Rachel and Mike in Australia

View from the Harbor Bridge

Most iconic images of Sydney involve Sydney Harbor and the Opera House or Harbor Bridge. We wanted to take advantage of the harbor while living here and what better way than by sailing it. Sailing in Sydney is hugely popular, and on nice weekends the Harbor is full of all different sizes of boats. We live in Balmain, a suburb just one cove west of the Harbor Bridge and downtown Sydney. Not long after moving to Sydney, the Balmain Sailing Club advertised that they were having an open house in our local newspaper, so we decided to go along and check it out. We are lucky that the club closest to us is also relatively casual and inexpensive. For most of its history, Balmain has been an industrial working class suburb that had several shipyards, but in the last 15-20 years Balmain has changed into a residential suburb known for its boutiques and cafes.

Franz and the Apache crew after the final race of the season, which was followed by a pirate party.

We asked about crewing opportunities and were told that we could just show up on Friday nights about 45 minutes before the race and ask around for anybody needing crew. So that’s what we did for most of last season, and we got on a boat every single time (though one boat never made it off the mooring). There are several different classes of boats. We mostly sailed on Apache, which is a ~30 foot ocean-going yacht owned and captained by a feisty Dutchman named Franz. The race course normally headed east to the Harbor Bridge and around several of the Harbor islands. It usually lasted about 1.5 hours, though it obviously depends on the wind speed.

Dinghies setting up at the Club House

After Friday night races, everyone goes up to the club house for a drink and dinner. The food is really cheap and surprisingly good, considering it’s just a couple of volunteer ladies working in a small kitchen. They serve the best meat pies I’ve tasted so far in Australia!

We had some pretty exciting races. In one race, the jib sheet (one of the ropes that operates the forward sail) snapped in half mid-race. The rope was 3/4 inch thick and didn’t show any frays—quite amazing that it could just break. Franz managed to tie the line back together, and we finished the race. On one particularly windy night, several guys that normally sail their own boats sailed on Apache because the wind was too much for their lighter boats. We were happy to serve as ballast that week to avoid all the arguing in the cockpit. I am continually amazed at how comfortable people are at telling Franz the correct way to sail his own boat—particularly considering how successful he is at it himself (Apache had the won the previous season series). It was a classic case of too many cooks in the kitchen, and we ended up having a collision with another boat.  No one was hurt (except for Apache), and once again we finished the race.  That definitely made for an interesting evening in the club house!

Rachel at the helm

Mike dreaming of his own boat

With the friday night races, we got plenty of experience in winding winches and tailing lines, basically the mechanics of sailing.  However, in a race situation, there’s not much time for explaining why something needs to happen, you are just told that something needs to happen NOW. In an attempt to learn more of the “why”, Rachel signed up for a dinghy class that the club was running over Easter (which is a 4-day weekend in Australia). Unfortunately, the weekend was as still as it gets, so Rachel ended up with more practice paddling than sailing. A second attempt at instruction with both of us on a 50-foot yacht went better, but the wind was still quite low, so we motored for part of that day as well. Mike is convinced that the way for us to really improve is to buy our own sailing dinghy…

Gorgeous Sydney sunset from the water.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 3rd, 2009 at 11:40 pm and is filed under Upside Down Living. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.