Endeavour Sailing 9/2/25 Sunday: My cancelled flight to Hobart

Today I set off for my two-week sailing adventure holiday on the Endeavour replica.

I woke up early, just before 6am. Luke and Julianne were also awake early for me which was nice. I had a quick breakfast, woke Robin up and we were off. We arrived at Auckland International Airport around 6:45 a.m. We parked and everyone came into the terminal to say goodbye to me which was super nice.

I quickly dropped off my single bag, an old army duffel bag I find very useful as I don’t use suitcases. I then said a sad goodbye to the family who I won’t see for several weeks. This will be my longest time away from the family which is a strange feeling.

Customs was quick and easy, so I headed though all the duty-free shops to gate 16 for my flight. I was early of course so I started working on my diary on the new Kindle Scribe.

All was going well to start with, I was on the plane soon enough and we then taxied away from the terminal. But then suddenly nothing happened and we were waiting on the tarmac for about 15 minutes as I continued writing my diary. This was a much longer wait than expected, when suddenly the air crew told us that our plane had engineering issues and we had to go back to the gate.

Sitting back at the gate in the plane was a tad stressful, then the call came over that engineers were working to fix the generator and they were expecting to be able to fix it.

Looking at the Air NZ planes at Gate 16

After sitting at the gate for a while the plane was officially fixed and ready to go but by then our pilots were out of hours, and my direct flight to Hobart was unfortunately officially cancelled.

Luckily I was moved to a Qantas flight on the same day which was great news going the long route via Sydney to Hobart. It was now around 10ish a.m. after being on the Air NZ plane for well over an hour.

All us passengers then had to fill in a New Zealand returning declaration form which was a tad funny as I have not actually physically left the country. This was so I could go back through customs to pick up my bag.

By 11:30 a.m. I had gone through customs, collected my bag and was at the Quantas check-in this time. My new flight to Sydney leaves at 4 p.m. so I have plenty of time to spare at Auckland Airport now. I successfully got $40 of food vouchers from Air NZ before heading back through customs. At midday customs was a lot more crowded than earlier this morning, but I'm in no hurry. By 1 p.m. I had quickly gone through the duty-free shops again and was looking at all the food options as I was quite hungry by now. To eat later on the plane, I choose a tomato and cheese panini along with a chocolate biscuit. To eat now for lunch I picked up a cheese, bacon and egg bagel. I don't normally eat bagels so I thought I would try something new. It was ok, but nothing to write home about. It reminded me of what we in the family call a Mummy McMuffin (egg and bacon muffin) which we all love that my Mum used make.

I then spent several hours reading on new Kindle Scribe. It was great as I could swap between the third hunger games book and a paper on climate change discloses so very easily.

By 3pm I was back at gate 16, the same gate I was at many hours earlier, talk about Déjà vu.

My second flight from Sydney to Hobart leaves at 7:30 p.m., and as such I need my Auckland to Hobart flight to be on time, and of course it wasn’t. It was supposed to depart at 4pm, and didn't start boarding until 4 p.m. And of course I was seated in row 29, one row from the back which made getting off the plane longer than those in the front.

The cabin crew were nice, and I did get a meal, but only vegetarian options as the chicken and potatoes had all gone by the time I was served, but the vegetarian curry was quite yummy so all was good.

We were supposed to land at 5:40 p.m. into Sydney and by 6 p.m. I spotted the runway outside of the window, which meant the wind direction required the plane to do a full circuit over the city instead of a direct landing which added another 10 -15 minutes of flight time which was very stressful but did provide amazing views over Sydney with the Opera House and Harbour Bridge clearly viewable. A fanatic snapshot over Sydney which I really enjoyed even if I was stressed about my Hobart flight leaving in just over an hour.

We finally landed and spent ages taxing to the terminal, Sydney is a big Airport, for sure.

I now had so little time to make my next flight, I was somewhat sure I could maybe get to the Gate for the flight to Hobart, but dropping off the bag in time for the flight I was not so sure about.

I politely managed to get past a couple of people in front of me. The whole middle of the plane was the NSW Waratahs women’s rugby team. I asked the nearest woman if I could get past and the whole team let me though. This got me to halfway through the plane.

After getting off the plane I run down to customs and there were no crowds which was a huge relief and I was quickly though to bag collection.

I spent a wasteful and very stressful 20 minutes of my precious time at carousal 3 waiting for my bag which never appeared. By now it was 6:40 p.m., so I had 50 minutes before my flight to Hobart leaves and I’m still actually at the wrong terminal. On finally finding an official I discovered that I was waiting in the wrong place!

I was waiting at the Air NZ Sydney flight not the Quantas Sydney flight, what a silly mistake to make. I quickly ran from carousal 3 to carousal 8, back past the woman rugby players and there was my bag going around and around on the carousal. It was how 6:45 p.m., and my flight leaves in just 45 minutes and I still needed to go through biosecurity, check my bag in and get to terminal 3 about a 15 ride minutes away from terminal 1.

First biosecurity and the final customs check which fortunately only had two people in the queue, and I mentioned I was trying to catch a flight and that I had nothing to declare. He let me through, past another sniffer dog and I was officially in Australia and free!

I run at full speed pushing a luggage trolly, dashing past people. Sydney airport has this great Qantas domestic check in at the international terminal, just to the right of where you exit. I've never seen this before but it was fantastic. There was no queue and I dashed to the counter, and was told I was just in time to check in my bags!! With no time to spare.

A huge relief, with my bags on the flight, everything appeared to be looking good. There is even a small security check-in at this domestic transfer section of the airport. I was quickly through this security as there was no queue into this strange room with other international passengers on different flights. By now it was 7 p.m. and I still needed to get to terminal 3.

Bus ride through Sydney airport airside

It took a while, about five stressful minutes when then a bus finally arrived, for a strange trip through the airside of the airport with planes, including planes taxiing around for my trip to terminal 3, where I am arrived at 7:15 p.m. After climbing the stairs into the terminal, it was a bit of an anticlimax as the gate was simply just there. I had a chance to quickly phone the family, so I could let them know that I was successful in getting to the Hobart flight and let them know my adventurous and stressful day.

This fight was my first plane to leave on time. So, a quick a goodbye to the family and I was on the plane for the two-hour flight to Hobart which was uneventful, coming into land at 9:30 p.m. on time, which by for me was 11:30 p.m. NZ time, so quite late at night after an early start in the morning.

The bags took a while to come through but by 9:50 p.m. I was outside the Hobart airport terminal.

My original plan was to catch the sky bus for $22 into the city and walk the one km to where I am staying. But as it almost 10 p.m. I thought an Uber seemed a better option. When I checked the prices while waiting for my bag it was only $40, worth it especially at it would go direct to my backpackers at this time of night, but now that I'm outside the price had jumped to $75. I thought I would simply wait for the crowds to die down and to try again, unfortunately for me more and more people kept turning up and the price kept going up. By 10:05 p.m. it was $85 then not long after $95.

I was cursing that I had not taken the final sky bus at 10 p.m., when suddenly someone called out “Anyone want to take the sky bus?”, which was only a short walk away.

I quickly said 'Yes' and jumped on board the bus with a number of others and the bus was off! The 10pm sky bus must have been delayed I guess, or this is another late service maybe? I don’t know but it certainly was in perfect time and place for me.

By 10:30 p.m. I was in the centre of Hobart after a short bus ride. The one km walk carrying my 17 kg old army duffel bag was a struggle going from one arm to another and I had to rest half way but by 10:45 p.m. I had arrived at Montacute Boutique Bunkhouse.

Luckily and strangely the door was open and keys were just lying on the table for us late arrivals, very old school. It took a while to find my room as it was outside on the balcony which was a bit strange, a six-person bunk room.

As quietly as possible I quickly laid out my duvet, went toilet, took off my clothes and went straight to sleep.

It has been a very long day with long periods of boredom with mounting stress throughout the day, but I'm now in my hostel in Hobart all ready for next adventure tomorrow.