November 22, 2016
Plans change; especially with those ADD people on Legacy. We’d decided to skip staying in Sydney this visit, but we needed to do some stuff there and wanted access to it. Our solution was to stay in Broken Bay, just north of Sydney. Then we changed our minds: we’ll just do a quick visit to Broken Bay and instead stay in a marina in Cronulla, south of Sydney. So where did we end up? Sydney, of course. It was a spur of the moment decision, and I’m not even quite sure why we made it.
We liked the area around Manly beach last time we were here; so we figured we’d anchor there and take the ferry to downtown Sydney. What we didn’t count on were all the other boaters who like Manly, too. Scratch that plan. What to do? We’d enjoyed our previous stay in Cammeray Marina, but we hoped for easier access to the city this time around.
Rich did some research (Cruisers Wiki) and discovered an intriguing place: SailCorp Marina in Lavender Bay (or Lavender Bay Marina). We called, a mooring was available, and here we are.
SailCorp “marina” is actually an area of moorings tucked into a bay near the north side of the Sydney Harbour Bridge. On the west side of the bay, houses cling to the hillsides. At the head of the bay are two beautiful parks, thick with trees, while the east side has tall buildings, the bridge, and an old-style amusement park by the water. To the south is a spectacular view of the bridge, the opera house, and downtown Sydney. The train station is only a 10-minute walk from the marina, and the train delivers us downtown quickly and cheaply.
What’s downtown? Culinary wonderland! Especially Asian food. There are a greater variety and number of Asian restaurants than I’ve seen in any other city, including Hong Kong! We are eating very, very well. So well, in fact, that we decided to add another week to our time here so we can at least scratch the surface of some of the places we want to eat. (There’s also an electronics district; which is high entertainment for Rich.)
Our routine is simple: Mornings on the boat, lunch and afternoons in the city, and evenings back on the boat where we have a drink in the cockpit and marvel at the incredible view of the city. We end the day with TV shows and reading. Life is simple and enjoyable right now, and it’s been nice to have a time-out from thinking about weather, winds, anchorages, sightseeing, etc. In a few weeks, we’ll be worrying about how to get across the Bass Strait with our lives and boat intact. For now, we just worry about what to have for lunch: Chinese, Japanese, Malaysian, Indonesian, Korean, Thai, Taiwanese, Fusion, or Mexican. It’s going to be hard to pry ourselves away from this place. Below, a few photos of our new neighborhood (click to enlarge/scroll).
OK, now that we’re not on the go, I’m going to try to finish our Able Tasman posts. –Cyndi
(Note from Rich: this “marina” is wonderful but not for those that mind a lot of boat rocking and rolling. The motion is pretty much constant during the days and sometimes pretty extreme, but mostly still at night. It’s from the multitude of tour boats and ferries passing under the bridge. There’s a free shore boat that hauls us to and from the dock for our lunch excursions. There are free plastic dinghies available to use after shore boat hours. There’s no water or electricity and it’s short on what one might call standard marina facilities. All that said, I really like it here.)
Here’s where we are…
