January 7, 2005 - Macona Inlet, Hook Island (The day we saw the sea turtles)

Sunset on Macona Inlet. We didn't hear jungle noises on this island, just a symphony of cicadas.

Here's our anchorage at Macona Inlet. We took the skiff into the beach and tried to snorkel, but the water was way too cloudy. People from a couple of the boats anchored there were having some weird pow-wow on the beach, which made us feel awkward. Did you have to be invited? Some kind of a Lord of the Flies deal going on there. If you look closely, you can see the people on the little strip of beach in this picture.

Which reminds me: In the different anchorages, people take their skiffs from boat to boat looking for parties. Sometimes they just invite themselves onboard. One boat tonight had a lot of people on board and they were talking loudly. We couldn't make out the conversation, but we could hear the punchlines:

Punchline #1: "... and so he grabs the bird by the throat and flushes him down the dunny!" Hahahaha.

Punchline #2: "... where did you learn to mix drinks, at the nunnery?" Hahahaha.

You get the idea. Some people hopped over to join the party. We decided not to. 

We had a long sail today, into the North wind on a close reach. We tacked maybe 10 times. We dropped the sails right here, at the Hook Passage between Whitsunday Island and hook Island. Yes, those are pine trees and evergreens. The pine trees tend to grow close to the water, and the gum trees and eucalyptus (which make up most of the trees in the forests), grow back in the woods. With their pines and gray rock faces, many of these islands remind us of the Adirondacks.

BTW - Palm trees aren't native here - they are flown into the resorts from Hawaii and Polynesia. 

Here's Goldfinger from Whitehaven Beach.

The highlight of the day was the sea turtles. We saw 6 huge ones in our 15km journey, each about 5-6 feet long. A 7th was only about 3 feet long. The first one we saw was right where the boat is in this picture. He was about 10 feet away from the boat when we were weighing anchor. They each followed the same pattern: They would surface, see the boat and then quickly make a deep dive. They were a surprising lime green color.

I thought the first one was a big clump of seaweed until he opened his eye. Dude! After that, we were looking for seaweed clumps all day.  

Here's a seaplane we saw close-up at Whitehaven Beach. Seaplanes are all over the place. In fact they fly in from Hayman Island(the resort island we're headed to next week). 

Whitehaven Beach is 5km of pure white silica sand. We took the skiff in and walked about 1km and back. It was so nice we went back to the boat and got the cameras.  

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.