Skipper Michael
Beautiful Sunset
Wetsuits
Big blue Starfish
The Happy Couple
We began the day with breakfast and morning Skeds. Michael took the call, and answered “Goodmorning Yal!!” The Cumberland radio had a slight pause and then he returned…”Good morning to you too”. We wanted Michael to say that we were going to “mosey” over to Stonehaven Bay, but he said “sailed” instead.
The trip to Stonehaven was only about 1-1/2 hours and we were able to find a mooring buoy to hook the boat to so we didn’t have to go thru the “setting the anchor” ritual.
We are slowly learning the nautical terms, even though some are a bit Eve-ish and unorthodox. The dingy is called a Tender or a Tinnie. I asked why it was a Tinnie and Danny said that it was because they used to be made of metal. Our favorite “Eves-ism” relates to the fenders which are the padded cylinders that attach to the boat by rope and keep the boat from brushing the docks. Ruth’s name for them are “Whale Tampons” and it is actually a pretty good description. The best one however is their name for Speedo’s…..Budgie Smugglers (a Budgie is a parakeet). Michael keeps calling them Budgie Stuffers and Danny keeps correcting him in a VERY loud voice.
We arrived at Stonehaven about 10:30 and immediately jumped into our wetsuits (not an easy proposition) and took the Tinnie to one of the local beaches. From there we snorkeled all along the coast. We had to be careful because the currents would pull you beyond a point along the tip of the island, so we kept pretty close to the shore. The coral in this area was not spectacular, but you could see areas where it was starting to re-grow. However, we did see several large brain corals, a couple of branch corals, cabbage corals, a smallish clam, and numerous fish species. The highlight of the time was finding a huge royal blue Starfish nestled among the corals. As we would dive down to look at him, he looked like a stuffed animal. Each of his arms were about 12 inches in length and about 2 inches in diameter. Now, keep in mind that it is VERY hard to distinguish sizes when you are under water, so he may have really been only 3 inches long and ½ inch in diameter, but we will go with our numbers!!!!
We returned to the boat and enjoyed chicken wraps. After lunch we all decided that it was time for a nap or reading session, so we headed off to different parts of the boat to rest.
Michael took the 1:00 SKEDS and announced that we were having a great time, except for the Aussies. Terry replied “you could always just throw them overboard!!” We are reminding them often that we have PERMISSION to toss them over the side.
We kept watching as other boats would enter our cove and moor at the different points. The boat next to us was driven by a completely NUDE guy….Danny named him a “Rude-y Nude-y). We found it a bit disconcerting, but fortunately we are not really close to them. We felt bad for the boat on the other side who were much closer.
Dinner was hamburgers, complete with grilled onions and was delicious.
The wind had been blowing hard the entire time that we have been here and it started to rain just as we were heading to bed. There was a mad dash to get all of the wetsuits, clothes and cushions off of the deck of the boat and into the cabin. The only problem with rain is that you had to close all of the hatches up and the bedroom cabins were a bit stuffy. We re-opened them about an hour after we got into bed…..more about that in tomorrow’s installment.