Wind   10  knots SE   Sunny      12nmi

Woke up to a beautiful calm morning with turtles popping their leathery heads up and the quiet punctuated by dingoes howling in the surrounding scrub. I thought i saw dingoes footprints and scat on the beach the afternoon before.

John and I pulled up the anchor and motored out into clearer flatter water to recalibrate the autopilot again as it was about 10° out. The water must’n have been flat enough yesterday, now its only 1° out.

 

We motored around to the outer anchorage and dropped anchor to head off in the dinghy on a fishing expedition.

 

We headed over to Round Island and drifted quite close to the rocks. Not many bites so we went over to the point off the mainland and had a great time pulling in Long Finned cod, Parrot fish and a smaller reddish brown reef cod.

John and I got bitten off several times by a much larger fish but we couldn’t seem to catch them or it. We were using Tuna Mac and Hardy heads for bait. Saw a few large turtles popping their heads up and a very large sea snake.

The day was magnificent, only a slight swell, quite acceptable dinghy fishing.

We departed Port Clinton about 12:00 and headed north between the mainland and Entrance Island.

As we headed north inside Delcomyn Is we put out a lure and in five minutes we had a Tuna Mac. John hauled him in while Jenny steered the boat and furled the jib. Tricky catching fish when you have the sails up. John only had light line out so we needed to slow the boat speed down so he could get it in without breaking the line. We let him go as we already had enough bait. Tuna Mac ( actually Mackeral Tuna) is a gleaming blue and black colour with an oval of beautiful coloured stripes on its back. The flesh is very dark and needs to be blanched first if you are going to eat it.

Another nautical mile on we had another Tuna Mac. This fish was larger but by then we had the screecher out which I couldn’t pull in single handed. Took some time to get this fish onboard as we turned down wind to let the screecher flop and finally determine what we had and let it go. Not sure if a shark took it as there was some splashing after we let it go.

 

Sailed on to Island Head Creek and motored up the channel on the northern side, very deep in places, 20 mts. Quite a few boats  anchored in the creek most up the western end in expectation of strong winds forecast for the next few days. We anchored at the entrance of the last inlet just before where Alan Lucas suggests in 3.6 metres of water at almost high tide.

We could hear booms from the live firing in the military exercise area as a major exercise is currently on. Peachy is there participating as an army reserve recruit.

Dinghied over to Moor R & R for happy hour with Brian and Deb and Steve from Clear Horizons.

Fish Curry and Rice for dinner.