Manly to Rushcutters

Well another week in Oz has passed, and its been a fun and wild time for me and with the weather!! Had a few days of really bad rain rain rain... lets hope that's not what is in store for the Hobart.

There certainly has been plenty of wind. which means that every time you get to the beach and sit down you get buried in sand... would have been better sailing! But hey, plenty of that to come so all I have been doing is taking refuge at the pools on the beach, definitely less sand blasting there!

Had a very funny night at the Manly Xmas Santa Pub Crawl. Basically nearly everyone in Manly dresses as santa or some Xmas thingy and goes on a pub crawl for charity.... not sure how that works and well, there didn't seem much crawling... everyone got to the Ho.. (Ivanhoe pub!) and well pretty much stayed up to closing and then went to the Steyne (great pub names...).

It was a long night starting at 4.30pm, a very hot sunny day for the Santas (34C) crawling around, probably why they took refuge in the aircon'd pub for so long! I was easily persuaded into the drinking of the vodka red bull through a large candy cane.. not the greatest idea, but funny.

After recovery from the santa crawl it was time for the Sydney Harbour Bridge Climb, interesting as I don't like bridges, heights or ladders (especially ladders!) much at all... it was more a personal challenge. I rose to it and had a great time, but defintiely won't be doing that again. Fantastic views, and chose the twighlight which was just a great sight.

So then it was all home and packing ready for my move to Rushcutters Bay and the CYC and the start of training for the Hobart and 10 days to the big race start...

So here I am, after a traumatic episode where I went from having a reservation, to being told I did not have a reservation, to the hotel then being fully booked with no room and potentially being without a place to stay. It all worked out in the end and luckily a room was arranged and sorted.... it was a very stressful couple of hours!! I certainly didn't relish the thought of looking for a place to stay at Xmas in Sydney.. :( but maybe could have walked the dock for a bunk on a boat... ha ha

So its all good, and I am set and ready for training, sailing and racing... very excited, nervous, happy and can't believe that this has come round so quickly. I added a couple of links as apparently yahoo are putting out a live global webcast for the start of the race. Gutted I missed the big boats racing today due to hotel trouble!! So here we go...