Calm day on the harbour

[khiemtran]

It's a calm day on Sydney Harbour, so Liem and I are off for a (slow) sailing adventure.



It's 23C this morning - glorious Spring weather. You can see Shearwater still has her old name ("Tryme") painted on the back.



The water is so clear you can see the bottom even several metres down. In the distance you can see Shark Island, which we hoped to inspect. The red wind marker shows that we'll need to tack our way there.



But the wind quickly dies and soon we're being passed by standup paddleboarders. It's looking like we won't make Shark Island today...



After trying in vain to find a breath of wind, we give up and engage the auxiliary engine to head home.



Just as we reach the club, the wind picks up again. These little Optimists were heading out at a good clip.



Liem helping to get the boat ashore. He was holding the bow when I went to get the dolly, but the tide was so high, he started floating off (very slowly) with the boat.



By the time we have the boat ashore, the wind has picked up quite nicely. Shark Island will have to wait for another day...

Comments

[osprey-archer.livejournal.com]

That clear water is glorious.

[khiemtran.livejournal.com]

Yes! Great conditions for diving. It looked more like what you'd expect for a tropical island rather than the middle of Sydney.

[mnfaure.livejournal.com]

That water is such a gorgeous blue-green.

It is rotten luck when the wind is not with you. We co-owned a catamaran when we lived on Mayotte, and before leaving, we wanted to sail around Grande Terre* with the other couple who had a share in the boat. We only ended up getting about a sixth of the way around by nightfall of the first day, which is a distance we could usually cover in just a couple of hours. We anchored in the lee of M'tsamboro, spent the night and then retraced our "steps" back to port the next day, knowing we could never make it all way around. :(

___________
* Mayotte is made of up several islands, Petite Terre and Grande Terre being the two biggest and only inhabitable ones.

[khiemtran.livejournal.com]

That sounds like fun! Such a shame you didn't make it around Grande Terre, but I hope you had a good time.

[athgarvan.livejournal.com]

Hope you had a lovely day in that beautiful clear water.

[khiemtran.livejournal.com]

We did! Any time spent on the water is very rarely wasted...

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

Liem's grin is such that I can almost hear his laughter. And those jaunty optimists! They seem to be saying, "If only you'd waited until later to launch."

Oh well--another day.

[khiemtran.livejournal.com]

There were actually two little schools of Optimists. The ones in the photo were little kids learning to sail. It would have been almost perfect weather for them. The other group had white sails and they were older kids who do sailing as a sport - they left us completely for dead in the light breeze.