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 2^nd 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.