Saturday 25 September
We left Windy Bay this morning. Unfortunately not enough wind to sail and it was a short distance to Whites (Waites) Bay on the southern side of Haselwood Island so we motored around.
There is a large fringing reef here and after we were safely anchored our depth sounder (aka Lydia) jumped overboard supposedly to check the anchor, which she did before taking off for a 2.5 km swim / dive around some of the reef area. Andrew and Sue paddled off in the kayak getting about a third of the way to check out how Lydia was going before they realised that it wasn’t just Sue’s backseat paddling that was making the kayak so bad at tracking but rather that we had forgotten to put the fins on the bottom of the kayak.
After having a chat to Lydia, Andrew and Sue paddled back to the boat to put the fins on then headed to the beach paddling across the shallow waters above the reef. The beach is a mix of coral, shells and sand and along the short walk we saw eagle rays (which Lydia had swum with), stingrays and some sort of sandy coloured ray that was a cross between a stingray and a shark. On the way back to Imagine we saw a few turtles, one of which was about 1m across (a large leatherback).
Back to Imagine and Sue hoisted Andrew up the mast to put some new pulleys on the spreaders to hold the lazy jacks up. We have had the bay to ourselves all day, while over the hill is about 30 rent a boats. Its been wonderful and peaceful.
