Fourteen boats live at The Spit, and most of them spend the day without ever passing Grotto Point. Here is the run that makes Middle Harbour worth a berth.
The Spit at Mosman is where 14 of the 42 boats in the BSA fleet live, the largest single concentration anywhere in the fleet. There is a reason owners keep choosing it, and it is not proximity to the Opera House.
Middle Harbour is a drowned river valley. It runs north-west from Grotto Point for kilometres between steep, largely bushland ridges, which means it is the most sheltered navigable water in Sydney and it looks nothing like the postcard harbour. There are no cruise ships, very few fast ferries, and long stretches where the only thing on the shoreline is national park.
The practical consequence is that a Spit boat can have a complete day, a swim, a lunch anchorage, an afternoon in flat water, without ever going out into the main harbour. On a day when a 25-knot nor'easter has turned the stretch between Bradleys Head and Rose Bay into a washing machine, that matters more than anything else about the berth.
The Spit Bridge is the one piece of infrastructure that shapes every day plan in Middle Harbour. It carries Spit Road across the waterway and it lifts on a published timetable set by Transport for New South Wales, with more openings on weekends than weekdays. It does not open on request.
Whether it affects you depends on two things: which side of the bridge your boat is berthed, and your air draft. A vessel that can pass under the closed span never thinks about it. A flybridge cruiser that cannot, and that wants to get from a downstream berth up to Sugarloaf or Bantry Bay, has to plan the whole day around two openings, one out and one back.
Check the timetable before you leave home rather than at the bridge. On a Saturday the queue of waiting boats is real, the current can run through the span, and holding station in a crowd of other people doing the same thing is the least relaxing twenty minutes of the day. If you are new to the boat, this is a good reason to book a skipper for the first trip upstream.
Chinamans Beach sits at the northern end of Hunters Bay, on the Mosman side, and it is the default Middle Harbour anchorage for good reason. Wide sand, shallow approach, Rosherville Reserve behind it with grass and shade, and an aspect that faces west and south-west, which puts the Mosman ridge between you and the summer nor'easter.
Anchor in sand well off the swimming area and tender in. Watch your depth on a spring low, because the shallows run a long way out. In summer you will share it; on a winter weekday you may not see another boat.
Just upstream of the bridge on the northern side, Clontarf and Sandy Bay give you the same protected water with a netted swimming enclosure and a playground ashore, which is the version of this stop that works with small children.
Past the bridge the houses thin and then stop. Sugarloaf Bay opens to the north off the main channel below Castle Cove: deep, steep-sided, quiet, with a scattering of moorings and enough room to anchor away from all of them. It is a fifteen-minute run above the bridge and it feels an hour from the city.
Bantry Bay is the one worth the extra time. It cuts north into Garigal National Park with bushland on both shores, no road access at all, and the heritage buildings of the old explosives magazine complex standing on the western side, reachable on foot only by a walking track from Seaforth. It is close to dead calm in almost any wind direction, and it is the correct answer when the forecast has ruined everyone else's plans.
Both bays reward slowing down. There are kayakers, there are moored boats, and the shoreline is a national park rather than a highway. Wash carries a long way in a narrow bay with hard sides.
In New South Wales you must be down to four knots within 30 metres of another vessel, the shore, a structure, or a person in the water. In narrow bays full of moorings and swimmers, that covers most of where you want to be. Posted speed zones apply on top of it, so read the signage in the upper reaches.
Wash is the offence people commit without noticing. You are responsible for the damage your wake does, and a bay with hard rock sides sends it back at everything moored in there. If you can see a kayak, you are already going too fast.
Two more. Do not discharge sewage into the harbour, use the pump-out facilities; and where you have a choice between sand and seagrass, drop the anchor on sand. Middle Harbour has seagrass beds that anchors and chain destroy, and they take years to come back.
A version that works: away from the berth around nine, anchored off Chinamans by ten for a swim while it is still calm, back under way by half past twelve to take the early-afternoon bridge opening, up to Bantry Bay for a late lunch out of the breeze, then home with the sun behind you. Two anchorages, one bridge cycle each way, no long runs.
The honest limitation of a Spit berth is that Middle Harbour is a cul-de-sac. It is superb sheltered water and there is enough of it for years of weekends, but it is not passage-making. Owners who want to actually go somewhere, up the Hawkesbury, into Cowan Creek, offshore for a weekend, are better served by the Pittwater fleet, which opens onto Broken Bay instead of a bridge.
Only if your air draft will not clear the closed span, and only if you are travelling between the two sides. Openings run to a published Transport for New South Wales timetable with extra weekend times, and the bridge never opens on request.
Chinamans Beach in Hunters Bay is the easy one, with sand and a reserve ashore. Above the bridge, Sugarloaf Bay and Bantry Bay are deeper, quieter and much better protected when it is blowing. Clontarf and Sandy Bay, just upstream, add a netted swimming enclosure and a playground ashore.
It is the best water in Sydney for it. The upper reaches sit between steep bushland ridges, so Sugarloaf and Bantry Bay stay usable in a sea breeze that has made the open harbour uncomfortable. The Spit fleet routinely heads upstream on days like that.
Around 20 to 30 minutes at cruising speed. You run out past Grotto Point and Middle Head into the harbour proper, which puts Bradleys Head, Chowder Bay and North Harbour all within easy reach of a Spit berth. Allow longer if you have to wait for a bridge opening.