We woke up on the morning of our final full day out on the water to slightly overcast skies. We didn’t have far to sail, so took our time getting ready and planned to explore a little of Cid Harbour before we moved on.
The previous evening as we had been sitting on deck we noticed what appeared to be a ship stranded on the rocks on the opposite side of the bay. After checking the charts, we decided that it would be safe to head over and take a look.
The boat was the Motor Vessel Banks that had become stranded on the rocks here during Cyclone Debbie. From what we later learnt, it seems that there have been a number of attempts to refloat the boat during high tides, but to date they have not been sucessful.
We left the eerie looking ship and continued on our course towards Stonehaven Cove on Hook Island. The cloudy skies gave the area an entirely different feel, with the grey skies turning the water a bright turquoise. Despite the overcast skies we had great sailing weather and the strong winds meant we made good progress over to Stonehaven.
We arrived in Stonehaven and were able to pick up a mooring buoy for the night. Just as we had finished the process of securing the boat, we looked down to see we had a visitor.
This sea turtle swam up to our boat and did a couple of leisuerly laps, seemily unconcerned that we we watching from just above. The turtle spent a little time hanging out just of the back of the boat before disapearing off into the ocean.
Our mooring was nestled right between several huge areas of coral and after spending some time enjoying our new surroundings, we lowered the swim ladder and got suited up to head off for a snorkel.
We spent a while swimming along the edges of the coral reefs surrounding the boat. As we swam past the edges of the coral we could see shoals of brightly coloured fish swimming around. The fish didn’t seem bothered by us and we spent a while enjoying the underwater world before swimming back to the boat.
We enjoyed one final night sitting out on deck watching the sunset and then after dinner lying out looking at the stars. The next morning we were lucky enough to have good winds to take us back across the Whitsunday passage to the town of Airlie Beach.