Watson's Bay

[khiemtran]

This week we're off on an excursion to Watson's Bay, right on the edge of Sydney Harbour...




To get there, we'll take a swift catamaran. And because it's a Sunday, we only need to pay $2.50 an adult for a Family Funday ticket.



Watson's Bay is a popular spot for both tourists and locals, but the sky is looking a bit gloomy when we arrive. Don't worry, it'll soon clear.



Let's start off with some fish and chips at Doyles.



Then take a quick walk up the hills to stare out over the Pacific Ocean (or more accurately, the Tasman Sea).



Or look back over the Harbour towards the CBD...



We can walk around the gun emplacement of the old gunnery school and watch boats passing through the heads and out to sea.



On the way back, we'll choose to sit on the roof of our ferry. We'll get a little wet...



But we'll have a fantastic view...



As public transport goes, this is hard to beat...

Comments

[davesmusictank.livejournal.com]

Some great photos there despite being a bit hazy.

[khiemtran.livejournal.com]

Thanks! Yes, we had winds up to 20 kts in the morning, and there was a lot of sea haze blowing in.

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

Wow, look how far over that sailboat is leaning in the last shot!

The views truly are fabulous. So you arrived around lunchtime, and had fish and chips for lunch?

[khiemtran.livejournal.com]

That's right. Catching a ferry for fish and chips at Watson's Bay is a very Sydney thing to do, although of course we'd never actually done it before. You can also get very expensive seafood platters at Doyles on the Beach (which you can see on the right in the third picture down), but that's probably more for a special occasion.

The boat in the last shot is heeling a lot, but if you look at its boom, you can see it's nearly at the centreline. They can reduce the heel quite easily just by letting it out a bit, but they're trying to sail as close to the wind as they can. Of course, if a sudden gust hits, they'd better to ready to let the boom out real quick...

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

The boom was the heavy horizontal piece at the bottom of the sail, right? When you say near the centreline, can you remind me what the centreline is? (center relevant to what?)

(I feel like this sounds preemptory, and I apologize for that, because I don't mean it that way. Imagine me with a face of concentration, trying to learn and remember how this sailing business works!)

[khiemtran.livejournal.com]

No worries at all!

You're right, the boom is the horizontal bar at the bottom of the sail (that goes "boom" when it hits your head). The centreline is an imaginary line that runs down the middle of the boat, from the front to the back.

By swinging the boom in and out, you can change the angle of the sail to the boat, and hence the angle of the sail to the wind. For the sail to work best, you want the wind to flow across it, from the front to the back, so it generates lift like the wing of a plane. There's a critical angle where the sail will work best - it's not hard to find though, as the sail will tell you when it's happy.

If you're trying to sail close into the wind, the boom is going to be pulled almost all the way in ("closehauled"), because that's the only way you'll be able to get it at the right angle. But the next trick is that, just like the wings on a plane, the force the sails generate will be at right angles to their surface (perpendicular to the boom). This means that when the boom is in tight, most of the force is actually going to push the boat over to the side, making it lean ("heel"). If the heeling force becomes too much, the crew can let the boom out a bit, which will make the sail less efficient and reduce the lift. If they let it out too much, the sail will stall, which will basically turn it into a big noisy flag and bring the lift down to zero.