Enjoy the yachtie lifestyle without owning a boat

This Sydney Harbour cruise operator has switched focus from overseas visitors to local pleasure seekers.

Mark Dalgleish believes there’s no such thing as bad publicity. Still, even his optimism was challenged when his boat tour business was splashed across front pages last March after celebrity clients Tom Hanks and Rita Wilson announced they had coronavirus.

Days earlier, the couple had cruised around Sydney Harbour with Dalgleish’s skipper daughter Elodie (she later tested negative). “The phone went absolutely ballistic within minutes of their announcement,” he says. “We needed to react by closing everything down.”

Ninety per cent of business had come from international visitors, drawn from five-star hotels such as the Park Hyatt. Dalgleish watched three months of bookings on Spectre, a 12m Scandinavian sports cruiser that can zip about at 70km/h carrying 10 passengers, go down the gurgler.

Whales came to the rescue. Dalgleish’s Sydney Harbour Boat Tours launched a sister brand, MySydneyBoat, and started taking Australians, including stars such as Hugo Weaving, beyond the Heads to see humpbacks and southern right whales. As summer approached, the harbour beckoned again.

The operation began in 2017 when Elodie, who also skippers vessels in the south of France, suggested offering a Mediterranean-inspired experience that allows visitors to charter a boat for casual exploration. Now father and daughter want to convince locals they too can enjoy the boatie lifestyle without the hassle of maintenance or fuel costs. Instead, guests hire Spectre skippered for $500 an hour.

I step aboard at Spectre’s Rose Bay base. It’s a perfect day for pretending we’re on the Riviera. A seaplane buzzes across a lapis-blue sky as we match eye-boggling harbourside mansions to names.

We speed across the harbour, riding some swell near Manly. Skipper Zane Kamat, a former water-taxi driver, is about to show off one of Spectre’s talents: its ability to cosy up to the shore. With his helping hand, I step into knee-high water and – voila – hello Store Beach.

This secluded strip of sand is critical habitat for little penguins. Search around and you’ll see the word “smallpox” engraved into a rock, a reminder of earlier pandemics and North Head’s history as a quarantine station. All that is far from our minds, though, as we drink bellinis and slurp briny oysters from the shell (you can BYO or request catering).

We mosey west, cruising under the Spit Bridge into Middle Harbour. Off Flat Rock Beach, lunch is served. Platters of sushi, sashimi, prawns and more oysters are washed down with sparkly drinks. We wave to other boaties as though we’re all in the same club. Guests can swim and snorkel in the clear waters if they wish but we linger in the sunshine before reluctantly turning for home base.

Katrina Lobley was a guest of MySydneyBoat.

mysydneyboat.com.au