Arrrgh, All Day on the Water, But the Pirate’s Booty is Safe

So there’s been a tiny little flood here. It’s not that big of a deal, really. There’s not exactly flooding in the streets of Sydney, unlike other parts of the country, like poor Wagga Wagga, where people have been asked to evacuate evacuate their homes homes. (Yes, I did just make an in-poor-taste flood joke, but I mean, come on! The town is named Wagga Wagga. It sounds like Dr. Seuss named the towns around here!)

The Murrumbidgee River at Wagga Wagga is expected to reach a flood level of 9.6 metres at noon on Monday and could peak at 10 metres by Tuesday evening.

Another area of the Riverina was also evacuated on Sunday night, when the main canal levee at Roach’s Regulator, near Yanco, was breached as a pre-emptive measure to protect up to 300 endangered properties.

It’s actually become quite the game for my man-panion XFE and I to time our activities around the rain. Whenever it turns from a sprinkle to a pour, we jump into a bar or restaurant, park on a stool and watch the world get drenched. It’s been kinda nice, although, we are running out of non-weather-related conversation, which is hardly surprising.

Some of that conversation had been around whether we should try to cancel a private boat hire we had for Sunday afternoon. It was actually one of the things we were most excited about. But, since neither of us was really looking forward to a day on the water being deluged by water from above, we were a bit unsure.

But, when we woke up on Sunday, there seemed to be this bright shining orb in the sky and the clouds seemed a tiny bit sparser than we’d seen the last couple of days.

It turned into a literally 9-hour window of glorious, sunshiny weather. We had brunch at Bill’s (corn fritters = justifiably famous, but seriously? What’s up with not being able to serve alcohol until 10 am? I’ve got things to do. Boats to co-pilot.  I’m an early bruncher. And I’d like a damn mimosa!)

Fortified with fritters and ricotta pancakes, we made our way to Rose Bay and our awaiting boat. For a very large fee, and an even larger bond, the incredibly trusting people at Sydney Harbour Escapes will let you rent a boat. On your own. With no boating license. And no oversight whatsoever.

They just gave us a 30-minute lesson and safety overview and then let us go with a map and some good wishes. And I’m not talking about a rowboat or something. I’m talking about a proper boat. With an (albeit small) toilet onboard and everything.

This seems unbelievably foolish and was so, so awesome. The boat doesn’t go very fast, but Sydney Harbour is very, very busy. And it’s full of other boats that ARE very, very fast and can overtake you very quickly.

(The ship above is actually a very famous ship called The World. You hear about it on the travel channel all the time. Basically, really rich people can buy a room on this ship, which is like a five-star resort, and then they own it and can meet the ship wherever it is in the world. I’ve asked XFE to buy me a room on this ship for my birthday. I take it’s presence here in Sydney this week as a positive sign.)

After about 4 hours of harbor cruising (we even set anchor in a small cove and ate sandwiches and laid in the sun without a care in the world), we turned the boat back in and beat the rain back to our hotel in just the nick of time.

Where we then proceeded to break a safe. Again. We broke a safe at the W Vieques in December and rendered it unusable. This time, we managed to jam the door to the safe in too far (it’s all my Pilates, I think). This required people to crawl into the dresser, physically unscrew the safe from its pedestal, remove plastic trims, turn it on its side, and proceed to pry and prod it with various tools while holding up this electronic blackberry looking thing to it every few seconds.

The very patient and diligent facilities manager, Christian, had just sent someone for a drill (!!) when he finally coaxed the safe open.

I can’t believe the amount of effort everyone here at the hotel put into this little project. I would have just said, “whelp, sorry lady. Your stuff is jacked.”  They were even nice enough to give us a new, larger one that I’m sure we’ll break before the end of our visit.

Has anyone else ever driven a boat? Or jammed a safe? XFE and I are just really in training to become safecrackers. So we break safes and have hotel crew come and show us how to open them.