Our last evening at sea was quite pleasant and uneventful. We were able to sail all night and well into the morning on a deep broad reach in gentle seas, making nice speed in the East Australian Coastal Current. This meant good sleep for all the crew. The only drama was keeping an eye out for all the ships coming and goingÊ from Sydney Harbour.
We motorsailed between the heads at around noon local time with a beautiful Sydney skyline and the Harbour Bridge looming in the background. By 1230 were snug on a mooring in the lovely Watson’s Bay. We had a bit of time to tidy up the ship before the arrival of the Customs, Immigration and Quarantine people, who ended up being more than an hour late for our appointment. There was a lot of food that wouldn’t be allowed into the country, so we made a last ditch effort to get rid of as much as possible. We had a bag of beautiful frozen California strawberries that were doomed to confiscation by Quarantine. Hang on, get out the blender and the rum – “voila!,” strawberry daiqueries!
Once on board, the Australian officials were professional, efficient and we completed the process of checking in in about 45 minutes.
We’re still not sure if MaiTai will have to “do time” in quarantine, but as of this writing, she is still on board awaiting her sentencing from the local authorities.
Bossanova arrived about two hours behind us, also checked in and we all had dinner on shore at an excellent seafood restaurant. Since it was a fishless passage, we were up for it.
Our crew, Clarisse was up at 0500 this morning to head off to Brisbane to make two films about the Great Barrier Reef. We were very lucky to find her on short notice, and she turned out to be excellent Moo-crew.Ê Hopefully she will be back for another passage in the future.
We’re off this morning to Pyrmont Bay Marina near the city center. Then we start the process of dealing with all those little administrative things that have piled up since we left Auckland last May. We have also amassed pretty big “to do” and “to get” lists, not to mention a lot of dirty laundry. We will be busy!