After a very quiet night, we again woke with the sun.  Well, Hannah woke with the sun.  All the rest of us woke via Hannah.

By 6am some of our neighbours had already left and we thought that we should too.  So after a quick brekky of raisin toast we hauled anchor and headed up towards Hayman Island.

Not long after rounding the point and heading North, the weather (and 3 seasick crew) made the decision to head South for Whitehaven beach an easy one.  There were 2M seas and they were coming across the bow, so she was rocking side to side.  Altogether unpleasant.

Along the way we made a short stop in Cid Harbour.  The seas in that direction were the same height but it was fore/aft and easier to tolerate.  There was a beach there that I dropped Kel & Hannah off at, to have a taste of dry land.  Blake and I rambled off to find a geocache on a small rock island nearby (coincidentally 🙂 ).  Also my first terrain 5 cache and it was well worthy of that.

This geocache was a bit of a tough ask really.  The cache was right on the top of the island and it was completely overgrown.  Even though the island is only about 75m across it took ages to scramble to the top.

After retrieving the cache, Blake & I took the dinghy back to retrieve Kel & Hannah.  They were feeling much better now and were keen for a snorkel.  There wasn’t much worth seeing where we were ,so we went back to the Phoenix to continue South.

We had to negotiate the treacherous Fitzalan Passage to get there.  A ton of water rushes through there at the height of the changing tide … guess what time we were going through there?

Great views looking back towards Hamilton Island from there though.

Our lunch stop was Turtle Bay.  No sooner had we moored there than we saw a couple of turtles swimming on the nearby reef.  We could have stayed there overnight as it was pretty sheltered and quiet, but we had our hearts set on getting around to Chance Bay.  It was only about another 45 minutes along the coast.

 

Lotto winnings, obviously...

From Chance Bay there is a really good walking track that goes across to Whitehaven Beach that we plan on doing tomorrow.  Chance Bay is actually a double bay and the part with the walking track was suffering a bit of weather so we’ve set up camp in the other bay tonight.

There’s a great beach here and we all bundled into the dinghy to head there.  The beach has a fringing coral reef with plenty of fishes to see, so that’s what we did.  We all spent awhile snorkelling around here.  No really big fish, but plenty of variety.

The shore was awash with hundreds of crabs.  When you picked them up, or got too close, they just curled up into little balls.

The kids had a bit of a play around in the dinghy.  Their skills leave a lot to be desired, but nobody managed to go overboard.

I have no idea what’s for dinner yet since Kel’s having an afternoon nap!  In fact, the whole crew settled in for a bit of an afternoon relax-a-thon.  We were getting into that groove when there was an insistent “Ahoy!” from outside.  We thought we were hearing things, but no … there was a small, bearded, speedo clad gentlemen in a rowboat beside our trusty Phoenix.  He turned out to be after some empty soft drink bottles to assist with his bottling of home brew.  We couldn’t help him there, unfortunately.  But the mind boggles where he found the space for a home brew outfit onboard his yacht and how it coped with all the movement.  The beer was bound to be a surprise for the palate that’s for sure.

Honey Mustard Chicken for dinner tonight, now that Kel’s wide awake.  Life’s tough on the open seas.
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