And the new bimini is ready

Installing the new bimini

It fits and it does look good!

Finished! I felt a mix of elation and worry when  finally I sewed the last stitch of the project 'bimini'. Will it fit? Will it look good? A big question mark as I was sewing the bimini at home, away from Zenitude. I couldn't try it on.
Installation took a little while, pushing here and there, until Oscar's hands were sore and the bimini in place.
What a relief, finally done. Considering that we bought the material 3 years ago and the project was always on the things to do list, we felt good to be able to finally write 'done!' next to the task 'new bimini'.

And our cockpit has a roof again.
G.

Back in Sydney

Leaving Soldier Point's marina in the afternoon we knew we would need to negotiate Newcastle ship traffic at night time. We could have waited to leave at sunrise but decided to do a night trip and arrive in Sydney in the morning ahead of a southerly change.  A bit stressful the night sailing as we had lost our Radar the week before, apparently a bad connection inside the display unit, and there is no signs that it can be fixed in the near future.

As we always do around Australia, we logged our sailing plan with VMR and off we went, on a nice weather window, winds from the East first, backing to the North before nightfall. I have to admit we are a bit rusty for sailing and after gathering all stuff we forgot to prepare ahead of time we were happily out at sea again. By nightfall, a bit north of  Newcastle we could see several cargo ships drifting, as they always do around that area. By the time we reached the port entrance it was night already. At our starboard side many lights showed ships at anchor, our port side showed ships drifting, luckily not many of them were moving. The few that were moving got us really confused. Without the radar we couldn't really estimate the distance. One that looked really confusing turned out to be another sailboat going the other way, another ship was showing red light when all of the sudden did a 180 degrees turn (red and green and then just green) and ended up crossing with us, starboard to starboard, too close for comfort. She was big. But soon the busy area was behind us and the rest of the trip was uneventful. The wind started to die by sunrise and completely died 5 miles from destination. By 10.00 AM we were happily at anchor in Middle Harbor and by 3.00 PM we were back in our old place, Cammeray Marina.(www.cammeraymarina.com.au)

Now Zenitude is back in Sydney and we have plenty to do to get her ready, first for a family New Year's Eve party, then for the Summer and after that, well, we have big sailing plans but still some decisions to be made.
G.

Soldiers Point

Soldiers Point marina is a great place to stay if you want to relax or get work done. Zenitude and Oscar arrive at the marina after leaving Oyster Cove boatyard and while the mechanic does his magic with the engines and the electrician with the battery bank, Oscar is busy working on the endless 'to do' list. We ended up loosing one of the batteries but finally got the new wind generator installed so now we are good with electrical supply, at least for the time being.

The marina has excellent installations, there are 2 good restaurants and the people are very nice and helpful. I'm coming on the weekends while Oscar remains in Soldier Point. The plan was to stay a week on Soldiers Point but we had to stay an extra week waiting for a weather window, we need northerlies or easterlies to be able to go down to Sydney and we need that during the weekend as I'm working during the week days.

In the meantime, work on the bimini continues during the little free time left, the deadline is sometime before Christmas, would it happen?:

   

hard work continues

Finally it seems that we can leave Friday for an overnight trip. The weather pattern has been pretty much the same, a southerly change every three days, we want to be in Sydney early Saturday ahead of strong winds and the cold front forecast for Sunday.

 

It is Friday afternoon and after almost 8 months without seeing open waters Zenitude is leaving Nelson Bay on a 90 miles trip towards Sydney. She looks great and with a lot less paint in the bottom it seems she is a bit faster. Everybody is happy.
G.