NYE 2012 - Sydney Harbour

Sydney Harbour is one of the most beautiful places to watch fireworks on NYE.  The setting is picturesque with the iconic Harbour Bridge and Opera House.

Anyone who has seen the Harbor on NYE knows, the beauty is only surpassed by the volume of traffic.  Most bays begin to look like mooring fields!

NSW Maritime and the NYE organisers go to some effort to publish information on the special restrictions put in place to handle the volume of traffic and firework displays, which include the establishment of large exclusion zones for the bridge and fireworks barges.

Having just returned from our Jervis cruise, Megan and I did a quick turnaround at home - showers & naps - then headed back down to Haliastur to watch the fireworks on the harbour.

It was quite the adventure - our mooring is on the western side of Rose Bay at the Rose Bay Marina, and we went all the way to ... the east side of Rose Bay and dropped anchor! 5 minutes off the mooring still counts as a trip!  The wind was from the ENE, so this was the ideal location despite the lack of any real adventure to get there.

I was a bit nervous about the thought of anchoring in amongst a bunch of boats on NYE, but the space between the yachts already anchored was actually huge compared to some of the anchorages we had seen in our bareboat trip in the Whitsundays.  We found a large spot with a great view - and maybe most importantly, all the boats near us were either couples or families (as opposed to the boat with 30+ partiers booming out Daft Punk).  I also, probably irrationally, felt comforted by the perimeter of 50+ foot motor yachts surrounding us - big & bright enough to be evident to even the worst sailor (drunk) on NYE!

We had decided to try and raft up for the fireworks with Jules, a fellow sailor from DBSC.  As Jules came alongside, we opted to have him drop anchor slightly to the north of us (at about a 40 degree angle to handle the anticipated shift to the north).

Given his heavier anchor and all chain rode, once we were rafted up I payed out more rode so we were effectively relying on his anchor with mine as a backup.

Jules has converted from owning keelboats to a sturdy little motor-yacht - quite sensible given his young family!

Jules & family - the deep cockpit is definitely a plus for young kids

As the sun set, we settled in for a bbq and some drinks.  Thankfully, Jules had been able to get in touch with T as she headed down to the Rose Bay Wharf where he was picking up the family, and she was able to pick us up a roast chicken - in our rush out the door we had left the steaks on the counter!  It worked out as a fair trade - they had forgotten their veggies!

As the sun set, the temperature began to drop, but that didn't stop us from enjoying some cold beverages!

Or showing off Megan's 'engagement ring'!

We thoroughly enjoyed the 'kids' fireworks at 9pm, after which the children were put to bed.  The adults then partied all night!...actually, we all fell asleep between the kids fireworks and the real thing, and were woken by the midnight fireworks.

After they were done, we all fell into our bunks and tried to sleep.

I say 'tried' as one of the unfortunate aspects of our rafting up was that the fenders rubbed quite noisily (vertical motion up and down) all night long any time swell hit one of our boats before the other.  Talking to Jules the next day, they were very glad when we got up at 5am and decided to drop our lines, pick up our anchor and head back to our mooring to get the last few hours sleep before the tender service started up at 8am.

This being the first time I had rafted up with another boat overnight, I'm not sure if this is a common issue or not, or how to avoid it.  (If anyone knows why/how to avoid this problem, please feel free to explain in comments or shoot me an email for next time!)