they way down.

Great view at the top, but just as we got there we could start to hear the thunder getting closer. A quick check of BOM indicted the rain was just about on us!

Emma had declined to do the last 200m to the top lookout, so we got back to her quickly and got ready for the rain
The Exped Typhoon backpacks we have are fully waterproof (I got them intended for our boat life!) so phones went in there, and down we went in the rain.

More leeches came out to greet us and wriggle all over our shoes and socks.

By the time we got back to the tender I found two that had drawn blood, but otherwise no physical damage was done (maybe a bit of mental scaring for future walks - “is this going to be a leech walk?”).

We tried our best to de-leech on the pontoon before getting in the tender, but still one or two made it back to the boat :(

Shower on the back of the boat to clean off from the walk: all the boats behind us had left so we could have a proper shower!

We spent a bit of time making plans for the next week.

After working out we’d leave early tomorrow, we jumped in the tender to go checkout the waterfall that was just around the corner.
Apparently you could walk up to it, but after this morning’s walk nobody was super keen to step foot on leech-land again.
The waterfall wasn’t that spectacular, and as we could see it from the tender we didn’t even have to stop :)

On the way back we noticed the couple from Woy Woy (that had taken our mooring at Taronga Zoo last week) were also on a mooring near us. We stopped for another chat with them on the way back to Lazuli.

Tomorrow we head off to Broken Bay to explore that area for a week or so as it has more options for avoiding the strong winds that are coming.

Thursday 2nd

We were still at Athol Bay, and the Meade’s were off to catch up with some of their other friends today.
We dropped them off to shore so they could catch the ferry back into the city. Hugs and goodbyes for everyone - we’ll see them again on the boat when we’re a long way north of here!

It was a bit overcast today, which made it a good day to walk around the zoo. A very short ride in the tender, a set of steps up from the beach and we were inside Taronga Zoo.

We failed at getting into see any actual shows as it was really busy, and we were taking it slow.

We more or less saw everything there was to see. Emma was excited to see the Capybara, and both girls loved the Red Panda and the big African animals.

By 5pm we were spent and needed to get back on the boat to relax. It took us a while to get out past the gift shop (one toy Capybara and tiger in tow).

When we got down to the tender we found some #@$%heads had flipped it upside down :( It was padlocked to a tree and the engine padlocked on. It started up 1st go and doesn’t seem to have had any lasting physical damage (only a little mental anguish).

Back on board and one of the many party boats (~35ft cat) turned up with a dozen or so young guests. Lots of loud music, and lots of posing for photos. Good entertainment for us knowing they only have a few hours of charter and weren’t hanging around all night.
One of the revellers exclaimed: “this is even better than NYE”.

Friday 3rd

After a BIG few days, we all needed a bit of a day off from doing anything. We moved to a free mooring to reset our 24hr time limit and that’s as much boating as we did that day.

However, Andrew was in Sydney, so we invited him onboard for breakfast - he came bring baked delights.

Great to catch up with him even if it was brief.

The rest of the day I spent catching up on blogs from the last two weeks.

We eventually persuaded the girls to leave the boat at 3pm, and went in to walk out to the end of Bradleys Head, and do the loop back around past Athol Hall.

The B14’s (dingy) were having their nationals (and then followed by the worlds).

We went for a swim on the beach, but it was low tide and we discovered a lot of broken glass. We spent about 10min picking it up, then swam a bit further down away from the rocks.

Saturday 4th

We’d been in Athol Bay since midnight of the 30th, so figured it was time to move somewhere else in the harbour.

We the winds light and mostly NE, we motored across to “Milk Beach”, which is between Rose Bay and Watson Bay (it’s out from Strickland House).
We picked up one of the public moorings and got sorted to do some walking. We got in the tender and looked for somewhere to come ashore that had somewhere secure to lock it up.
The end of “Hermit Beach” had a ramp of sorts and a dingy storage rack that looked ideal. We only discovered the oyster covering when we got out (no injuries).

With the tender high and dry and locked up, we walked up to Strickland House to have a look at that. An Uber then whisked us away up to Camp Cove so we could do the walk to South Head.

It’s only about 700m each way, and we were lucky enough to have good views of the headlands; and unlucky enough to cop some unsightly views of the “clothing optional beach” along the way.

The light here, “Hornby Lighthouse” had been very prominent when coming into through the Heads at night on the 30th.

We hiked back into Camp Cove, then up the hill to start the clifftop walk down towards Macquarie Lighthouse. We got just past that to the park and we reached our limit of walking (~5km) so stopped in the park for a good 30min.

We’d promised the girls ice cream, but with no shops insight we ended up walking to Woolies to do a quick shop and get ice creams there.
Uber back to the beach to enjoy our ice creams where we had tied up the tender (thankfully still the correct way up!).

We took the groceries back to the boat and got changed for a quick swim in at Milk Beach. Plenty of foreign tourists there.

By 5pm we were cold and ready for sip’s ‘n dips. Just about to crack open a beer when the wind came up, and more from the North. It was going to be a bit uncomfortable here, so we left that mooring and headed back to Athol Bay, which is great in the Northerlies.
We scored a mooring straight up, so got stuck into the beer with minimal disruption.

More evening entertainment from another party boat.

Sunday 5th

Woke up and saw another mooring was vacant, so we jumped onto that.

Kristie had tried booking the Bridge Climb the night before, but it wasn’t going through online. They opened at 9am, so shortly after that we were locked in for a 12:25 climb.

Being a Sunday with blue skies and not much wind, the bay/beach got busy very quickly. We took the tender into the beach just near our boat (and more public) and locked it up to the national park sign.
A quick walk and ferry and we were in Circular Quay. We had some time to kill so walked around to get a photo of us with the Opera House in the background.
We had to try several times before we could find someone who could take reasonable photos (one lady had cut Emma out of the photo altogether!)

Quick packed lunch before getting to the bridge climb and filling in forms.

We were lucky and had a fun guide, and there were 3 other kids on our walk: we didn’t see any on the other walks immediately before or after us - good timing.

We had great weather, and a marvellous view from the top - yes we could spot Lazuli on the way up: being blue she stands out from all the white boats around her :)

We had a voucher to use at The Squire’s Landing. Despite a cruise ship being in port, it was still ok to look back at the bridge. Early dinner there before getting one of the last ferries back to Athol Bay (that ferry only really runs when the zoo is open).

We then moved inside as we thought rain was coming:

Monday 6th

The girls had declared Monday was going to be a “rest day”.

After a bit of hassling/prompting from my dad, I finally got around to getting my fishing rod out. The braid on mine was a bit heavy, so I ended up using one of the girls new rods.

Back in November I’d booked to stay at the Cruising Yacht Club of Australia for three nights from Boxing Day onwards (I’d assumed we’d be down there!).
However, back in Yamba when we knew we weren’t going to make it I’d opted to have the booking changed to the 6/7/8th Jan (the marina has been really good to deal with). CYCA is just the otherside of the harbour from Athol Bay.

We were about to head for a swim with a guy from another smaller boat came over and said they were off to the zoo, and if we could call him (he gave us his business card) if it looked like they were starting to drag anchor.
We countered that with a “we’re leaving in an hour, how about you have our mooring?”. That suited them, and we ended up having a good chat with him about stuff to see in Broken Bay / Pittwater (where they are from) and an offer to catch up when we get there!

We had a quick swim, then back to the boat and cast off the mooring at pretty much 10am on the dot. They were ready with boat hook out - you gotta be quick as other boats pounce as soon as they see you starting to leave.

We got to the marina with fenders and lines ready. Thankfully nobody was in the other side of our allotted pen - I’m don’t think I would have got in as the berths are narrow: we’d have less than a small fender space between us and another Lazuli!

We (Kristie) caught up on a few weeks worth of washing, and I had a few boat jobs/cleaning to do.
Noteably, our fridge was in dire need of defrosting: it nearly had an inch of ice around the top freezer/cooling compartment!
I followed up with a trip to Woolies while the girls were on their devices and Kristie had a nap - it was up hill all the way, which meant downhill on the return.

The girls only left the boat to go have a shower.

Tuesday 7th

Kristie had booked tickets to Sea Life the night before. The 10:45am slot was the cheapest, and also most convenient for us (cheaper Uber out of peak rush hour).

We had a quick walk on Prymont Bridge before heading in at 10:30.

We were all really impressed with Sea Life. It was busy, but the displays and variety of sea life was great (doesn’t beat diving!).
I think we enjoyed it more than Taronga Zoo, but I guess we are more sea inclined anyway (the girls are part mermaid).

Our highlights:

• the Dugong pit - one of only 2 Dugong’s in captivity.
• Seahorses
• Penguins
• Large fish tanks - fish + rays + GNS

The penguin cruise - you have to queue for about 30min for a 2min boat ride… we weren’t in a rush so didn’t bother us.

We ended up taking 3.5hrs to get through.

Walked home via Pitt Street (shopping), Hyde Park, and Kings Cross.

We’d lost 2 items the day before - the head for my electric shaver (I was tapping the hair out and tapped the head to the bottom of Athol Bay), and one of the tender tie down straps came loose and ended up in the same spot :(

I got the replacement for my shaver easily, but had no luck for the strap: I tried the chandlery here but the recent Sydney to Hobart start had left them depleted of a few items!

Back to the boat for a drizzly/raining afternoon/evening.

Wednesday 8th

The day started off overcast, but no rain. Running gear on, I managed a 5km run along the footpath along Rushcutters Bay, and around Rushcuttesr Bay Park.

Kristie had booked a show at the Opera House: we were off to see “Josephine wants to dance” at 10:30am. We’re finding that Ubering is much more convenient than walking/public transport for the four of us.
It’s only $15 or so to get into the city.

We were all dressed up when the rain started. It was only light, so we left the umbrellas on the boat much to Kristina’s protests (she turned out to be right!).
We had to use the walkway underneath to avoid the rain.

The show was fun, only 45min or so.

We had a quick packed lunch while avoiding the rain and expensive food.

Though it was raining, we headed up for a quick photo in front of the Opera House.

Another Uber to the Art Gallery as the girls wanted to do the kids crafting for a bit. I walked around and enjoyed the free sections.

A final Uber back to the boat to hang up wet cloths.

This is our last night in the CYCA marina. We’ll make good use of the facilities here before we leave:

• washing
• fuel
• water
• shopping

The rest of the week and most of the next week looks to be wet. Sprinkled with a mix of wind from SE and then from NE we’re not sure where we’ll end up tomorrow or after.

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.