Monday 14th July - Coral Sea Marina
School’s back, and also work.
We got in 3 loads of washing!
Kristie had booked the courtesy car from the marina for 11:30am.
She took the girls with her:
- Post office pickup
- New socks for both girls
- Bunnings for some more sandpaper (I’d used up a bit cleaning the anchor Chris found)
- Woolies pickup
Nauti Kitty turned up in the marina just across from us while the girls were out. I caught lines with Jess who’d come in on their tender.
Also bought a new fuel tank for the tender as the filler for the old one had broken.
I walked the unleaded over to the fuel dock to top up - only needed 15L.
With the girls back it was time to stow all the food, and vacuum seal some of the meat.
We didn’t use the vacuum sealer for the first half of the trip, but it’s getting a lot of use up here now.
Kristie started on fixing/sewing the canvas that needed some patching.
With that done she gave Lazuli a bit of a wash down and filled water.
While we were doing all that, Jess (Nauti Kitty) had taken our girls and Charlee up to the resort pool for a swim.
We’d arranged to have dinner with Exhale and one of their other boat friends (Dolce Vita - Martin and Belinda) at “The Deck”.
The outside /veranda area was needed as both had their dogs along.
Tasty dinner, and then off to the ferris wheel for kids (and Kenny) to have a ride.
Ice cream (Cold Rock) on the way home. Also yum.
With a long motor tomorrow, I cooked sausages and got the boat as ready as I could.
Kristie did a bit more patching of our shade covers.
Tuesday 15th
8am departure for Bait Reef. Kristie on the helm while I worked. Plenty of whales to dodge on the way out.
We were lucky that a boat had just left before we got there, so we could grab a mooring at Bait Reef.
The free one was probably the best, right near the reef!
With conditions good, Kristie and I jumped in for a dive together at the Stepping Stones.
Gear in the tender, tender over to one of the many tender moorings, and down we went.
The Stepping Stones is a lovely dive site. Lots of bommies to swim around and in between.
It’s a green zone here, so there is plenty of fish life.
My dive computer is now playing up.. it was showing me still at 1.4m while at the surface :(
David from the boat next to us paddled over to say hi and talk about the dive. We had a good chat with him.
This is the first time he’d been able to convince the other boat owners to bring their boat up here.
Plenty of pods of whales swimming in close to Bait Reef.
We had glued up a rip in the bimini in the morning, and now it was dry we needed to sew it up before we could attach the infill for the night.
Not a pretty job, but hopefully it’ll hold up.
Sip’s ‘n dips and I spent a bit of time playing Minecraft with Emma.
Kristina had been after a movie night for a while, so we all enjoyed watching Zootopia.
Wednesday 16th
With no internet at Bait Reef, I spent some time working on updating the blog while Kristie did school for the girls.
With only one tank full, Kristie jumped in to do a solo dive on the Stepping Stones, this time more of a drift.
Emma needed to cool down, so she had a quick swim off back.
With the dive done, it was time to get the compressor out and fill the dive tanks.
Explore had turned up and was on the mooring next to us with all their snorkelers in the water.
The girls and Kristie enjoyed a jump off Lazuli, then all in the tender to head over to where everyone else was!
Both Emma and Kristina enjoyed showing off their mermaid tails to everyone else off Explore.
Back for some food, then Kristie and I geared up to go dive the Dropoff.
There’s a big mooring there and with nobody on it we could leave our tender tied up to that.
There was a little current, so we dove in to that to make the swim back easier.
Great dive with lots of different sections to explore. Found our way back to the tender which was a relief!
The diving here is great - would be fun to bring the club dive boat up there for a week (in good weather!).
Long slow motor back to Lazuli.
On the way back with stopped for a quick chat with Tom and Jillian on Wild Kat. Turns out they are just two crew doing a delivery on the cat for the owner and had a month to kill.
Talked about the dive for a bit before Kristina started calling from out boat and wanted to come over and pat their dog!
We grabbed Kristina and she jumped onboard (we were still in wetsuits) for a pat.
Eventually Emma was up front of Lazuli demanding to come over as well, so we went back (leaving Kristina on the cat) to get changed and grab her and some nibbles (sort of impromptu invited ourselves on their boat).
We enjoyed a good chat with them and watching whales the entire time.
Back on Lazuli for dinner.
Thursday 17th
Again, with only one full tank, Kristie jumped in to do another solo dive on the “Cluster of four”.
She was lucky enough to have two whales swim over and back around past her.
Once they were out of the way, she had visits from a Manta ray and a reef shark.
Up on top while doing surface watch, our tender outboard decided to pack it in. Attempted to get it going but no luck.
Had to row to a tender mooring and wait for Kristie to surface. Rowed back to Lazuli.
We had hoped to stay longer, but needed to get the outboard sorted so left to sail back.
As soon as we had Starlink online I made a few phone calls.
I could get a new Yamaha 9.9 4stroke delivered to the marina that afternoon!
Booked a berth back at Coral Sea Marina.
Fast sail back towards Hayman Island, and once behind that the wind dropped a bit and had to motor the rest of the way to Airlie Beach.
With Lazuli tied up, we lowered the tender and rowed to boat ramp to get new motor.
The shop dropped it off, and took the old one.
I had a quick run to chandlery to get hose fitting (the Tohatsu and Yamaha had different fittings naturally).
The marina were having their monthly “Marina Mingle” night - a free drink and nibbles. They had a few lucky door raffle prizes, but we didn’t win any of them!.
We only had a few small slices of pizza for snacks there, so we needed a proper dinner.
Walked to town, and ended up finding one of those street food setups that were doing sourdough pizza.
Possibly the best pizza’s I’ve had.. especially the Nutella & Banana pizza we had for dessert :)
(Emma was not impressed that we didn’t get Cold Rock again!)
Back to Lazuli and bed.
Tomorrow we’re off to go pick up Uncle Scott!