Sweltering temperatures as the Poms arrive .

Sydney has been experiencing some pretty extreme weather over the past week. Sunday saw record temperatures (about 47 degrees!!) and on Monday night we had the most dramatic thunderstorms, with the gap between flash and bang being only half a second. Perfect conditions for friends to leave the winter weather in England and join us aboard!

Before Karl (an ex-colleague from Yeo Valley and one of Graham's closest friends) and his 21 year-old son Harry arrived, we had the challenge of stowing sails and all sorts of other kit that normally lives in the 'garage' (aka the forecabin) to give them both somewhere to sleep. The ensuing re-organisation prompted us to dig out the sewing machine to fix some damage on the yankee (the front sail) where chafe had worn through it at the point where it leaves the furler foil. If we'd ignored the issue for much longer there'd have been a real risk of some serious rippage so dropping it to the deck early in the morning, before the breeze kicked in and the sun became too hot, was a good move.

Chafe is your enemy, again. Wear at the luff rope

Sewing in a reinforcement patch

That job completed, we moved Maunie back to the city to meet Karl and Harry from the airport train at Circular Quay. They were in remarkably good form after the long flight from Heathrow, though were understandably rather underwhelmed that their baggage hadn't been put onto the second flight in China so they had only the clothes they were wearing and a few small items of hand baggage. Monday's sail around the harbour therefore included some sightseeing, some swimming and then some clothes shopping in Manly.

Selfies with a well known back-drop

Peeling prawns for lunch

Sailing out of the harbour into the Pacific

Making selections of new underwear in Coles. Luckily their bags did arrive on the Tuesday morning, delivered down to the beach at Manly for us to load into the dinghy

A spinnaker run under leaden skies the morning after the thunderstorm

Karl and Harry left us this morning (Wednesday) to pick up a camper van for a road trip down to Melbourne. We thoroughly enjoyed having them with us for three nights, culminating in a very splendid meal in town last night. Our thoughts now turn to sailing further south but it seems that the weather has other ideas. Ah, well, there are worse places to have to wait for weather.