Sailing in Sydney

Australia is mad about sailing. It’s not hard to believe when Sydney and surrounds feel like one never ending harbour – all you can think about is how to get on that water and out of the traffic you are sitting in.

Ever since I watched the Sydney to Hobart sailing race at Christmas, I have been trying to bribe my way onto someone’s sailboat, and I haven’t been spectacularly effective…until I found a Social & Outdoors club, sponsored by the YHA that lead sailing weekends out in Swansea. Perfect! I thought – I can go and spend a whole weekend on a boat, learning to sail, sleeping in those little bunk beds – rocked to sleep by the waves. Now there was going to be a good blog posting. Not the least of which, I was going all by myself with total strangers to god-knows-where in Sydney for an entire weekend, always a recipe for entertainment.

I managed to scam a ride up to Swansea (where we were sailing) with a delightful couple – one was a computer programmer for research computers and his girlfriend was a statistician. Well – I can tell you they were oodles of entertainment - 80% of the car ride was discussing the merits of the chosen itinerary, and disaster scenarios of what ‘might’ have happen should they have – god forbid – decided to take the X highway or the Y exit. “Would have added 20 minutes” they laughed. Some people need to discover the joys of life beyond optimal traffic planning… because everyone else showed up at the same time we did.

Anyway…
Turns out that instead of my dreams of a 80 foot yacht sailing down Sydney Harbour, we were running little 20ft. Catamarans on Macquarie Lake. That’s not to say I didn’t end up having a blast. After we (finally) got the boats rigged up, and stopped them from actually blowing away 3 times, we were ready to sail. Winds were gusting about 18 knots, and we were probably on the edge of it not being very safe with a bunch of newbie sailors, but out we went anyway.

Well – I was sitting on the mesh in between the pontoons, feeling like a character out of Castaway. I didn’t get washed overboard, but did my best impression of a drowned rat – the waves were crashing over and under me – I looked like I was in a spa bath with all the water frothing around. We made it as far as the other side of the lake, which – when the shelter of harbour meant I could actually see and breathe water instead of air – we had to rescue the other boat that had capsized.

The water was warm though, all limbs accounted for and everyone was in good spirits. We jerry-rigged the other boat, got it back upright and made the crossing again – and it made for great tales at dinner, where a few of my crewmates didn’t recognize me dry!

The next morning, boy was I excited to get back on those boats again. I got all dolled up in my ‘hot-pants’ wet suit again (hello 70’s!), put on my ‘diaper’ - a cloth harness, by which you attach yourself to the boat so you can lean out on the edges – and got ready to get wet. I needn’t have bothered. We got on the boat, and drifted – yes - drifted to the centre of the lake. Not a breath of wind for 45 minutes – we had to paddle with out hands to get back into shore.

Ah sailing.