We are all set and ready to GO!!! We are now sitting here at the fuel dock, all fueled up, all provisioned up, and waiting for dawn tomorrow morning. Boy, it seems like it has been years since we sailed into Bundaberg Marina. So you can understand how excited and anxious we are to be under sail again with the sun shining down, the wind in our hair, listening to our favorite music and sailing across the bounding main! Even though it is just a day sail of only 55 nm, it still will be a hoot!

This morning we walked over and said our goodbyes to Trim and Sea Mist. Ken and Lori of Trim will be driving down to Melbourne soon so Ken can start his new job. Cheryl and John of Sea Mist are thinking of leaving here in a couple of days. We are sure we will be bumping into each other either in the next couple of weeks or someplace in the Whitsundays. We also hope to see Paul and Julie of Silver Lining II and Jerald and Anz of Spirit. We will keep our fingers crossed.

Our first anchorage is Lady Musgrave Island. It is a sandy cay sitting on a lagoon inside a fringing reef. The channel through the reef is well marked but we will have to be careful once inside since the lagoon is not surveyed and we have read that there are a number of coral heads sitting just under the surface. However, as long as we get there before the sun gets too low in the sky, we should be able to eyeball our way around the coral heads just fine.

We have talked to a couple of boats that have shaken hands with a few of the coral heads. But with each incident, they were doing something that they should have tried to avoid. One cut in from the channel too soon and the other left very early morning and could not see the bottom well. However, when you sail a lot, sooner or later you will run aground. Both boats just had minor damage so that would a good thing.

When we leave, we are planning to leave the lagoon mid-afternoon the day before we sail to the Heron Island and just anchor off the leeward shore of the reef. That way we will be able to see the coral heads just fine and still get an early start the next morning. However, we will need to be sure that the winds will not be shifting that night.

Tonight is our last night of having Internet access for a couple of weeks. Thus, I will be posting our blogs through SailMail. We will still be able to get our emails but I will not be able to post any photos.