Blue Pearl Bay for lunch, then on to Butterfly Bay

Wednesday 5^th July 2017

After a peaceful night at Stonehaven, we cast off our mooring at 9am, and motored around to Blue Pearl bay on the western side of Hayman Island, to do some snorkeling.

"One and Only Resort" , Hayman Island (currently closed for cyclone repair work)

As we were approaching Blue Pearl Bay, we saw a Coastal Cruising Club boat, Sub Zero departing. We waved as we passed each other and I am sure will catch up at some stage.

Blue Pearl Bay

We were fortunate enough to find a vacant mooring, and got the dinghy in the water (after some minor repairs to one of the side grab ropes), and went for a look around.  All around the boat, and the same was the case at Stonehaven, we are visited by some very large Batfish, who seem to enjoy eating the algae on the mooring lines.

The mooring lines here are made for serious weather (they barely fit over the cleat)

Batfish watching 

All of the tourist (backpacker) boats seem to anchor out and run dinghies into the northern part of the bay where they let their customers go snorkeling whilst they wait in the dinghies to take them back. It was pretty full on in that area, but we motored up and had a look, before heading back down to an area where some rough port and starboard markers have been put in place indicating that you could get a dinghy ashore there.

A boatload of tourists waiting their turn tp go snorkelling. You can see the trees on the shore of Hayman Island have been almost stripped bare by cyclone Debbie

So our snorkeling was done from the shore. Not much coral to look at that had any life in it, but there was a great selection of fish, and a few jellyfish. The jellyfish were a bit unsettling, so we didn’t spend a lot of time in the water as we don’t have stinger suits.

Back on our mooring, we decided we would have lunch here and then motor around to Butterfly Bay on the top of Hook Island. To our surprise a yacht motored up to us and called our names. It was Brian and Amanda on “Dalwhinnie”, friends from Sydney who also keep their boat on our marina. 

We knew they were on their way, having left after us, but they must have got a spurt on and are now here. We told them we were leaving our mooring as soon as we had lunch and they willingly motored around for about 20 mins until we left.  I am sure we will see more of them now they are here.

Just near the tip of Hayman Island we saw 2 whales swimming quite close to the shore. We later found out that they swam down to Blue Pearl Bay and swam between the shoreline and the moored boats.

On our way around the top of Hayman Island we could here a yacht on the radio talking to their charterer saying that they were in the passage between Hayman and Hook Islands, had lost power and were drifting. The charter company asked them if they were in any immediate danger, and they didn’t think so, so told them they would send a support boat as soon as they could.

We could see them drifting into trouble, so changed course and went over to talk to them. They had no idea what they were doing, and had dropped their anchor (it is 40m deep and they have 50m of chain). I suggested they pull the anchor back up and roll out their headsail. There was enough breeze for them to slowly sail back out into clear water until help came. It then became clear they had no idea how to sail, so we spent quite a bit of time motoring around them giving instructions until they were in the clear. Fortunately the support boat arrived  (after about 30 mins) and we continued on the Butterfly Bay. In the meantime I radioed the charter company and told them the situation. They were grateful we helped out.

At last we are at Butterfly Bay and our luck with moorings continues. None of the moorings in the eastern bay are available, but there are 2 spare ones in the western bay, where it rolls a bit more. Nevertheless we grab one, and the other one is quickly taken up by a boat following us.

The Western Bay of Butterfly Bay

We had towed our dinghy around, so went for a bit of a dinghy tour of the eastern bay and saw some huge fish. Of course it is a no fishing zone here.

There is no communication here, must be one of Telstra’s black spots, so we will be off the air for a day or two, as tomorrow we plan to go out to Bait Reef / Hook Reef and will stay the night if the conditions are amenable.

I called the people repairing my Metabo drill this afternoon to see how they were progressing. It seems they have yet to receive the spare parts from Metabo (ordered almost 2 weeks ago) as Metabo’s computers were hacked in Germany and the Metabo Australia system has been down for almost a week. Hopefully they have got it back up and running. Pretty hard to believe their systems were that vulnerable.  Just as well as we are hanging around the Whitsundays for a few weeks, as it seems it is going to probably take that long to get it fixed and sent to me at Abell Point.