Wind   NE 10 – 15  Sunny    4 nm

After a slightly swelly night John cooked a delicious breakfast of mackerel with bacon and mushrooms in a mornay sauce. The weather over Cairns looked overcast and drizzly but where we were was lovely and clear. Sandra fished and caught a Starry triggerfish

while Doug caught something we are still trying to identify in Grants Guide to fish.

 

 

 

 

 

 

We departed Vlassof at 9:30 and sailed round to Michaelmas Cay and picked up a public mooring buoy. Michaelmass  Cay is a National Park and is a famous tern breeding ground that appeared to have thousands of the smelly squawking and chirping birds covering most of it. There are large signs on the beach which restrict you from going ashore between 3 pm and 7 am and most of the cay is fenced off for the birds.

Michaelmas is a popular charter boat destination from Cairns and three boats arrived during the day two with about 100 passengers on and one with 30. Still there was plenty of coral for all to snorkel over.

The mooring buoy had us sitting right over the coral so we donned our snorkelling gear and jumped in. John got last Christmas’s present out , a sea scooter which propelled him along underwater at a good speed. I think he thought he was James Bond. Everyone was very impressed with the new toy.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The coral below us housed a lot of fish of all sorts, there were schools of fusileers, large sweetlip, trevally , bat fish and a couple of reef sharks cruising the bottom.

 

John inspected the hull and cleaned some of it while Doug and I snorkelled over to the shallower coral and watched several different varieties of colourful and interesting fish.

 

 

Sitting on the back transom we ate crab and fed the scraps to the bat fish which were milling around. All of a sudden a school of large Amberjack came in fighting for the scraps, they were almost leaping clear out of the water to be the one who got the tasty morsels. Mixed among these fish were the large sweetlips and other large fish we couldn’t identify from above, Morgan was whining and carrying on as the bat fish came right up to the back transom, she had her nose in the water touching the fish but she didn’t seem to want to grab them. It was fantastic to watch them all jostle for scraps.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Looking at all the fish was too much for John and Doug so we pulled off the mooring buoy and sailed out of the green zone ( Marine Park Zone) to a spot where we could fish, The fishing was not as expected, we only caught small cod, trout, stripeys, trigger fish and all manor of colourful reef fish.

We motored back to our mooring buoy but unfortunately it had been picked up by another boat that had just arrived so we motored over and picked up the lines of a large yellow buoy that was vacant. It belonged to a large charter boat that wasn’t due back until 10:30 the next morning.

Roast Lamb and vegies for dinner with chocolate brownies and cream for dessert.