Garrett’s Adventurevideo
Living on a Sailboat in Sydney
April 11, 2026 · 14 min · 52K views · Sydney
Sailboat moored under Sydney Harbour Bridge at golden hour
What this video covers
Garrett spends roughly two weeks anchored and on mooring balls in Sydney Harbour aboard his unnamed current boat — a replacement for his previous vessel, Hooligan — after sailing it from Fiji to Australia via New Caledonia. He repairs failed solar cabling, replacing the deck-penetration connectors and routing new black wire carefully to avoid polarity errors, then drip-loops the cable above the charge controller.▶ 10:50 A chartplotter failure prompts him to install an Orca tablet chartplotter, a Norwegian-made device that connects to NMEA instruments and displays AIS, charts, and radar.▶ 11:42 He also buys a used Hydrovane wind vane with a built-in backup rudder for $1,500 USD — roughly one-fifth of new price — specifically because his electronic autopilot is unreliable on long passages.▶ 12:48 Mooring locations mentioned include Rose Bay, Balmain, and Manly Beach.▶ 3:43 He flies to Indonesia on a $300 round-trip to reset his 90-day Australian tourist visa, visiting a surf town south of Jakarta called Simaja, Mount Halimu National Park, and Bali.▶ 8:09 The plan after Sydney is to sail north to the Gold Coast for a full refit including a watermaker, autopilot, and electronics before heading to Indonesia.▶ 9:51 A Hydrovane purchased secondhand provides both self-steering redundancy and a backup rudder when electronic autopilots fail offshore.▶ 13:20
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