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Thursday 14th October
On our way north we didnt get to stop at West Bay here on Middle Percy because of the weather. Early this morning we hauled anchor and headed around to West Bay whilst the wind and swell were supposed to moved more easterly. No they didn’t. The wind and swell were coming straight in the bay.
We anchored and made our way to the beach. The reason everyone stops at West bay is to visit the A frame hut and leave a plaque. We were here to upgrade the one we left last year and Lydia had a new one to leave. It’s fascinating looking at all the plaques and names of the boats.
We chatted with the caretakers of the island, had lunch, a swim and left our mark. It was too rolly to stay in the bay so we returned to Rescue Bay. Graham from Symphony came over to see if Lydia wanted to go spearfishing. She didn’t need asking twice. She picked up her gun, mask, fins and weights and was in the dinghy in seconds. About an hour later they returned. Graham had caught a fish. Lydia didn’t see any of the ones she was looking for so she returned empty handed this time, Graham shared half his fish with us.

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Wednesday 13th October
Rescue Bay has kept us sheltered from the northerly winds for the past few days. The bay has two sandy beaches separated by a rocky cliff.
Tuesday morning Andrew and Lydia went ashore and climbed the hill to see if there was any reception but there wasn’t. After the short climb Lydia exclaimed “I dont like being on land, my gills are drying out”. She has just forgotten how to walk. So it looks like climbing the sand dune and kayaking down its steep edge is now off the itinerary.
Back in the water Lydia found a bommie with lots of fish around, so she was happy she could go spearfishing. After lunch we all went back to the beach for a swim. Sue attempted to climb the sand dune, but soon returned to the water claiming “the sand on the dune was too hot”. It had nothing to do with the size of the dune and that she had taken 3 steps up and promptly fallen on her bum!
Today on our way back from the beach we saw a yacht had anchored over Lydia’s bommie and was playing around with their anchor. They hadn’t seen the bommie when they came in late yesterday afternoon and now their anchor was caught around it.
Lydia dived the bommie and let Graham and Sue (Symphony II) know which way their anchor was wrapped around, so they could get free. Lydia then continued diving the bommie and speared two fish. She gave one to Symphony. Graham, Sue and Jamie re-anchored and came over for sundowners.

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Monday 11th October
We got up early to leave Keswick but had a slight problem, the anchor wouldn’t come up. Sue tried motoring to port, then reversing and trying to go to starboard, to no avail. It was time to bring out our secrect weapon, Lydia. Nine meters down, no problem. She disappeared and a minute later surfaced to say “The chain is unhooked from the rock. You can haul anchor now”. With that we were off.
With only 10 knots of wind, the gennaker was the go. By afternoon the 10 knots had subsided to 5, not even keeping the sails up. So we had to motor the remainder to Prudhoe Island (half way to Percy). The south west gave us protection from the swell, so we had a nice night.
In the morning we set off for Percy Island. Out of the shadow of Prudhoe we could tell the wind, although strong enough, was not going to get us to Percy without a lot of tacking. So we returned to the protection of Prudhoe and spent the day exploring.
This morning was going to be the day. The weather report said the winds were in the right direction and were going to start at 7 knots building to 10 by lunchtime and then 15 by afternoon finishing at 20 for the evening. Well, we started with 10knots and after two hours it dropped to 5 and that’s where it stayed.
As if we weren’t going slow enough, Lydia went and jumped off the back of Imagine and hung on to a rope, being dragged along in the water.
So today was another motor job. We were just off Percy when the wind came up (10 knots). We just carried on motoring till we got into Rescue Bay, on the southern side, just in case the northerly winds do eventuate over night.

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Friday, 8th October
The past few days have been just snorkeling and fishing on both Keswick and St Bees Islands. Andrew has spent time editing videos and has now uploaded 4 new ones for you to watch. Look at the VIDEOS tab and click on 2021 Whitsundays.
On the northern side of St Bees Island just 10m off shore is the wreck of the Cremer. It was a 50m steamship that sank in 1945. The remains of the hull, and deck machinery can still be seen.
Because of the depth and rocky bottom we couldn’t anchor nearby. So Sue circled in Imagine while Lydia and Andrew swam to the wreck. Being in 8m of water Lydia was the only one able to dive down that far and check it out.
As we are getting stung every time we get in the water here we have decided tomorrow we will head south to Percy. The final straw was seeing the locals having sex in the bay.

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Monday 4th October
After such an exciting day yesterday, today was a rest day. Well, it was a rest day because the wind in the bay has been up over 20knots sometimes reaching 30 making it not nice to go exploring.
Lydia completed more of her online theory for her yachtmaster course, Sue caught up on some news and Andrew just bummed around annoying the others. Oh, and he was editing some of the video we have shot during this trip, so you will soon have something to watch.
The tide is now coming in against the wind so it’s quite bumpy. It should calm down by 11pm (they say). In the meantime Sue is having fun rocking and rolling in the galley making dinner. We hope it’s something that sticks to the plate.

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Sunday 3rd October
We said farewell to Goldsmith and with light winds we headed south. The gennaker went up as we left the bay. The wind and swell were so low we decided to experiment with our other sails. We have a bag marked spinnaker that we have not opened as we either didnt have the correct wind conditions or competant crew to hoist a spinnaker. A spinnaker for this size boat requires more than two people.
So out came the spinnaker. As we we pulled it out of the bag we could see it was smaller than our gennaker, so it was off another boat. Being smaller it wasnt going to do us any good putting it up instead of the gennaker. The wind was coming from behind, just off the back quarter. So we hoisted the spinnaker along side the gennaker. It gave us a good look at the sail and two sails are always better than one. Having the two sails up gave us better spead but we were crabbing quite a bit, so it had to come down.
We also have a sail which we had tried once before and couldnt work out where it would fly from. The sail is another light weight sail and the corners are marked head, aft and tack. So we rigged it that way and hoisted it along side the gennaker. Once up we could see it also was not made for this boat. Although, it did allow us to point higher and increased our speed.
We then had the bright idea of flying the spinnaker off the pole and tying off to the bow like the gennaker but off the opposite side and run directly down wind for a while. With everything ready, Lydia hoisted the spinnaker while Sue pulled in the sheet through the pole. Andrew guided the sail as it went up. Problem! As it went up the sail twisted and looked like a figure 8. Andrew tried to untwist it. While doing so the bottom of the sail touched the water, immediately inverted to form a giant scoop. With several tonnes of water dragging the sail backwards, the pole was pulled hard up against the stay and had quite a bend on it. The only thing to do was for Lydia to cut the line from the bow. This opened up the scoop and we could then haul the sail back on board.
We decided to just stick with the gennaker for the rest of the trip to Keswick Island where we will stay a couple of days. We’ve had enough excitement for one day. Although once we dropped anchor, Lydia was off in the water heading towards the reef to snorkel when a power launch gunning his motors headed her way. She started power swimming towards the reef. Just when she thought it was safe, he turned and started coming back straight at her. She stuck her tall fin in the air, surely they would see her now …. and they did!

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Saturday 2nd October
This morning Andrew and Lydia went ashore. Lydia wanted to write messages in the sand. As they were returning to the dinghy which was anchored in the shallows, emerging from the sand came thousands of crabs, making noises as they marched across the beach. Most have brown legs with blue backs, but the larger had yellow backs. When approached they stopped marching and dug themselves into the sand. They seemed to be marching to the waters edge as it retreated with the tide.
On the way back to Imagine Andrew and Lydia came across a turtle just chilling. They managed to get the dinghy within a meter of the turtle and it didn’t seem to mind, it just slowly swam away. Lydia had to jump overboard and snorkel her way back to Imagine where Sue had lunch waiting.
After lunch Lydia did some programming on this website. Now the map displayed on the right hand side of this blog shows where we are (on tablets and PCs), below the SUBSCRIBE and CATEGORIES list. You can also click and select the route we have taken over the past few years.
Great job Lydia

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Thursday 30th September
A short sail south and we arrived at Goldsmith Island. Anchoring again on the north side (Roylen Bay) there were five other boats cluttering the bay. By morning four had left. We just relaxed and swam off the back of Imagine. The following day we were alone in the bay.
Andrew and Lydia went off in the dinghy to try and spear lunch, but there was nothing to be had. Sue and Andrew spent the afternoon on the beach while Lydia got out her paints and went all artistic.
The next few days have low winds so we have moved around to Stingray Bay, to see whats happening on the south side.
We have gone from one other boat in the bay to seven in the bay this evening. With a cool breeze blowing we are partaking in sundowners below deck today. We are having a hard time prising the nibblies away from Lydia as the Infuzions snacks are her favourite.

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Sunday 26th September
Seven thirty and Lydia was up (well vertical) and straight into the water “its f***in cold” came the scream from off the back deck. She’s awake now. Cold or not it didnt stop her swimming around the boat. Climbing back on deck she repeated several times how cold the water was this morning.
Sue and Andrew thought breakfast was more important than a morning swim. After breakfast Lydia went back to bed to warm up, while Andrew cleaned the water filters.
After lunch we all went to check out the other side of the bay. Lydia snorkeled while Andrew and Sue drifted over the coral in the dinghy, with their masks on every so often sticking their heads underwater to have a look. The coral was some of the healthiest and diverse Lydia has seen on the whole trip, and we had the whole bay to ourselves. Back on Imagine it was relax and read a book time, after such a busy day.

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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.