A storm and an Outer Reef excursion

We left Airlie mid-afternoon and headed for Cid Harbour. On the way we detoured past a massive cruise ship filling the bay, Rob has his eye on it for his next boat. Due to currents and wind we arrived at Cid in the dark but luckily it is an easy anchorage, just head towards the masses of lights and anchor off them. On the way we witnesses an amazing sunset and another encounter with a whale which headed straight towards us and dived just under our bows, letting out a large roar which vibrated the boat and had the crew on high alert. We heard on the forecast that a southerly front was coming so we headed for the all weather safety of Shute Harbour (although it was the site of massive ruin during the last cyclone...). At around 1am the storm hit and was much stronger than predicted. Winds over forty knots, buckets of rain, lightening and breaking waves pummelled Volante. After donning our yellow wet weather gear, securing everything down and then bailing a full Joy who was bravely fighting the large waves, we retired to the cabin and rode it out. Anna even cooked pancakes in the morning in the midst of a strange lightening storm with no thunder until she realised it was Rob taking photos with the camera flash. Others were not so lucky with emergency radio calls from people stuck on reefs, and lots of reports of dragging in crowded anchorages. With the continued development of the coastline for marinas and resorts many of the safe anchorages have been taken away. Along with all the environmental problems this brings, it is also a safety hazard as it leaves only a few anchorages left to ride out storms and these get very crowded, pushing boats into the outer margins and causing chaos when something does go wrong. We heard later that one of our friends in a 43 foot monohull actually dragged their public mooring and headed for the rocks, luckily they escaped unharmed as their inflatable dinghy acted as a fender holding them off the rocks.
After everything had quietened down a bit we then sailed off to Northern Hook Island to wait for some good weather in which to visit the outer barrier reefs. We had drinks on a neighbouring boat and he gave us some fresh coral trout he had just caught, very delicious. At night the water was alive with garfish jumping all around the boat. The next morning we headed out all eager to get to the reefs. However after sailing out to sea for a couple of hours, and even though we were having fun surfing down the waves, we realised the weather report was a little on the light side compared to reality. Needing pretty much perfect weather, light winds and small swells, we decided to head back to Hook for the rest of the day.
Butterfly Bay where we found a free mooring was beautiful and we went for a walk up a nearby dry streambed to find that it was filled with thousands of blue and black butterflies.
The wind died during the evening, which we took as a sign of things to come. We arose before the sun was up, and set off, sailing silently away from Butterfly Bay. After much to’ing and fro’ing of ideas on how to best have the spinnaker set up, we deciphered how it must have been done previously, and it worked great. It was much easier than expected. We could lower the jib, hoist the spinnaker then watch it billow out as the bucket and sock are raised! As we are writing this, in the distance, Airlie Beach Race week is in full swing, with their colourful spinnakers flying in the downwind leg. We raced out towards the reef, matching wind changes with sail adjustments. A pod of whales ahead moved towards us, we turned quickly around to get past what appeared to be numerous males fighting each other vigorously in pre-mating behaviour. We were to get an even closer look and perspective in a few days time.....
We headed to Bait Reef Lagoon which is one of the only sites that has public moorings on the outer reefs, making it popular amongst yachties. We negotiated through the reef entrance and around the bombies with relative ease even though there were strong currents. We made the most of our time here in the small lagoon for the next few days with perfect weather. Even the locals were friendly with a turtle coming to graze on our mooring line every morning and evening.Looking into the water we could see a myriad of fish swimming underneath, making us itch to get into our wetsuits, thanks Aunty Helen who posted them up to us, for a snorkel. As the tide slackened in the afternoon, we made our way to the Stepping Stones, which are a series of around 18 coral pinnacles rising from around 20m of water that are in a line and exposed to the current, which, in turn creates a diverse ecosystem. We entered the deep water from Joy and were instantly greeted with a 6ft reef shark that was acting a little erratic. It was twitching nervously in the distance, darting up towards us before quickly veering away. The look in Annas’ eyes was of those of someone about to witness an attack. We headed to the relative safety of the reef, and Annas’ shark attack images were rather instantly washed away by the beauty of the coral reef. ...... We spent the evening having a couple of sundowners while watching the sun set, as we tried to capture the green flash that you get when the sun disappears just over water. When the tide came in and the reef was fully covered it was a very different feeling being out in the ocean with the closest land over 17 miles away in the distance. The next day we explored the Stepping Stones again and the snorkelling was AMAZING, definitely the best we have seen so far! Great visibility, heaps of fish, turtles, clown fish and large cod. It was an awesome experience when the boisterous whales came close by again. They were breaching and thrashing around for a long time near us and their singing was deafening under the water, however when they came close enough for us to see them under the water we just got a flash of their enormous frames as they rushed by before they were gone.
We headed around to another snorkelling spot on the reef edge called Manta Ray Drop Off, the water was crystal clear and there were many jelly fish swimming past. We did some more snorkelling here and saw many colourful fish and an inquisitive turtle. We went to sail back to the islands for the evening but fate had other plans as we broke the pull cord on the outboard motor. Luckily it wasn’t too difficult to start it with the emergency fly wheel but we decided to stay the night anyway and leave early the next morning.
Safely back in port with some reef experience under our belts we are super keen to explore the outer reefs again, and hopefully some of those that are not frequently visited, but of course, only if the temperamental weather permits.