Wind Variable to 10 knts sunny

Woke up to a lovely calm morning so Morgan and I took the paddle board ashore.

We paddled over coral bommies and isolated soft corals on the bottom but hadly any fish and no turtles.Morgan ran along the beach while I explored.

Back to Ovive for breaky then a swim. The water was lovely so I scrubbed the starboard hull as it was getting a bit dirty along the waterline.

 

As we pulled the anchor up we marked off the 10 metre marks with cable ties on the chain, as we had forgotten to put markers on it when we put it in the chain bay after we bought it .At the moment its very slow to bring in without the stripper arm and it tends to wrap itself around the gypsy instead of peeling off into the chain locker.

There was an 8 knot breeze so we hauled up the main and sailed up through Hook Passage with no idea of where we wanted to go. It was slow going through the passage due to the opposing currents and eddies, we got down to 1 knt. The once delightful little resort and observatory on Hook Is was closed which is a shame as it was a lovely spot.

We still couldn’t make up our minds on a destination so headed north east and opted for a fishing and whale spotting cruise. We were rewarded by both.

John caught two Tuna macs which we kept one for bait as we had no bait and to my delight spotted half a dozen whales. It was a very exciting afternoon.

At 3:30 we turned back towards the mainland heading for the top of Hook Island. The plan was to cruise along the anchorages until we found a spare mooring buoy. Anchoring in these top anchorages is usually rather deep so a buoy was much preferred especially as its such a job to get our anchor up at the moment.

Luckily as we rounded first inlet, Pinnacle Bay one of the two mooring buoys was vacant so we picked it up and secured it to the bow.

Went ashore to try and walk up to the little lighthouse but the tide was up and we couldn’t pull the dinghy up because the beach was covered. We chose another little beach and searched for shells and interesting dead coral formations.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Took the dinghy round the point out of the green zone and fished, with John pulling in a lovely 2 lb sweetlip for dinner.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Back on Ovive we enjoyed happy hour on the back deck. One of the most scenic happy hours yet, four whales were frolicking just out of the bay for quite a while, then they headed for Manta Ray bay next to us. They must have gone in really close to the anchored boats, what a treat for them.

Fresh fish and chips for dinner. Excellent tasting fish, it rivals coral trout.

The mooring buoy gave us grief in the night it kept banging against the hull., John getting up several times to solve the problem.