January 6, 2005 - Chance Bay, Whitsunday Island - (The day we played with the manta rays)

Here's the sunset over Whitsunday Craig, aka, the Manta Ray Playground. (The Aussie's say manta ray in one smooth word that sounds sort of like "mawndaree." Mawndarees are worshipped like Gods here - with tattoos, with t-shirts, on names of stores and restaurants. Now we know why!)

So maybe we'll get some sleep tonight? No, not with all the jungle noise coming out of the woods on Whitsunday Island. If you listen closely you can differentiate a dozen different sounds, most of which seem to be birds. The most loud and obnoxious of all are the kookaburras. They apparently chose tonight to have a kookaburra stand-up comedy jam. They screech all night like deranged chimpanzees. I pteradactyled them back a couple of times. Still learning kookaburra.

BTW - The word on the reef is the kookaburra only laughs when it's going to rain...

Even more distracting than the birds is all these stars! I've seen star-filled skies before, but out here they have stars wrapped inside galaxies wrapped inside universes. These stars have stars upon thars! I don't think they forgot a single star tonight - they're all up there. The night sky in the southern hemisphere is unrecognizable - no Orion, no Big Dipper, no North Star. Not a single constellation I can name. If they're there, I can't find them... because of all the stars! I might as well be on Planet Klingon observing the Moons of Zontar.

BTW - we also saw shooting stars! And we slept maybe 4 hours.

Here's the beach at Chance Bay. We immediately took the skiff onto the shore and waded into the water with our snorkels. We were by ourselves - the first arrivers of the day. Sunsail (our charter) gave us a big speech about tides because they're tricky here and can leave anchored boats on the sand. But during that speech we also picked up that the best time to snorkel is low tide - and we arrived at Chance Bay right at low tide.

We're between the Equator and the Tropic of Capricorn here - and January is the warmest month - so the ocean is more than 80 degrees. And where it's less than 2 or 3 feet deep, it's almost 90 degrees. It's crazy, I tell you. Crazy.

So we're in the water for less than 60 seconds and barely up to our waists, when three fish, each about 2 1/2 feet, dart past us in unison. I thought they were barracuda, but I looked them up in the book later on, and they were probably seapike. Seapike are similar to a barracuda, but more likely to swim into shore.

We also saw some white puffer fish, just like the ones in Sydney aquarium. They are almost transparent. I got within a couple feet of one and snapped his picture... I hope it comes out.

So then a little later on, this happens:

We're standing in the water, about up to our thighs. Then we both spot a manta ray, zipping from left to right, just an inch from the bottom. He's like lightning - zigging and zagging around us, and he's out of sight before you know it. He's sand colored, almost white with sand-colored spots, and maybe 1 1/2 feet across. Then another one, this one's a little bit darker brown. He flies past us to the right, makes a u-turn in the blink of an eye and flies past us again to the left. He follows the shoreline until he's out of sight.

Before I can catch my breath, a little tan-colored one about 8 inches wide comes streaking straight at me from out of the blue. Before I can even react, he speeds between my flippers and right through my legs. As I watch him, my head goes between my knees and I almost flip myself over. Whoa! I've seen the coyote do that when the roadrunner runs through his wickets.

A little later we were getting in the skiff to head back to the boat. And we saw a few of them to left... a few in front of us... and a few to the right. Yikes - they've got us circled!

They were all different shades of white to brown, none with a wingspan larger than 2 feet. Every few seconds, one would zip toward us, then speed back to the other side.

Creepy feeling #1: They're raptors ganging up on their prey. We're toast! Or, um, we're whatever manta rays eat!

Creepy feeling #2: They're Cherokees circling the wagons! No, worse - cats playing with their food before they eat it (i.e. mice)!

Reality: Apparently they're just playing! We are the featured attraction of a manta ray game of maypole. They're just messing with us! Little kids who just want to play.

The whole episode probably lasted all of 15 minutes. But I don't think we'll ever forget it!

It took us less than 2 hours to sail to our first anchorage at Chance Bay on the south side of Whitsunday island. Winds were from the NE at about 10 knots, we sailed on a close reach. This is Whitsunday Craig, the mountain overlooking Chance Bay.

So the Indiana Jones part of our adventure - Act III of V - finally begins. It doesn't begin when we wake up on the boat on a gorgeous sunny tropical day. It doesn't begin when we turn north out of Hamilton marina toward Whitsunday Island. No: The adventure begins the moment we put up the sails. Of course I celebrated the sail raising with my world-famous pteradactyl scream. This one was the loudest ever.

OK, sorry for the short and sweet post yesterday. We weren't sure when we were going to be able to connect again. But we really just wanted everyone to know what our plan was, and I had to slap it together very quickly. They actually have an Internet Cafe on Hamilton Island, but it wasn't exactly the network operations center at AT&T.

BTW, the sleeping on the deck thing didn't work out. The Goldfinger was docked too close to the local tavern, and the spotlights from the Sunsail office were shining in our faces. Not our best night's sleep.

BTW, the rule is, you're not allowed to say the name of our boat - you have to sing it. And you have to sing it like they sing it in the movie, including the trumpet part: "Gold fing-gaaaah... bup-bah BOWW!" And you have to do that every time.