FEBRUARY 5, 2005

      It's Saturday, February 5, 2005, and we had a much calmer motor in Sydney Harbour on our way to Rose Bay for a few days. Only met up with two ferries - obviously commuter traffic is the main component of ferry traffic during the week.

    We really do need to learn more from someone about the mooring system here
in Australia. There are lots of bays in Sydney Harbour and lots of yellow mooring balls. We know that there is a symbol on the charts that indicates casual or visitor mooring and that means that we can tie up to a mooring for 24 hours with no problem. There are, however, many other moorings that we believe are private and we need to ask more about this. The anchorages that we have been to so far all have the mooring balls and we have been careful to anchor out of the way.

First haircuts aboard Bella Via.  Getting "duded up" for the  posh birthday party aboard the  yacht on Sunday in Rose Bay.  A  special thank you to Mary's  hairdresser, Kathy Campbell  from Simply the Best, for her  help and haircutting  instructions over the past few  years. Mary will be home for a  visit in January 2006  Kathy, Keep an appointment  open  please!

     
   Today, we're in Rose Bay because we're going to a birthday party tomorrow at the Royal Motor Yacht Club. It's quite lumpy here because of the wind direction. Mary had no difficulty making dinner in the galley of the starboard hull, which is a good thing as we both are prone to seasickness. On our previous boat, we would not have been able to spend any time below during these conditions.

Paul spent Saturday afternoon splicing anchor line onto the anchor chain for our secondary anchor. Seawind tells us that no one puts out a second anchor in Australia. We'll see. That's not our experience in Northern Ontario.

     We read an interesting bit of fact in our cruising guide tonight at dinner. Rose Bay has the distinction of being one of two Sydney suburbs to be shelled by the Japanese during World War II. A submarine surfaced offshore and lobbed seven shells into Rose Bay and Bondi, causing only one injury when someone broke a leg. Incredibly, five of the seven shells were duds.