Hawksbill turtle on the Monkey beach reef at Great Keppel Island

We are holed up in Yeppoon's Keppel Bay marina while a trade wind surge envelops the east coast. It's the first sign of trade winds for some time as we have had northerlies ever since we left the Whitsundays. Theoretically, that should be good news - downwind sailing as we head south away from the cyclone zone's not to be sniffed at! Generally, at this time of the year it tends to yield these favourable winds, in between trade wind surges, as the big high pressure systems of winter retreat further south, but this year it's been a bit demented. Perhaps it's just a sign that there is a La Nina forecast for the second year in a row, or a portent of increasing heat and moisture across Australia because of climate change. Whatever it is this year, it has created a series of troughs and associated lines of thunderstorms, many of them severe.

We have spent 13 summers in the tropics but have never known thunderstorms to start in earnest so early before - they usually start up in December. We weathered one particulalrly nasty blow while anchored at the southern end of St Bees Island at the southern end of the Whutsundays. A slow moving storm moved off from near Mackay where it dropped huge hailstones (the largest recorded ever in Australia), then hit us with 55 knot squalls for several hours. Nasty!

One good thing about warmer weather is that we have been in the water a lot more. We haven't seen any really healthy reefs in the Whitsundays worth diving on, but were delighted to snorkel on one of the best known reefs at Great Keppel Island near here. It has almost miraculously escaped the damage to other reefs on the Great Barrier Reef and had plenty of healthy staghorn corals and quite a variety of friendly fish. Our last chance this year to do any diving will be the Bunker Group offshore between Gladstone and Bundaberg. It's the most southern of the Great Barrier Reef cays and reefs and an area we have never explored before, perhaps because it's cooler than anywhere to the north.

We are taking a close watch at climate change politics as Cop26 overshadows Covid news here in Australia and probably elsewhere. The warming climate doesn't do us sailors any good at all as it makes passage making more unpredictable and perilous and nibbles away each year at the safe sailing season - let alone the damage it is causing to coral reefs everywhere.



Keppel Bay marina is nestled behind the volcanic outcrops of Rosslyn Bay 35 km from the city of Rockhampton



Staghorn coral at Monkey Beach



Long finned rock cod (a young one) shelters under a coral outcrop



Spangled sweetlips were common at Monkey reef



Butterfly fish



An angel fish swims amongst small damsels.



A relatively healthy stand of live coral (mostly staghorn) at Monkey Beach.



A veritable cloud of small damsel fish (chromis) hover above staghorn coral. At the slightest sign of danger, they retreat within the prickly branches.