G’day
Sydney,
Yep
we’re here – after a reasonable sail all day yesterday but with the
threat of strong winds starting in the evening. Matt had studied the gribs and
worked out that we needed to be well west and south of the rhumb line to avoid a
dead beat in the worst of the weather to come. We were well ahead of schedule
to arrive in Sydney and didn’t want to
arrive too early (Sydney
is 2 hours behind NZ time – GMT +11) so we only needed to do around 5
knots for the last few hours. We had an early dinner, reefed down the sails
and waited for the winds to kick in and waited… and waited. With little
wind we were being pushed further south by the current and were going nowhere
in the little wind we did have with such a small amount of sail up. At around
9pm there was no sign of any movement in the sky, and no wind so we were just
thinking about taking the reefs out when wham bam…it didn’t quite
do 0 to 40 in 15 seconds but it certainly came in quickly – before we
knew it the wind switched from North to West and we had 40+ knots true. We
were in the worst of it for around 4 hours as it gradually turned to the south –
banging and clattering – and trying to keep the speed down. At around
1am it started to calm down a bit until we had around 20+ knots and lumpy seas
but were going around 5 knots so that was good. The last few hours were very
lumpy with hardly any wind and we finally got in to Sydney harbour just before dawn around 8am
(6am local). We were told to go and anchor in Farm Cove – right next door
to Sydney Opera House (how cool is that) and wait for a call from customs.
It’s now just about lunch time and we’ve just finished with
customs, immigration and quarantine – all extremely polite and efficient
– no hassle whatsoever. The only reason we are here so long is that
we’ve been using their water to hose down the boat and fill water tanks!
So we’re now off to find an anchorage somewhere and get sorted.
Passage
time: 7 days, 22 hours
Passage
length: 1301 miles
Average
speed: 6.84 knots
Engine
running time: 32 hours