February 8 – Cruising the Tasman Sea/Arriving in Sydney, Australia

We sailed into Sydney Harbor early this afternoon.  The harbor is so beautiful and surely the best way to see it is to sail in. Most of the guests were up on deck in order to see Sydney unfold before us. And the weather was perfect...warm, sunshine and blue skies.  We passed some very impressive cliffs on our way into the harbor.

It is a pretty awesome harbor and sky line. 

There were even a number of crew members on board enjoying the sights.

Once we were well into the harbor we had good view of the opera house

and Sydney Bridge.

There were many and varied boats all over the harbor as we came in.

We anchored out in the harbor and tendered in to shore.  

The tenders took us under the Sydney Bridge...

and dropped us at the base of one of the bridge pylons and we walked down to the main harbor area to see a bit of the sights. 

It is Chinese New Year’s and there were a lot of “sculptures” around representing the various signs of the Chinese Zodiac. 

This year is the year of the pig (and apparently the pigs are flying).

We also walked down to the Sydney Opera house and took pictures but it was too late to get in for a tour. 

We decided not to stay in town for the evening and headed back to the wharf.  It is a good thing we did because the skies opened up just after we got on board.  There were several hours of torrential rain and a major lightening show.  It was pretty dramatic. 

The show tonight was presented by aboriginal people and they performed some of their traditional dances.

By evening the thunderstorm had passed and we had good weather.  The Sydney Bridge and the opera house were beautifully light tonight and we could see them from our balcony..

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More Photos of Sydney, Australia
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More Photos of Sydney Boats
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