After what seemed like a long night sail we
arrived in the torrential morning rain at Lady Musgrave Island. Not the beautiful idyllic day we were
hoping for and we were a bit worried whether we would have enough light to see
the coral heads in the lagoon. We decided to go for it and enter the pass which
is well marked and then make a call from there. A fairly nerve racking entry as
it is very narrow with reef either side so one little slip up and you could be
sitting on it. We timed it with incoming current and there was not too much wind
so we made it in no probs. The water clarity was pretty amazing and even in the
dull light you could still see the bommies pretty clearly. The day was totally
‘mingin’ and we were soaking wet, tired and in need of hot tea and DVD’s. A very
chilled day inside, we could have been anchored anywhere!
Our fishing luck changed after having
Jez and Gav onboard and we finally managed to catch 2 on the way south. The
first one decided it wanted to give up on life in the middle of the night by
launching itself into the cockpit, hitting the boom and making an awful cracking
sound. I was on watch and had the worst nightmare going through my head as to
what had happened, screamed, woke Mike up and cowered in the companion way
looking at this poor fish committing suicide. Of course I could have saved it
but decided to let it beat itself to death and fester all night causing the
cockpit to reek. The 2nd fish we caught early am (a Kingfish Mackerel
(Wahoo)) weighing about 4-5kg – fine eating!
Our
Wahoo
Lady
Musgrave
On the beach at
L.M
Lady Musgrave is a nice island and the
short snorkel we did was pretty amazing. Fantastic coral and fish. Shame the
water was so Baltic! The Island is the nesting site of thousands and thousands
of birds so you can imagine what the interior forest smelt like. They have these
strange Burrowing Shearwater birds; they build burrows into the ground up to 2m
long to have their wee ones. It’s quite odd looking down a hole in the ground
and seeing feathers….
Burrowing Sherwaters
It was shame the weather wasn’t really on
our side whilst we were there but we have been pretty lucky so far this trip and
it was great that we could make it ashore and for a snorkel when the rain
finally stopped and wind died down a bit.
