Michaelmas Cay - "Now I can PowerDive"!

On our last afternoon at Michaelmas Cay I (Ryan) went to dive school with Dad. It was awesome! We saw loads of clams and fishes. I had to wear a weight belt like Dad. We tested me with only one weight, but I still floated so I had wear two weights - each one was one kilogram.

We swam around the reef checking things out from a fish's perspective. There were Bat Fish and Parrotfish. I saw a whole group of at least two dozen Parrotfish munching away at the coral and you could hear them eating it like, Crunch, Crunch, Crunch, Crunch etc etc etc!

The coral was great, but I really liked finding a turtle and swimming slowly with it under water while taking this picture! It eventually swam away from us.

You have to be careful when you use the PowerDive or things can go wrong. Dad told me the key rules are:

1) Always dive with someone with experience;
2) Never dive too deep;
3) Clear your ears on the way down;
4) Breathe normally underwater; and
5) Never ever come up faster than your bubbles!

The strange thing about diving was that it was warmish up near the surface and cold down near the sea bed. I hope we can go diving again soon...

Around and about in the Whitsundays

Last week was a wet and windy old week in the Whitsundays, and we had been running around hiding in various little hidey holes, trying to stay dry. We spent more time at Hamilton Island Marina (just in case I haven't said it before, we can highly recommend a stop or five here ;-). We then spent a couple of nights in Cid Harbour, before moving on to Butterfly Bay, followed by a few nights in Stonehaven, then a night moored off Black Island (aka Bali Hai), and we wrapped it all up with another night in Cid Harbour.

In between times we visited beautiful Luncheon Bay on the north side of Hook Island and also went to Langford Island, just south of Hayman Island. Towards the end of the week the wind starting dying down and the clouds started clearing so we managed to get in some diving and snorkelling in these places too.

Langford in particular is a nice place to stop, where you can easily pick up one of several moorings located just off the sand spit joining Langford Island and One Foot Island. It is then a simple matter to don your diving gear, hook yourself up to the Powerdive unit and step off the back of the boat into your own private fish filled, coral garden...so we did!

A bunch of Damsels in distress...

The very rare, yellow-nailed, yellow-tentacled, yellow-eyed, yellow-belted, bubbling, black boo bear!

Nick took Emily into some very shallow water near the beach and taught her how to use the Powerdive unit. She took to it like, well, a fish in water! Unfortunately it was a bit murky here due to the wind and strong currents, but you can see her clearly enough above to know that she looked like she was preparing to go trick-or-treating!!

A shy little Blackback Anemonefish, hiding in a Bulb-tipped Anemone.

I have recently invested in a great little e-product which so far has come in very handy indeed. It is Neville Coleman's Marine Life Identification eGuide (Asia/Indo-Pacific)...and you can find out more about it here. Pretty much everything I have seen in the water up here to date, I have been able to ID pretty reliably in Neville's Guide...(well, as reliably as I can with the pictures I have)? Having the guide on my iPod means we don't need to have lots of big books on board, hogging valuable space, either. I hope to go back and ID the other things I have posted pics of recently...when I get a quiet minute or two.

Billions of big Batfish...not exactly sure which ones

A type of Acanthastrea or stony coral

Elephant Ear Sponge

That's all I have had time to edit and get together for the blog. Gonna go have some yummy pizza for dinner now.

Ciao, ciao!

More Bait Reef Beauty...

We had another aquatic day today on Bait Reef. Nick and I did some Powerdiving in the morning, and he managed to get these shots...

Nick has decided to try and capture more shots of fish...but they tend to move a tad more quickly than the coral...so its taking some time! I move a whole lot slower (than the fish, not the coral)...so I'm a relatively easy target.

(wish the occupant of this beauty was still at home)...

There will undoubtedly be more underwater pics to come, but I'll try and get some blue sky in too!

The Stepping Stones, Bait Reef

We had another fun day yesterday. We moved from Hook Reef to Bait Reef, and went Powerdiving off the Stepping Stones...

It is still a tad windy here, but under the water you don't notice the wind so much (except that it tends to blow the floating Powerdive unit away, and I can sometimes feel it dragging me backwards).

It poured with rain here last night, which washed down the boat but unfortunately also soaked MY side of the bed....not so nice, but it'll dry out today.

Colourful Cateran Bay

If you check out our trip map here, and zoom way, way in over the Whitsunday Islands, you'll see that we have stopped in Cateran Bay (on the north side of Border Island) three times so far (if you can make any of it out at all, that is...we have been doing circles of the place, and its looking like a big scribble until you zoom right in). We started out snorkelling at Cateran Bay, but on the last stop we threw in the Power Dive unit and wow...we had a ball! The Powerdive doover is proving to be worth its weight in gold.

Apologies up front...this is another picture heavy post...

We'll definitely go back there again. It is a really lovely place, and apart from one encounter with a cranky cruiser who didn't know how to use his anchor (and was taking his frustrations out on us)...we have enjoyed every minute we've spent there.

It is a tad windy out here on Hook Reef today, so we've had the stereo cranked up and while the kids have been 'dancing' in the cockpit, Nick has been pulling apart our Harken winches...as you do while you are sitting out the wind behind a reef....and I've been photo editing.

Diving on Bait Reef

We are currently anchored behind Hook Reef on The Great Barrier Reef, and all I can see in every direction is amazingly blue ocean (and one or two other boats, and the reef...which is just coming out at low tide, as I write).

Yesterday we motored out here from Cateran Bay, and stopped briefly on the outer edge of Bait Reef on the way. We picked up the Manta Ray Drop-off public mooring and then chucked in the Powerdive unit and went for a quick paddle...

Apologies for the picture heavy post, but what more could I say? We came, we saw, we were impressed! This is a heavily visited area, which has also suffered some storm damage by the looks of it, but I for one am pretty easy to please when it comes to underwater adventuring. It also helped that the whole dive was accompanied by the sounds of whales singing, quite close by this time too!