Arrived Sydney on Sunday 17^th of April and had a busy week catching up with all sorts of friends and family in Sydney.

On the Sunday night we caught up with Oscar and Graciella from Zenitude who we first met in Lord Howe Island back in 2013 so was great to catch up with them.

Monday evening we caught up with my Nephew – Jon, his wife Carmel and the Miles Gordon Hollamby

- the new addition to the family who had only arrived home on the Saturday. 

Very excited for them both and look forward to following the progress on my great nephew.

On Tuesday Tim (our crew) arrived and settled in and we then met up with Rod,

who was Mark’s boss when he worked with RP Vending, and his partner Jade. 

Another lovely evening.

Wednesday we had the Woolworths Online delivery so we are all stocked up with food & beverages.

Thursday we went through the weather and although it is looking thin we decided to head off but the plan is to head out to Middleton Reef which is around 120NM north of Lord Howe Island which makes for a more comfortable sailing angle and is also easier to get into when we arrive as it is still expected to be quite windy at the time of our anticipated arrival.

We had Border Security on board who officially cleared us out.

Unfortunately the Thursday evening forecast did not look so promising and the wind strengths have now built to what we consider not acceptable.  This was also confirmed by Roger (Clouds) Badham who is providing some routing and weather information for us so unfortunately after a final review on Saturday morning we decided to pull the pin and wait for the next weather window which is not likely to be with us for at least 1 week.

With this in mind Tim has now headed back to Melbourne although we do have his cake and sailing gear on board so we are pretty sure he will be back.  

We have decided to head up to the Broken Bay and the Pittwater for a few days and will then reconsider our options later in the week.

As it is the Anzac Day long weekend many of our navy ships are arriving in Sydney Harbour and we were lucky enough to pass close by the HMAS Adelaide which is one of the new ships in the fleet (we also spent quite a bit of time with the Adelaide during our time in Jervis Bay).  We also had a submarine pass us as we were departing from Sydney Heads.

Our current position is on a mooring in America Bay with at least another 50boats who are out and about for the long weekend.

33:36.03S 151:14.87E

It’s a bit showery and cool this morning so I think Tim’s cake is going to ‘’get it’’.