Wind  variable  10 knts  Sunny                      HT 12:41  40 nm

We departed Grays Bay at 8:30 and motored out of the bay. It was a lovely calm morning with lots of small fishing boats out further hoping for fish. Yesterday we saw one of the boats bring in a 25 lb long finned tuna. The couple were quite pleased with their catch and they would have had the tiniest tinny of the lot. Later we saw them cooking it with friends at the caravan park. (the tuna I mean)

John had hardly put the rods out when he had something big on . Whatever he had on fought like buggery ( John’s words) and while I steered the boat towards the fish he slowly reeled it in. It was a 17 lb Golden Trevally with great big blubber lips and no teeth. We let it go as it was too big for us to eat although it’s supposed to be good table fish.

We pulled the jib and motored in the light winds until we saw what looked like the flukes of a whale floating,with the rest of the whale down below. It was motionless but as we got closer another whale surfaced an breathed. We continued past for nearly  a k then thought we should go back and see if there was a problem. The whale had been down a long time but as we got closer we could see a small whale swimming around it and surfacing.

John was on the phone at the time and Bryan mentioned it might be calving but I googled humpbacks and they said you can identify a feeding calf as the female humpback

usually stays underwater while the calf returns to the surface every few minutes to breath between feeding. The calf will surface 4 – 6 times before the mother comes up for a breath. A few females will feed by remaining motionless in an upright position

while the calf feeds underwater, though this position is relatively rare. Well we were lucky we got to see this rare position.

 

We moved on as we didn’t want to disturb mum and baby. By the way a baby Humpback consumes 200 plus litres of milk per day.

The rest of the day was quieter, we motor sailed all day averaging only 4.8 knts. I did some paperwork and John got a sunburnt torso as he had his shirt off. We saw a few more whales in the distance.

Just before lunch he pulled in a small spotted Mackeral which he filleted and cooked in a Tempura batter. The fish was delicious, you couldn’t get it any fresher. We topped it off with the last of the Tim Tam cheesecake.

 

 

We arrived at Cape Upstart and anchored off the second beach along in 5.4 metres of water at half tide. Morgan was looking longingly at the shore so we dinghied over to see if Andy a fellow we had met in 2005 and 09 was still there. He is the only permanent resident here , all the others go to and from their fisherman shacks.

He wasn’t there so after a walk along the beach we headed back to Ovive for happy hour. We didn’t expect Andy to be there as the last time we saw him he said he had some medical issues and might have to move back to civilisation.

It was more like fishing hour than sit down and drink hour as soon as the lines went out a small Trevally and and black tip reef shark were on the lines. They both went back in the water but were followed by another 4 small trevally and 4 more sharks. John gave up on the fishing, the sharks got the better of him.

No TV reception so John beat me at scrabble.