Year 2 – 26 March 2025 - Lady Musgrave Island - Great Barrier Reef

If anyone reading this and is free from late June to mid July 2025 to come to Australia then do contact me as I am short of crew during this period at present.

It was grey again when we woke but it was lovely and quiet and we were the only boat here. The night had been interesting as there had been a constant howl of wind in the rigging etc. It reminded me of being in the San Blas Islands and the constant 20 + kt winds.  I got up about 4.00am and put on the instruments and at first it said depth at 18m. I thought gosh we must have moved but when I checked the lighthouse on the Island and the local floating camping pontoon etc we did not seem to have moved. I checked our lat and long and they were nearly the same and then the depth gauge once it had woken up moved more to the 8m that I expected.  As all was ok I went to bed again. We were the only boat here overnight in such a lovely location and we had the place to ourselves.

It was a reasonable morning when I woke and I had anticipated rain. Mark cooked his NZ/Oz breakfast of bacon and eggs and toast which went down well. We then chilled and then got the dinghy down and prepared to go ashore. It was about a quarter of a mile ashore and we were not sure how to get to the Island. We got into the dinghy and headed toward the Island and as we got closer we saw a red buoy and green buoy going ashore. We had meandered between various bommies or areas we could see coral underwater. We went into this channel and worked our way to the shore.

We anchored off the beach and waded ashore and a red ray scuttled away from us. There was no-one here and we went up on to the beach which was really full of broken coral rather than a beach. We came to the treeline and walked through the woods and meandered toward the other side of the Island which had a camp area and a toilet block. The beach was full of trees and tree trunks and other detritus.

We walked around and enjoyed the Island but it felt like we were marooned here. We eventually got back to the beach and it was clear due to the tide and depth that we could not swim here. We decided  we would go and tie up to one of the floating holiday pontoons. This was only about 30 yards from the edge of the reef. We tied up and went on to their platform which was well maintained. We tied up the dinghy and got in and swam toward the edge of the reef. It did not take long. The visibility was a bit cloudy due to the swell but we could clearly see the edge of the reef. This was amash with a very broad range of fish of all sorts of sizes and colours. It was like being in a fish nursery and we swam around for some time. There was also a lot of different types of coral. It was a great snorkel in a lovely coral setting.

We returned to the dinghy and then came back to Stormbird for some lunch and on the way we saw a huge manta ray swimming past. After lunch we then had a rest. Mark and I went for a swim around the boat but we could not see the bottom although we could see the hull etc. I tried to look at the log but did not have a rope to grab hold of. David went and had a look at the log later and we put out a rope. He thinks it needs to be tilted to port about a quarter of an inch. We will try that tomorrow.

I cooked steak with pepper sauce with broccoli and cauliflower for supper which all enjoyed.

We hope to head over to Fraser Reef tomorrow. The picture of the day is the guys enjoying a sundowner on the rear deck.

Need/Opportunity Year Two

I am in need of more crew from late June to Mid-July so if of interest do email me at  hine.nick9@gmail.com  

In year two I will be going from New Zealand to Sydney and hen up the Eastern Australian Coast, Indonesia and then through Bali, Singapore and on to Thailand to end year two about the end of November 2025.

The blog will continue as we continue the journey. If you have any comments or suggestions about the blog then do email me on hine.nick9@gmail.com