Monday

After gracefully falling out of my bunk in the staff quarters, I wondered out onto the deck to discover us steaming north past Cape Flattery. There was a certain buzz on deck about the wind, or lack of it, the standard 30 plus knot winds of Lizard Island seemed closer to the standard costal 15 knots we get back in Port Douglas, unlike the sea breezes south of the tropics, once you get this far north the trade winds kick in and it blows non-stop day and night, well that’s the theory. In any case I was glad I’d decided to pack the old 13m bandit in next my kit of shinny new 10 and 12 meter JNs.  

Knowing that we were only an hour or so away from the famous blue lagoon I headed below to double check my camera gear, then up to the wheelhouse for a quick crew meeting about the plan for the day. Bretto and Kingy (Luke King) were concerned about the lack of wind while our skipper looked quite pleased with the outlook of easy anchoring and a good day’s sleep.

Once everyone was fed and the appropriate gear for the day gathered, we loaded up the tenders and started carting people into the blue lagoon. To keep people entertained while we waited for the wind to blow through, a couple of snorkel tours were planned, they don’t call it the Blue Lagoon for nothing and even under a slightly overcast sky the water looked incredibly inviting. With 20 plus meters of visibility and some amazing reef accessible straight off the beach, blokes who would normally turn their noses up at such a dull activity such as snorkelling were amazed at the diversity and colour just below the surface. Which was all fine until I thought I spied a fin out in the middle of the lagoon, 100 feet or so from where I was leading a snorkel tour, in a place known for it’s big tiger sharks I wasn’t going to hang around to investigate further, so we made our way back to the shore and called for the boat. Bretto went over to check out my ‘fin’ which turned out to be a log, I was then given shit about it for the rest of the day, seriously a log in 20 feet of water 20 miles from shore, give me a break.

The wind had picked up by the time we made it back to the beach, kites were being pumped up and lines ran out, it was on. I grabbed my camera and the long lens and headed up to capture some of the action; Ritchie and Ben were first out, with Ben throwing down techy hooked-in jumps and Ritchie gibing and sliding around on an ancient skim board. For most of the day people were just happy to be out on 12s just cruising on the clear water.

Lunch came and went, beers were drunk, we packed up and shuttled back to Undersea. More beers were consumed, and Lisa our cook for the week put on a massive spread for dinner, no-one was going to be losing weight on this trip.

As the day rolled to a corona fuelled close, one word was on everyone’s lips ‘Eagle’