The radio "scids" kick-off every day in the Whitsundays. The Pentium says it stands for "Small Craft Identification System." The yachting charter companies roll-call all of the boats that are out on the water to confirm their plans for the day. Our company Sunsail does its scids at 8:45am and 4:45pm. So when they call "Goldfinger"at 8:45am, you have to know your route and your planned anchorage. And you have to be safely anchored there by 4:45pm. Rules is rules, mate.

We're more or less sticking to our original plan. On this morning's radio broadcast, they said the wind is going to shift from N to S in a couple of days - with 30-knot winds from the South - so we're going to have to change things around at some point - we don't want to have a long sail south on the last day. In fact, today we're going to head all the way to Hook Island, ahead of schedule, since the wind is still pretty light and it's a nice day.

Of course, as soon as we weighed anchor this morning, we got caught in a little squall and got completely soaked. (Kookaburras!)

We had great weather the rest of the day. Here's Goldfinger at Whitehaven Beach, our first stop of the day.

Addendum to yesterday's story: As we were getting into the skiff in the surf, we see a large dark shadow in the wave in front of us. It's a huge sandy-brown manta ray, wingspan about 6 feet. She's not zipping or zooming or flying. She's coasting, almost soaring. In fact, she's surfing! She even rolls over, very gracefully, from left to right. She checks us out and continues on, very very slowly. So we're thinking: I guess we met her approval as playmates for her kids?

Addendum #2: Yes, we're wearing the stinger suits for the jellyfish. And in fact, everyone
we see is wearing them. We do see some dead jellyfish washed up on shore, but none in the water, except a monster one way out at sea.

Addendum #3: Every boat has its idiosyncracies. The Goldfinger has several, but the funniest one is this one. Whenever we raise the anchor with the automatic winch it sends an audio beacon to our radio. So whenever we're leaving an anchorage we have to endure a loud screeching alert tone for 5 minutes. Fun fun fun.