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On a bright, summer (December!) day we went out to see the send-off of the Sydney-Hobart yacht race. It started about 1931 as a very amateurish event among some friends who were sailing from Sydney to Hobart and decided to make it a race; it now garners great gobs of publicity. Maybe there is so much attention because in 1998 it turned into a very dangerous race. We all love to see a disaster and everybody must be secretly hoping that some big storm and big problem will come up. That wasn't why we went; we just wanted to see what was going on. We left to the day of the race finding out where we should go to see the start. We'd hoped to come across a map in the newspapers but didn't, so at the last moment searched the web and looked for a good spot. (Later we found in an old newspaper sitting around that we hadn't looked carefully enough — of all places — in the sports section.)

We picked Nielsen park, just opposite the start line, then bicycled out there, taking only an hour and getting there on time in spite of the need to stop and repair Gerry's brakes along the way. We shared the top of a rocky outcrop with about two dozen people. While we waited the boats below jockeyed for position and then, to the roar of a canon, were off. It's truly amazing to see how fast some of these sailboats can go. We watched from our perch until most of the boats were approaching the gap between North Head and South Head; the leaders by then were out into the Pacific.

Then we went to picnic in the nearby park, among a rather large crowd. Sydney siders really like their barbies (barbecues) and volleyball. Just down the slope from us was Nielsen beach; we discovered that a giant pool was in effect created by a very long shark net. Shark nets are something we're concerned about having heard of several shark attacks recently along Australia's coasts, although thankfully nowhere near Sydney. We expect to go back to Nielsen beach at least once before our time in Sydney is up.