The 2018 Australia Day Celebrations on and around Sydney Harbour were fun, engaging and exciting. The activities and entertainment started with a 8 am Harbour swim and rolled continuously through the day till the late evening fire works.
The centre stage of Sydney Harbour Australia day festivities was the Naval Warship that was hovering off the Sydney Opera House and Circular Quay. Helicopter fly-bys wowed the crowd, that was only upstaged by the low flying screaming fighter jets buzzing the Sydney Harbour Bridge and up the harbour to Manly and Bondi.
The aboriginal smoking ceremony was held on the west side of Circular quay and was quite moving thinking about the natives of this land for 50,000 years before English settlement. The Smoke Ceremony wards off evil spirits.
One crowd favourite, which held in front of the big warship and the Opera House was the yacht and tug ballet. Choreographed to classical music, the 10 yachts with main sails up, tacked and gybed and sailed in unison, whist the tugs pirouetted and made their own synchronized moves.
There was the annual best dressed boat competition showing much creativity with flags, banners and crazy blow up animals.
There were literally hundreds and hundreds of boats cruising Sydney Harbour to get close to all these festivities. Eastcoast Sailing had a large number of our hire boats and charter yachts enjoying the great day on the harbour. After watching many of the events n the harbour, our charter boats then cruised off and dropped anchor at a lovely beach for a cool drink and a swim.
The evening was capped off the fabulous fireworks display at Circular Quay.
What a fantastic day on the water for Australia Day 2018. If you would like to hire a boat, contact us here for more information!