Morning All!

To those of you who know me well, you will shocked and dismayed to know that is only just on 7am and I am sitting at my computer writing to you when usually I am nowhere to be seen until a normal hour of the morning! I did get out of bed thinking it was actually later than it was but I guess when you are in bed and asleep by around 8.30pm and you are getting a full and decent night's sleep then getting up this early is probably normal I guess!

Anyway, I wanted to share our very exciting day from yesterday! We had left Kingfisher Bay on Sunday morning and as the wind wasn't terribly strong and we were moving slowly, following by spotting some rain ahead of us, we decided to pull into a little bay a couple of hours north of the resort and wait. The waiting turned into overnight so we set off on our whale watching yesterday. We headed straight into Platypus Bay and when we spotted a few tourist cats up ahead, we figured there must have been whales in the vicinity. Even when you see a hump poking out in the distance, it is still all very exciting! We got within 100 metres of another boat and a whale that was swimming and playing around it. It didn't come near us but we watched for a while then kept moving and came across another tourist boat watching another couple of whales. So we were happy to have seen some whales and decided that we probably should put the sails back up and keep moving closer to where we wanted to anchor for the evening. Just as we were a couple of miles from the land in Platypus Bay, we saw another couple of whales that were playing about. What was more exciting then was they decided to follow us and come up and say hello. So for about half an hour or so, we had these two magnificent and massive whales swimming right up to the boat, poking their heads out, as well as their flippers to say hello. It was unbelievably cool! After they left, we continued on and saw some more in the distance that were breaching. One did a full breach! The whole body out of the water is quite impressive for the sheer size of the animal! Of course, camera in hand didn't do much when it all happens so quickly but I got smart and got ready! As we were sailing north, we had one that was continuously breaching and swam past the boat and then came back and breached right in front of us! It was all very exciting! Of course, you hear yourself going "ooooh!!" and "aaaaah" but they are so incredible when you see them up close. The other mammals I spotted yesterday were a dugong that swam by the boat and a couple of dolphins. So it was a very successful day overall! What a great way to start the week!

We are anchored now, at the northern part of Fraser Island. It is nice and calm here as we are protected from the southerly winds. The beach looks absolutely beautiful and I was thinking of going for a walk sometime later in the day but we are leaving for the port of Bundaberg while the winds are good and in our favour. I will post a few more photos in the next email as I could not fit all the ones I wanted to share in one email. You can't help but love a fluke (which I remember being told are as individual as fingerprints) and flippers and humps!

Anyway, have a wonderful Tuesday!

Love Claris

Oh....for the less computer savvy (just in case you didn't know), if you look at the pin on the map to see where we are it looks the same each time unless you scroll out. So if you go to the top left hand corner and you scroll over the + sign and click on it, then it will give you a closer view of the map. Then all you do is click and drag the map up to see exactly where we are. Hope that helps. Otherwise, it looks like we haven't moved. Whenever there is a new latitude and longitude position entered next to the diary entry, you know the pin has moved.

I don't know who named them swells. There's nothing swell about them. They should have named them awfuls.   -Hugo Vihlen