The Cure for Work

Our friends, Garry and Liz Stewart from Perth, arrived Saturday afternoon and the weather looked perfect for our southbound trip to Yeppoon, so we departed Mackay early on Sunday morning for our first stop-over at Digby Is. Tony Patch and the crew on "Last Resort" joined us in this beautiful anchorage and invited us over to help them eat the spotty mackerel they had caught as they entered this sheltered anchorage - Yum.
The next day we called in to West Bay on Middle Percy Is. and hung our boat name and date of visit in the A-Frame on the beach amongst the thousands of other cruising yachties' names and dates placed there over the last 50 years or so. We walked up the island track to the South Percy Is lookout, then returned to Antidote for a well earned swim and cool off from the back steps.
Now this was a very special day because it was someone's 59th birthday, and my party was about to begin. A couple of bottles of Verve Cliquot Champers and 'nibbles on the back deck watching Garry try his hand at fishing was a most relaxing time (especially as he shouted the Verve Cliquot) The sunset was very colourful, however the peace and tranquility was interrupted by the screaming sound of fishing line being stripped off the overhead reel and as Garry lifted the rod to strike the hook, an Amberjack of about 15 kg leapt clear of the water, did a flip in the air and spat out the hook...bugger!
The look on Garry's face as he said "Did you see that?"...Priceless! Yes Garry, we all saw that...a truly magic moment!
A BBQ party whilst catching up on old times topped off a great day.
The next day saw us again battling the tides around Broad Sound ( even out wide) and our 45nm trip took 65nm to complete, finally anchoring at Is. Head Creek, exhausted.(or was that leftovers from the party??)
Before we moved off our anchorage the next morning, Garry (the fisherman) hooked into a stingray (?) and played it for 10mins before "IT" decided enough was enough and headed off for the last time with all the ground tackle. We had not moved more than 400 meters from this anchorage when I caught a 750mm long spotty Mackerel. By now, we all had our jobs when a fish was caught, and this helped our strike/capture rate enormously. But wait, there's more! The day was not over and an hour later when we cruised into Pearl Bay, Garry landed a 6Kg Golden Trevally (delicious) The day's weather was perfect for snorkeling, and just wasting time at one of my new favourite beaches. Whilst snorkeling off the beach, acres of fingerlings were being schooled up around us, before the big baddies charged through them and thinned their numbers. Later on, we moved around the corner to Port Clinton to better suit the wind conditions for our overnight stop.
Our final day to Yeppoon started with a beautiful spinnaker run alongside Peter and Julie's "Adagio", a Seawind 1000, and we took lots of photos of each other under spinnaker.(CD's to be exchanged) However our good northerly weather was not to last, and after about 5 hours of soaking up the sun on the front trampolines, a storm was brewing. We snuffed the spinnaker in it's sock and continued under headsail only until we reached North Keppel when we furled the lot and motored whilst the heavens opened up 'big time' with 100mm rain, small hail, and lightning everywhere. Even the birthday boy had eyes-wide-open! We tried to lay off and skirt around the central storm cells, but when RockyMet announced that this latest storm could last up to 2 hours, and when we heard on the VHF radio another yacht near us saw a water spout close to them, we decided to enter Rosslyn Bay Boat harbour (Yeppoon) sooner, rather than later. This, in torrential rain, saw the birthday boy do a "Captain Ron" into an empty pen in 20 knot cross winds with no damage to anything ... a perfect landing!! Wow! All that driving Go-Karts finally paid off! All tied up and the fridge opened up straight away,...And we needed it!! A really great trip ended with lots of great memories and good stories to tell. Thanks Garry and Liz for a great week.