Day 9, Year 3: The Whitsundays–Airlie Beach to Hook Island
Date: Sunday, May 18, 2008
Weather: Yet Another Beautiful Day in Queensland; Winds SE 5-10 Knots
Latitude: 20 degrees 04.370 minutes S
Longitude: 148 degrees 55.763 minutes E
Location: Butterfly Bay, Hook Island, Queensland, Australia
Hordes of jellyfish in the water . . . that’s not what you want to see when you arrive in an anchorage where you have come to snorkel the Great Barrier Reef. But that is what we found when we arrived in Butterfly Bay this afternoon. The jellies we saw were tiny, and probably harmless, but with all the scare about box and Irukandji jellyfish having deadly stings, a little precaution is in order. So instead of diving in the minute we arrived, as was the plan, we got in our dinghy and went around
to talk to other cruisers to see if they had been in the water and to get their take on the situation. We found that others have been in the water and have had not ill effects. The locals we talked to say that this is just not the season for these critters, and that if we wear our dive skins, all should be well. So tomorrow we will dive in with great care and explore. Stay tuned for a further report on that.
Our morning started by heading into Airlie Beach to make a Skype call to our grand baby Sam. Since our 8:30 am is his 6:30 pm and bedtime for him, we got to town early so we would be ready when the internet caf� opened at 8:30. But no one was there at 8:30 or 8:35 or 8:40. We had double checked yesterday and they assured us they would be open no later than 8:30, but then we are on Aussie time here, and hey, what’s fifteen minutes here or there? Well, we scurried down the street looking for other
internet possibilities. A young woman pointed us in the right direction. We found a caf� playing extremely loud rap music and it was our place. It was open and it had internet. We asked if the music could be turned down since no one else was in the place, but the young woman said that was not possible. So we made our call and hoped for the best. Actually the music wasn’t the problem that we thought it would be and we thoroughly enjoyed our Skype time with Sam. I definitely saw recognition
on his face when he saw us on the screen, and when I asked him about seeing elephants at the National Zoo in Washington last weekend, he immediately launched into his animals sounds and signs we had made when reading books together this winter. He then took hold of the laptop screen and pulled it forward to look behind it. He was thoroughly confused when we were not there. I guess we will become the grandparents that live in a computer monitor!
We tried to call Justin and Jo, but they must have been out doing something fun on a Saturday afternoon. We left a message and will hope to talk with them at our next land-based stop. We were able to talk with my sister Patsy and with the Stuart family back in Concord, New Hampshire. The Stuarts, Linda, Michael, and son Garrett, are good friends that flew to Rarotonga to visit and sail with us last season. Garrett has Dystonia and has recently had deep brain stimulation surgery. He is doing
great and we are so very happy for him and for Linda and Michael. Every time we talk with him, he just gets better and better. The wonders of modern medicine are sometimes almost inconceivable, but the results in this case have been phenomenal.
One last note about the cruisers we met when we went looking for jellyfish information this afternoon. We met a couple named Chris and Erin from Boston. We couldn’t believe it. We haven’t met anyone else out here from the Northeast US, but this young couple lived in the North End and kept their boat in Rhode Island. They left in 2006, so they are traveling even faster than we are. They spent the Australian summer in Brisbane and met an older couple with whom they became good friends. That
couple was aboard Barefeet today and they gave us their take on the jellyfish situation. Anyway, it was quite a find. We hope to meet up with Chris and Erin in Darwin and share more New England stories. They have an interesting name for their website: www.NotAllThoseWhoWanderAreLost.com. We’ll check that out the next time we come to land.
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| 080518 Day 9 Airlie Beach to Hook Island, Whitsunday |
