Lady Musgrave

Wednesday 20^th September 2017

There was considerable relief this morning when all anchors came up without fouling on the rough bottom below. We all had 60m of chain out so it took a while to get it all in.

The anchorage actually was very comfortable with regard to wind, current and swell, but we were the only 3 large boats anchored there, the rest were tinnies pulled up on the beach.

It is another day of light winds and no-one is interested in raising a mainsail, so we motored off against the tide for the first 3 hours, losing around a knot in speed across the ground.

Leaving Masthead Island behind

Today we are heading to Lady Musgrave Island , one of the real gems on the QLD coastline. An hour or so after we left at 6am, the morning SW wind started to come in and we all put up headsails (in our case the code zero), and were able to cut the engine revs by around 400rpm.

Soon after leaving Masthead, we saw a large sea snake swimming in our wash, it appears that we went over the top of it. The whales are also out in force again today.

We saw lots of whales including these two large ones quite close to us

 After 8.30am, when the tide changed , we started to get the benefit if the tidal flow, which also kept the diesel consumption down. The wind only lasted for a couple of hours, after which the sails were furled back in, but by now the current was giving us another knot.

We arrived at Lady Musgrave just after 1pm, planning to pass through the narrow entrance into the lagoon, when the tidal flow is waning. Low tide is at 2.12pm. To our great surprise, the Young Endeavour is visiting Lady Musgrave and is anchored on the outside of the lagoon entrance.

The Young Endeavour anchored outside the lagoon 

The three of us went through the entrance with little problem, although the flow was still quite pronounced, needing a lot of engine revs to get us through smoothly, in the turbulent outflow.

There is so much space once you get inside, we had no trouble finding a nice sandy spot to drop our anchor in around 7m of water at low tide.

We had lunch and went ashore on the island to have a look around. The tide is still pretty low, so we need to drag our dinghy onto the beach across some rock and coral, but with the wheels we have on it, it is an effortless task.

You need to navigate through a few reefs to get to shore

Looking back out into the lagoon, from the "beach" at low tide

There were a few other boats at the beach, but I think quite a few were deterred by the low tide. We decided to have a walk around the island, and headed off in an anticlockwise direction.

You can tell it is low tide

However the beach in some areas is lovely white sand

About one third of the way around, we came across a camping area, where a few tents were erected. 

There were a couple of walks that went into the interior of the island that started here, so we diverted from our around the island walk and opted for a bush walk. After all, we have all of tomorrow to see the place in more detail.

As soon as we entered the forest, it was very clear that this island is a major nesting site for a number of birds, and they are all very active at the moment, building nests. Accommodation is limited, so high density living in the trees with nests side by side seems to be acceptable.

The walk took us through some interesting forest and emerged back at the lagoon where our dinghy is, but we continued to explore the island, taking a clockwise direction.  By the time we had walked a distance along the beach in this direction, we reckoned we have probably covered  about two thirds of the way around the island. We did notice a large tower that looked like a fire lookout or similar, but as we got closer, we realized it was the “lighthouse” for Lady Musgrave. The light was flashing brightly tonight.

The "LighthouseTower" at Lady Musgrave

It is amazing how close the major shipping lane is to the island

Sundowners were on Dalwhinnie tonight. It is the first time that Brian and Amanda and Marg and Pip have been here, and both were a bit intimidated by the passage through the entrance channel (a character builder for anyone), but were stunned by the lagoon when you get inside.

There are not many places on the Great Barrier Reef that rival Lady Musgrave.