Sailing Taurus NZ

We sailed into Sydney on Monday the 23rd of February, and headed to Rose Bay. This we knew to be a convenient anchorage: close to the heads, good access to a dinghy dock, showers at the local yacht club, supermarket and liquor store, and a good (and cheap) Thai restaurant. What more could the cruising sailor want? Well, peace and quiet. Unfortunately Rose Bay can be popular with the party crowd, and over a couple of days the number of launches that anchored nearby with music pumping encouraged us to move on.

We headed under the Sydney Bridge to anchor in Birkenhead, home to a massive discount mall and within walking distance of a laundrette and chandlery. We’d stayed here on our previous visit and knew the advantages and pitfalls of the place. Great access to amenities, but not well sheltered and difficult to anchor out of the way. The channel should be plenty wide enough to allow anchored boats and traffic to coexist safely, but the river is popular with rowers who, looking at where they’ve been rather than where they’re going, create an early morning hazard — chiefly to themselves. After being woken a couple of times by alarmed rowers yelling out “yacht!” we called it quits before someone hit us again and we had to provide first aid and counselling before breakfast.

We lifted the hook and headed back towards the city before turning down a channel to an anchorage at Blackwattle Bay in Glebe. Entering the bay requires passing a now-permanently-open rotating bridge before ducking beneath Anzac Bridge, which is second only to Sydney Harbour Bridge.

Serendipitously, once inside the bay we spotted a catamaran we knew. We had bumped into Joline and her crew, John and Pauline (hence the boat’s name), in Hobart one wild evening when the southerly wind and swell entering Constitution Dock seemed determined to set all the moored boats free. We spent a memorable evening with the guys, but they left for New Zealand shortly afterwards so it was great to bump into them again. Or at least to catch up with John, Pauline, unfortunately, was away trampling in Patagonia — as you do.

Blackwattle Bay soon became our new favourite Sydney hangout. There was plenty of room for dinghies on the local ferry dock, and ashore there was a massive park, a track around the bay, and easy access to a nearby supermarket and the city.

The local area is famous for its fish market, but, whilst an interesting place to a visit, its focus appears to be the wealthy Asian tourist market. Our budget, alas, lies more towards the, well, budget end of budgets, so having had to pass on the fish and lobster we were delighted to find a pub opposite the market with a cheap Thai Restaurant attached. As the businesses are linked you can order Thai and eat it in the pub whilst enjoying a beer. This is Aussie culture at its finest!

The circus that is Sail GP arrived in Sydney whilst we were at Glebe, and the various teams set up just the other side of the swing bridge. Many of the locals were excited to see the races, and planned to anchor just outside of the race course, but we had no great desire to face the crowds and chaos. Indeed, a day or two later we met a couple who had been to the races, and who told us that one of their friends had crashed into another boat and was subsequently expecting a bill in the tens of thousands. Such games we prefer to avoid.

Our next destination was an area known as Middle Harbour. We had heard rave reviews of this ‘hidden gem’ in Port Jackson (aka Sydney Harbour), so we had to go and explore it for ourselves. Access is governed by a lifting bridge that opens a few times a day, more or less at two hour intervals. Arriving early, we sat on a public mooring next to the bridge, and as the clock ticked closer to opening time we were interested to see a number of boats, obviously planning on passing the bridge, jostling for position. I thought that we were best to wait on the mooring until the bridge opened, but as the traffic started to thin and we released the mooring and started to accelerate towards the bridge we found it unceremoniously dropped in front of us. You could almost hear the bridge operator chuckling to himself and saying, ‘too bloody late mate!’ Needless to say, two hours later we joined the wacky races, trying to avoid other boats whilst rushing to get under the bridge before it closed again!

Middle Harbour lived up to its reputation. We enjoyed anchorages surrounded by bush and replete with such a chorus of bird song that, against all odds, it managed to drown out the noise of the city.

After a week in Middle Harbour we popped over to Manly, Sydney’s playground for the young and beautiful, to stock up on groceries before heading north. We had been having an ongoing issue with the gearbox which was becoming increasingly worrisome. The symptoms were that it was becoming increasingly difficult to engage drive when the engine and gearbox were cold, but once warm the problem disappeared. As the issue worsened It became clear that this was not a minor hiccup due to something like cable adjustment, but a potentially major gearbox catastrophe. This was disappointing, to say the least, as we replaced our gearbox a year ago, and the new gearbox had only had 275 hours of use.

We knew the cost of marine mechanics and hauling out in Sydney to be ‘prohibitive’ (read insanely expensive), and as we had an appointment to meet a water-maker chap in Pittwater, the next harbour to the north, we decided to head there and see what happened. As the old joke goes, ‘De Nile ain’t just a river in Africa!’

We arrived in Pittwater safely, but the boat’s refusal to engage gear when cold had become significantly worse over the previous couple of days. The problem had to be identified and resolved. It was a bit of a shame to have the shadow of this latest malfunction hanging over us, as it put a bit of a downer on our experience of the big smoke, and our trust in Taurus.

This, of course, is the tax that cruisers have to pay — the yang that balances the yin which consists of freedom, beautiful anchorages, and glorious sunsets. If cruising was easy everyone would be doing it, and the old saw that describes cruising as ‘working on boats in exotic locations’ is far truer than the uninitiated might expect. We all hope for a bit more yin and a bit less yang, but such things are beyond the control of mere mortals.

Next time, isolating the problem and trying to find a solution…