Boating heatwave: Gallery

You know it’s the start of the boating season in Sydney when the ice-cream boat is doing the rounds towing a lost $55,000 Williams jet tender, looking for its owner. Over here, over here. Actually, it was over there, from that superyacht.

Besides the usual litany of early-season follies and breakdowns, business was particularly brisk this opening weekend of the boating season for on-water sales of Magnums and Drumsticks. From our observations, inflatable toys and floating foam mats are also go.

Whatever you were aboard, it was a sizzling start to the boating season and we thank Huey for delivering the goods all the way from Cairns to Melbourne. That said, a Spring heatwave of 30C+ is a little disconcerting, even if it does fuel our desire to get afloat.

Of course, most boating anchorages were thronging. Your Marine Editor's favourite boltholes on Sydney Harbour were heaving. From Quarantine, Store and Collins beaches, where we let it all hang out, to Castle Rock, Chinamen’s Beach, Clontarf, The Basin, Cowan Creek and Port Hacking, boaters launched their 2015 pleasure-boating baptisms with gusto.

The Water Police looked impressive in their big black RIB, pulling over random boaters for random breath tests and safety-gear checks, while most captains seemed more concerned with anchoring and fending off amid the melee.

From the local timber classics to the racing yachts, the catamarans to the kid crews, the trailerboats to the hired hands in superyachts, here’s a snapshot from the 2015 October Long Weekend of boating on Sydney Harbour.

These photos were taken at Store and neighbouring Collins beaches, where we dropped anchor and dived in to celebrate the official start to the 2015 boating season.