Hot day on Sydney Harbour...

It was a hot day on the harbour today...top of 31 degrees C. Nick took the kids ashore in the morning for a trip to the laundromat and the hardware...and I got to stay aboard Lucey Blue and mooch about by myself....thank you!!! :-)

They all came back about lunch time and that's when we flagged down the icecream boat...YES, the icecream boat!


Kinda like a Mr Whippy, but he doesn't play any music. He just zips backwards and forwards between Manly, Fairlight, Delwood, Forty Baskets and Reef Beaches all day...from what I can tell (possibly over to Quarantine too). Anyway, I flagged him down and we got icecreams all round...


However, they weren't enough to cool us down, so shortly thereafter...we all jumped in the harbour (in fact some of us did it several times!!)...






The water is beautifully clear here...and aside from a small fear of sharks, lurking in the back of my mind...we had a lovely time...



Hope you managed to stay cool too!

:-)
Sam.

Reef Beach

After our morning in the National Park yesterday, we had lunch, followed by a much-needed rest in our cabins, then we took the dinghy ashore to Reef Beach.

Reef Beach is the next along, to the east, after Forty Baskets Beach, and lies within the Sydney Harbour National Park. When we arrived there were about 10 other people on the beach, but by the time we left, we pretty much had the whole place to ourselves (it was almost 6 pm...so that was hardly surprising).

I got a little Canon PowerShot D10 camera for Christmas, and it is waterproof to 10 m....so we decided to take it along and give it a go!

...love the water in this one...




...Nick took this one...how clear is it? AMAZING!


...SAND MONSTER!


...me looking especially glam...no?

...Nick...looking better!



BLUE LIPS!!!


...flying!

...sand castle...of course

a pretty anenome in a rockpool...

...Mr Kookaburra..not underwater...

Dinghy ride home....big smiles all round.

We had a lovely afternoon...and the camera aced it IMO!

Back at Fairlight...

...we left Cabarita on the 4th, and motored back up to the Fairlight mooring. Grandi came with us, and it was a lovely trip.

Since then we have been doing all sorts of 'stuff'. Some fun things like walking around to Manly and back along the Scenic Walkway for ice cream, and on another day, walking to Manly, then catching the the ferry to Circular quay, then the train to Town Hall, then a movie - The Princess and the Frog, then lunch, then travelling home...as above...LONG DAY (which also included having dinner at Aunty Jess and Uncle Pete's house) and some not so fun stuff like washing, shopping, and looking for new foam for the mattress!

I've also been spending some time watching the 14ft Skiff racing on the harbour...


I've got absolutely no idea how they managed to make it around that mark without a major pile-up! There was some loud swearing at one point, but most of them made it around in one piece!

Today we got up and decided to go for a walk around Dobroyd Head, in the Sydney Harbour National Park. We dinghied over to Forty Baskets Beach...

...then headed off...


...the Harbour views were spectacular...


...and the flowers were very pretty...

Banksia Ericafolia (I think)..


I used to know what this is...but can't remember any more...



Flannel Flowers....beautiful!

We also came across some local wildlife...


Water Dragons!

We made it as far as the Arabanoo Lookout on Dobroyd Head....which is a 3 km round trip...so we didn't do too badly considering we had two kids in tow.

It looks like someone tried to make off with the dinghy outboard while it was chained to the pier at Forty Baskets Beach...they'd broken off the ring that the padlock was threaded through...but they must have been scared off, or changed their minds, because the outboard was still there (thank goodness!).

We've been out and about this afternoon...but more on that later.

Have a good weekend.
:-)
Sam.

Rain and stormy days

...just going back to New Year's eve for a minute...we got Emily up for the midnight fireworks...


...and the show was spectacular!


It was worth every minute spent agonising over whether we would make it in and out unscathed.

In the end we were the first yacht up the river...although we were in a wave of speedboats that were in front of us, behind us and on both sides of us too...and all going considerably faster than us too.

Yesterday was a peaceful, if hot and humid, day spent shopping and installing a TV antenna up the mast. Although it was Nick up the mast, I was acting sparky offsider and in charge of the ropes for his harness, and the tool bag. I lost count of how many times I brought that darn tool bag up and down the mast (to add new tools and bits to it). Lots of fun!

Today we caught the Rivercat in to Darling Harbour. We had Yum Cha at the Marigold on Sussex Street (YUMMY) and then went looking for a small climbing harness for Emily...she is dead keen to climb up to the crow's nest on the mast. We finally found a pint sized harness in Mountain Equipment.

We then went back to Darling Harbour and were enjoying an ice cream on the side of the harbour when there were suddenly screams and a general ruckus coming from the other side of the harbour. We looked up to see the most amazing rain front screaming towards us...


We upped stakes and RAN as fast as we could to the cover of an expressway. It POURED and POURED down...and was really quite spectacular except that we had no umbrellas or raincoats and were miles from the ferry wharf.

The kids finished their now liquid icecreams...


...then we lashed out on Peoplemover tickets which got us as far at Wildlife World...where we bought luxury $3.99 rain ponchos!

By the time we got back to Cabarita it had stopped raining and the sun was out.

This next shot shows Lucey Blue...at the VERY, VERY FURTHEST END of the Marina. I tell you what, I'm getting in some great exercise stomping back and forth between the showers, toilets, laundry, kiosk and Lucey Blue...at least 4 times per day!!


I had just sat down to compose this post, when I noticed the most amazing storm front on the horizon...


...so I've spent the last half hour desperately dragging in the washing and closing hatches before it got here. I nearly lost some of the washing the wind was so strong.

Hope you are all having fun!

Sam.