Sydney - still trying to get our of here (20th April)

We arrived in Sydney at the CYCA last Saturday (13th April) and it was a lovely sunny day with light winds blowing.

Sunday was spent going through the jobs list to make sure we were ready to depart for Lord Howe as soon as a good weather window appears.  At this stage we were hoping that we might be on our way again late this week!

Monday we hired a car and went out north to visit the Sat Phone people in the hope that they might be able to get it working for data connection but unfortunately they had no more success at getting this working than what we have been able to do so headed back to the boat feeling pretty disappointed but they haven't given up hope on us yet so will keep our fingers crossed that we can get this sorted before we leave.

Grahame (aka Roger) arrived at the boat latish on Tuesday and we then went out and had dinner with my nephew Jon and his girlfriend Carmel at a very night place called 4fourteen in Surrey Hills.  We don't get many opportunities to catch up with them so it is always nice when the opportunities arise.  They had some very exciting new for us in that they had just recently got engaged and are getting married next August which is exciting and we are really pleased for them.

As the nice weather was holding up we decided to head over to Manly on the Wednesday and had a spot of lunch at the 16' Skiff Club.

We got a good tip from Grahame and have purchased a weekly public transport ticket which allows us to go on the ferries, buses and trains so we are making sure we are getting good value for our money.

Mark has always wanted to go to Cockatoo Island so we headed over there on Thursday.  It originally started as a convict settlement and has been transformed into many things from a school for girls to a ship building yard which only recently finished in the 1990's.  These days it has been set up for the tourists and also has accommodation available for school groups etc.  Anyhow it was a really interesting day out.

View of the harbour
from Cockatoo Island

Dry Dock - Cockatoo Island

Even though we were hoping to get out of Sydney late this week the weather doesn't seem to be behaving itself again and the forecast here for both Friday and Saturday looks horrible with strong winds forecast and also 9-10mt swells so it is now looking like we will clear customs early Monday morning and make our escape from mainland Australia early Monday arvo or first thing Tuesday for the 425NM trip out to Lord Howe.  We thought we could be in for some good entertainment down at Bondi yesterday so headed down there to see a few optimistic surfers taking on the big waves although they all decided to head back to the safety of the shore not long after we turned up.
We also checked out the Bondi Baths which was only for extreme swimmers as they had waves breaking in the pool and had half of it shut off to prevent swimmers washing out into the ocean - it was certainly a wild day down at the beach.

It is quite cold and pretty wet today so not quite sure what we will get up to - so far we have spent the morning reading papers and drinking coffee.  Graheme has headed down to Bondi today to check out the waves (from the beach of course) and has fish dinner planned for us after catching 3 bream in the marina last night - the fish killer is back.

The fish killer at work!

Hopefully all will go to plan.  Apart from the weather, which is now looking good for either a Monday or Tuesday departure we are waiting on our last hope for the Sat Phone which is a part that might make enable it to communicate with the data connection - this should arrive Monday morning and if this is the case will be out of here soon after.  Dermie has offered to be our weather guru while we are away so we do have a back up plan if all else fails which is nice to know

Will post another Blog when we are on our way down the harbour as that might be the last one for a few weeks when we get to Noumea!