The trouble with Sydney Harbour

The trouble with Sydney harbour for people wanting to sail is the ever increasing number of people in what former Australian Prime Minister Paul Keating called "Tupperware Boats". These are the shiny white motor cruisers that criss cross the entire harbour at great speed and set up wakes and washes that destroy the "quiet enjoyment" of sailors everywhere else on the water. Yachties generally dont seem to have a lot of affection for these craft or for their owners because their approach to the water seems to be the absolute opposite of the true sailor : Whereas a true sailor loves nature and the sea and has to learn to understand it and the weather and takes pleasure in observing it at leisure and working with it, and has to learn special skills to sail, the Speedboat requires minimal skill to operate, makes a lot of noise and is costly to run, interferes with everyone elses enjoyment on the water and travels at such speed that there would seem to be no time to appreciate the beauty of the ocean or even hear it. Fishermen in their boats on the other hand I have great admiration for, as they practice an art and skill to earn a living and have wonderful practical sturdy vessels that are often full of character and charm. Tupperware boats on the other hand are predictably shiny and clean, lacking in anything that resembles "style" , are charmless and usually everyone aboard is ostentatiously overdressed and waving around a plastic glass of (probably) cheap champagne. It all seems like so much inconsiderate pretense.

There are other problems with Sydney Harbour : the ferries have absolute right of way and seem to creep up suddenly on you then frighten the hell out of you with an almighty blast on the horn if they think you might get in their way. Theres a You Tube video of one of the ferries slicing a sail boat in two, and Ive seen it nearly happen on more than one occasion - though not to us!

Another problem are the racing sailors who get very pissed off and make it very clear to you if you happen to be on the bit of harbour they want to be on, the worst offenders being the 16foot skiff sailors who are obviously really pumped as they hurtle from one side of the harbour to the other. Theyre fantastic to watch but just look out if you get in their way. It can really be quite unpleasant.
In fact Sydney Harbour is a magnificent waterway, and mostly I enjoy sailing there, but what I really wanted to do was sail on the wide blue ocean away from the irritation of having to share the sea with boats I didnt like. What I needed to do next was make Sapphire into a proper blue water cruiser, albeit a small one.

The Learning Curve

The day I handed over the cheque and got the keys, I paid my sailing adviser to come with me for my first ever sail on Sapphire. He spent a lot of time looking over the boat with me, finding all the through-hull fittings, checking the safety gear, finding the fire extinguishers life jackets and life ring, the stowed sails, checking the oil in the engine and so on. And then we started the motor, cast off from our temporary mooring, headed out into Pitwater and pulled up the main and then the headsail. Next came that magical moment that still turns me on when I turned off the motor, everything goes quiet except for the sound of water slipping by , and we were sailing. It was a cool but sunny wednesday afternoon with a 12 to 15 knot breeze to help us across Broken Bay towards Lion Island. It was a wonderful feeling to be Skipper on my own yacht at last.

From then on it was just Sue and me as we headed up the steep learning curve, steadily pushing back at the boundaries of our own fear and inexperience. Each time we returned home after a sail I would think about all the things that we had done that day or that weekend that we had never done before - such as setting an anchor and retrieving it, doing a gybe, docking the boat against a jetty rather than onto a swing mooring - to fill up with diesel and water for the first time - changing a headsail, putting a reef in the main, negotiating a squall with gusts up to 36knots, discovering how to use the Raymarine Autopilot, the VHF Radio, pulling the Log out of its thru-hull fitting to get the growth out of the wheel so that it would work(!), sleeping and cooking on board..... everything was new to us as we explored the safe and sheltered waters of the Lower Hawkesbury, Cowan Creek and Broken Bay.

Eventually though we had to get Sapphire to Sydney Harbour - Port Jackson -where we had a permanent swing mooring at Five Dock Bay, and this meant "going outside" a term we heard from other yachties with a slightly anxious tone, meaning going out into the Ocean away from the protected waters and bays of Pittwater. On one of the sailing courses I met a guy who had a 34 foot yacht in Sydney Harbour for four years and "went outside" three times - always to Pittwater and back, and on one occasion half way back the boat started to fill with water. He discovered the water was pouring in through the stern tube and managed to plug it and get home safely, but then he decided to sell up and just charter yachts when he went on holiday.These scary war stories reflect the truth about the ocean, that it is a more dangerous place than coastal waterways and harbours, and demands a higher level of care and preparation and planning than is needed otherwise. And so for us , making that step up to sailing in the actual ocean was another big step up the learning curve that we were keen to make, though at the same time apprehensive.

Initially we had thought about getting my yachting advisor to come along as back up but in the end we decided not to, because by then we had been sailing Sapphire for four months and been out over a dozen times. We felt we knew Sapphire well enough and our own abilities well enough to be able to safely head out into the ocean as long as the weather was OK. The trip was only about 15 nautical miles but nevertheless we anxiously watched the forecasts over the few days before the planned trip.

Off Manley

In fact it all went well, except for two things: the wind was from the South west so we heading straight into it, and for some strange reason Sue got seasick and had to lie down for most of the ocean journey which took 6 hours as we tacked into a 15 knot headwind. Reaching in through Sydney heads for the first time was another "First" and we were ecstatic,the anxiety of the previous weeks vanishing as we sailed past the Opera House and under the Harbour Bridge, our first Ocean Voyage successfully completed.

Coming in through Sydney Heads for the first time.

Past the Opera House and Under the Harbour Bridge

On the Mooring at Five Dock

Over the next 18 months or so we went "outside" 7 times - south a short distance to overnight at Port Hacking, three returns to Pittwater, and another to Pittwater that I did by myself, and two trips to Port Stephens and back. There were also numerous day trips out onto Sydney Harbour, and a couple of attempts to head up to Pittwater that were abandoned because the winds were too light. And I hate motoring. And another thing I was starting to hate was sailing on Sydney harbour. I'll explain why in the next Post.

My Yacht : Sapphire

Sapphire is an Eastcoast 31, a production sloop of the late 1970's, designed by a well known and highly respected Australian designer called Peter Cole.He designed a 1986 Americas Cup defender called Steak and Kidney, but many other Peter Cole designs of yachts both smaller and larger than the EC 31.went into production. An EC 31 is recorded as the handicap winner of the first ever Lord Howe Island race, which is a 414 nautical mile ocean yacht race from Gosford, just north of Sydney to Lord Howe Island , one third of the way to New Zealand. They have also completed numerous Sydney to Hobart races, and are still sailed in Club races around Sydney Harbour and elsewhere in Australia. Its great to think they were once thought of as modern and cutting edge, but now they are hopelessly outdated and slow by comparison with modern yachts. But everyone regards them as strong and seaworthy. Sapphire is 10 feet wide, draws almost 6 feet, and weighs just over 4 tonnes.

This is the Nav station - theres a VHF radio behind the sliding panelling.

Step Two: Get a Yacht

OK I had the basics from Eastsail and now what I needed was time on the water to put that theory and that practical experience to the test. Numerous sensible people advised me to join a yacht club and go sailing as a crew member for their Twilight races during the week and on weekends.That way I would find out if I was really going to enjoy sailing, and I would get help and encouragement from experienced yachties. If I insisted on jumping straight in and buying a boat they suggested getting a small boat, maybe a laser or a trailer-sailer,rather than something bigger and a lot more expensive that could be unsuitable or that I might end up hating. Or worse than that - and I am sure this was the scenario that was flashing before their eyes as they tried to calm me down - some sort of horrible disaster at sea that could destroy both me and the boat. They were all too polite and didnt want to hurt my feelings or dampen my enthusiasm, especially as I was a potential new member for their Club. They knew from all their own experience how unforgiving and dangerous and unpredictable the sea can be and were all giving me excellent advice but the problem for me was that

a) I knew I was going to love sailing and yachts - I already did;

b) I lived nearly two hours away from Sydney harbour so would never be able to do twilight racing;

c) I didnt want to learn racing anyway, I wanted to go cruising;

d) I didnt want a Laser or a Trailer-Sailer and

e) joining a club and going to races on the weekend would take too long.

I wanted to get sailing in my own boat RIGHT NOW - I had already wasted 40 years and I just didnt want to waste any more time. Everytime there was news about someone I knew or a friend of a friend being diagnosed with cancer or dropping dead with a heart attack at my age, my determination to get on with it was strengthened even more.So I started looking for a yacht.

I wanted one that I could sail by myself - so it couldnt be too big. I wanted one that could sail across oceans- so it would have to be well built for ocean passages. I was told not to buy a wooden yacht, even though I adored wooden boats, because they would require an enormous amount of upkeep and I am not a carpenter so it would have to be fibreglass or steel or ferrocement. And it would have to be second hand because Brand new yachts were way out of my price range.

I was on the internet for hours and hours and hours, looking at yachts for sale, reading yachting blogs, reading about the different types of rig, and keel and sail, reading about fibreglass and cement and steel, ocean passages, storm tactics,rescues, radio, refridgeration,communication...anything a search engine could come up with. I read yachting magazines from cover to cover, all the ads - everything. I went to the Boat Show and to Boat Books and bought manuals and guides and technical journals and I even joined a sailing club and went to a lecture by a solo circumnavigator half way through his voyage. And I enlisted the help of a yachtie, and paid him to look at some boats for me and offer an opinion about their suitability for what I was planning.

Eventually - and this was half way through my sail training - I had a short list of about ten boats that I wanted to look at. And after I had done that, there were two left - an aluminium Adams 35 and an Eastcoast 31,built of fibreglass in 1981. My advisor said either would be good, so I went back and had another look at them and decided I liked the EC31, Sapphire. She was then pulled out of the water for Survey prior to final haggling about the price, which only dropped a little, because she was given a clean bill of health by the Surveyor. He said he wished he was the one buying Sapphire and predicted we were about to have a terrific summer of sailing. At last I had my Yacht, and I was ecstatic. They say there are only two really happy days in the life of a yachtie - the day he buys his boat, and the day he sells it: well certainly the first part seemed to be true!!

Sailing School Drop Out

At Eastsail Sailing School I must have been the most eager student they ever had. I wanted to know everything and never stopped asking questions in class and on the water and when on the Boats always volunteered for any chore that needed to be done - except maybe cooking which I am hopeless at. Once the instructor so misinterpreted my questioning of things he was asking us to do that he spat the dummy and said there was no way he could teach me anything and that he was taking the boat back to the Dock to find someone else to take the lesson. I was shocked at his outburst and explained I simply wanted to understand why he, Brian, did this particular thing differently from the way another instructor , Wendy,had previously told us to do it - was it an important difference or maybe I had misunderstood him or the previous instruction - I just wanted to know and get it right.
The instructors were interesting people who had one thing in common - they knew heaps about sailing and were all very experienced sailors. We all loved listening to their stories of hair-raising near misses, groundings, storms, men overboard, gear failures, rescues at sea and all their other adventures. One instructor was more interested in talking about his high speed runabout than sailing, and another had us learning to do a gybe in wind and weather that another instructor the same day had described as too wild for beginners.

. Brian was a Captain Bligh sort of character with major financial problems that made him moody and unpredictable.On our first day out, after he had agreed to stay on board and continue the 5 day Course, he cursed me and suggested I go and hang myself because I was so usless, but later when I suggested I should be the one leaving, he begged me to stay because if I went he would lose his job. So I stayed after he agreed to try extra hard to teach me.

In spite of these personality issues from all my instructors I had learned an enormous amount, and I enjoyed every minute of it.The one thing I needed was time on the water, which unfortunately I could not download from the internet - I just wished I could have been like those instructors who had been around yachts and yachties and been sailing all their lives.
I wasnt too upset or surprised when at the end of all my Eastsail training on New years Eve 2006 Brian failed me. However he passed another student who on the last day had said he still wasnt sure what the difference was between a tack and gybe!I hope Brian didnt think that failing the course meant I was going to walk off the Jetty and never set foot on a boat again because if he did he would have been shocked to have learned that six weeks before I had actually bought my own boat! Not only that, Sue and I had been sailing it by ourselves in Pittwater.Once, on an Eastsail training day we had even sailed right past my boat on her mooring - but I didnt let on as I stared like an infatuated teenager at my new girlfriend, Sapphire.

Step One: Learn to Sail

The obvious way to learn how to sail is to go to Sailing School and I quickly discovered several based around Sydney Harbour .They mostly offer a cheap "Introduction to Sailing" as a way of attracting people to their more expensive proper sailing courses and the one I went to with Sue required us to front up one cold midwinter Tuesay evening to attend a lecture where we learned that ropes are sheets, port is left, the front is called the bow and sails on modern yachts work like the wings on a plane to create lift as the wind flows over them. The following Saturday was a beautiful crisp winter day and we went onto their Sydney 38 for a sail down the harbour and learned about winches and tacks and gybes. We immediately booked the Beginners Sailing Course but a couple of weeks later when they phoned and said the Course would be postponed because there were too few students I rang Eastsail, a much bigger outfit and booked myself in to the Beginners course there. It was called the "Start Yachting" course and consisted of four half days of sailing and instruction on their beneteau yachts. It seemed that what usually happens is that you pick four weekends and do one half day each time but I couldnt wait so I did them all in one weekend where there were vacancies in the morning and afternoon courses on the Saturday and Sunday. Next I did the Competent Crew Course, two weekend sails which involved sailing out of the harbour for the first time and sleeping on the boat. Finally, just before Xmas I did the Day Skipper Course. For the Theory part of it I had to take a week off work and travel to Sydney every day for 8 hours of lectures and then on Friday afternoon an exam. The practical part was five days living onboard, during which time with two other students and our instructor we sailed north as far as Newcastle and back. In my next Post I will review my experience of Sailling School and illustrate with some photos.

Where it all started for me:The Americas Cup

I'm not sure where my interest in sailing came from, though a Psychologist might make something of the fact that my mother ordered me to get back out and sail my big brothers P Class in gusty wind that frightened me when I was 12 , or, if I didnt, she would take me straight home and that would be the end of sailing for me. Well I didnt, she did and it was! Well at least for the next 40 years.

But like it was for many Kiwis, it was the Americas Cup that really got me going, though for most their interest in the AC didnt start till Michael Faye mounted the first Kiwi challenge for the cup in 1986. I am not sure how it came about but I had been following the Americas Cup even before Australia II took it off the New York Yacht Club in 1983. That year was my final year at Medical School and for the last three months of my formal medical education I went to work in a tiny polynesian Island called Niue for three months. I desperately tried to make my little radio tune in to Radio New Zealands pacific broadcasts to find out what was happening, but it wasnt until the Time magazine arrived on the island a few weeks after it was all over that I read about that Ben Lexcens winged keel and that unbelievable victory.

Three years later I was working as a GP when AC fever began to sweep New Zealand as the first ever Kiwi challenge for the Cup was mounted with KZ7, the "plastic fantastic" 12 metre yacht, and Chris Dickson its Skipper. In the Finals of the Challenger series, Dickson was knocked out by Mr Americas Cup, Dennis Connor, the American skipper who lost the Cup to the Australians, but who then went on to win it back from them. All Kiwis know who Dennis is - a man we loved to hate, especially after he said things about the Kiwi challenge like "Why would you build a plastic yacht unless you wanted to cheat?" At that time all other AC boats were aluminuim but nowdays theyre all "Plastic" - so Kiwi ingenuity was just showing the way. At the end of the series it seemed all of New Zealand was Cup mad, and thereafter the madness just grew until the Cup was won in 1995 by Peter Blake, Russell Couts and "Black Magic". In 2000 Team New Zealand succesfully defended the Cup against several American Syndicates, including Dennis Connors "Stars and Stripes"as well as the French. Swedish and other eurpoean teams.

Sadly Team New Zealand lost the Cup in 2003, sailing a boat that just wasnt up to it - Kiwi ingenuity got the better of them, but remarkably in 2007 in Valencia they regrouped and came oh so close to winning the Cup back from the Swiss. That last race against Alinghi, when TNZ lost by ONE second must rate as the greatest AC Match race of all time!

Throughout all these years I constantly scoured newspapers, magazines and the Net for every detail I could about the Cup. Team NZ had a compound in downtown Auckland while I was living there, and I would often drive there after work, after everyone had already gone and the security fences were all locked up, and I would peer through cracks in the gate to get the tiniest glimpse of the latest boat. When I turned 50 I was given a ticket for a daysail on an old AC boat on Sydney Harbour and when I stepped aboard I was so excited and emotional I almost burst into tears. I guess you could call me an Americas Cup "Tragic".

But here I was at 50, and though I knew just about everything there was to know about the Cup, and though I loved everything about the sea and about sailing, I didnt know the first thing about how to actually sail a boat. And thats what struck me like a thuinderbolt out of the Blue one day in 2006. "This is crazy" I thought " I'm going to have to do something about it"