First step down the coast

After a couple of quite rainy days in Pittwater practicing our maneuvers we finally left the sanctuary of Quays Marina and headed 30 miles south anchoring up in Port Hacking. The last couple of days the weather has been fantastic and spent our time walking into Cronulla to get provisions and do some chores as well as fitting in the odd swim. The picture shows Samurai in Pittwater the morning we left. Plan to do a bigger jump south in the next day or two.

End of Week 1

End of week one we sailed down to Sydney Harbour to attend a Senior First Aid course and anchored near Manly Wharf. We had planned to invite friends onto the boat that night but unfortunately David slipped and fell into the water holding the outboard causing it to cut out. Lesson 1: always have the outboard hooked on to something when lifting out the dinghy. Thanks to Chris and Matt for helping us sort the engine situation and Rebecca and Anne for bringing the wine :) We're heading back to Pittwater now and this is Caroline taking us out the heads.

When back at Pittwater Clare, Phil, Mark, Tanya and Chris visited for a sail and some lunch. David mentioned he needed to go up the mast to change a bulb and Phil jumped at the chance, brave man!

Moving In

On Friday the removal guys came to move all our furniture into storage and we drove up to Pittwater where Samurai is moored with a car load of clothes, food supplies, books and whatnot that we couldn't do without. The afternoon is spent figuring out how and where we can store all this stuff on the boat. Per and Jill come up for the weekend on Saturday and after the now traditional sail round Lion Island we settled in for the night at Refuge Bay. Sunday is Caroline's birthday which is celebrated with champagne on the mooring under tarps as the rain comes and goes - it doesn't stop keen swimmers though.

House cooling

With a few days to go before moving onto the boat we had a party to say cheerio for now to friends in Sydney. This happened to fall on Halloween and some strange looking people turned up. As you see here the modern dracula is happy to eat grilled haloumi and veggie sausages. Thanks for the awesome effort on make up and to everyone who came to wish us well,.