Curacoa Island (Palm Islands) - Britomart Reef

27.-28. October 2017

We spent one night at the Great Palm Island at a beautiful beach. 

In the evening, we went into the small aboriginal village just before sunset and found the local bar. Ended up playing a round of pool with two young whitey painters. They work 10 days on the island, then have 3 days off. And seem to play pool every night, so we didn’t feel too bad we lost - it was certainly entertaining :-)

At the dock I used the good internet signal and called my parents, while Michael made the acquaintance of two curious sweet little local girls. 

Next day no wind, so we motored the 5 1/2 miles to a more northern Island (Curacoa I.) and found some nice snorkeling. 

Unfortunately though, our windlass is acting up again after we thought we had successfully fixed it with new brushes in Townsville. Gotta find a solution for that, not good if that’s not working well!

 

Michael got us up and going early, at 6am, to make use of the wind which was supposed to turn and then later die down. 

And we really don’t like to motor, especially not 27nm. 

Caught a nice BIG mackerel under way. Our fishing luck is holding up. 

The first spot we went to, the snorkeling was quite disappointing. A lot of corals were dead - and we saw the Crown of Thorns starfish everywhere. 

They can be a plague and are ravaging the reefs. 

So much was dead already. 

We had met people from the James Cook University in Townsville in Magnetic Island. 

They drove around at night setting out traps for jellyfish, to monitor which ones are around, and if there are any of the dangerous stingers amongst them - they found one … :-0

Anyway, want to try to contact them to see if there’s anything to be done about that reef. 

Because 2nm further, it was super beautiful again: