Friday

Friday morning dawned with ominous grey clouds and the possible bad omen of a large shark hanging off the back of the boat as we dropped anchor in the lee of Hope Island. Everyone was a bit iffy about the spot as there were some deeper channels to cross between the flat water and an obvious wind shadow between the island and the boat. With some apprehension we loaded up the tenders for our final day of kiting.

By mid morning the clouds had cleared and the tide had dropped to reveal some surprisingly good flat water around the front of the island, the dedicated kiters dialled in the tricks that they had been working on earlier on the trip while the others cruised off in one of the tenders to watch the whales that were putting on a show just beyond the fringing reef.

I personally got in my best day kiting, with hardly anyone on the water to keep an eye on Kyle and I went to explore around the island throwing down in the deeper spots and dodging heads of coral up in the shallows.

A late lunch was served up after Chris had one of the best kitting debacles I’ve have ever seen, while throwing a jump and having the kite luff above him right in front of the ship, he proceeded to drift down the port side while his kite still attached went down starboard, Chris released leaving his bar and lines to first get caught around the anchor chain, then once freed to be snagged again on the transponder of the depth sounder, upon retrieving the kite and Chris from the water Kyle backed the tender over the line which had come unwrapped from the bar resulting in a great mess around the prop, thankfully the lines were ok.

This should of signalled a good time to pack up but everyone was trying to make the most out of the last day, Darren tried to sneak around the back of the island for an explore and when his kite fell out of the sky as he entered the wind shadow, Kingy then followed him minutes later with the same result, a third person proceeded to complete the trifecta but managed to swim back to the beach, which left us with the fun job of rescuing two people from deep water in the exact location we’d seen the shark earlier that day. Needless to say the guys were pretty stoked to get into the rubber ducky.

That afternoon Flino produced 20 kilos of cooked prawns from the prawn farm he manages and Lisa whipped up a thousand island sauce. Captain Pete, Kyle and I put our selves in charge of testing the prawns to make sure they were properly thawed, another tough job.

The lads smashed through the prawns and worked on finishing the last of the beer. Once the last kite was landed I gathered everyone together around for the classic group shot which signalled the end of the 2009 Windswell Lizard Island tour