EGsail2016: First of the season, cruising the islands.

We were joined by Lawrence, the son of a good friend and a wonderful sailing companion for the next few days. Lawrence has a little sailing experience and holds a pilot's licence so has a very good understanding of the principles of sailing and of navigation. He's also strong and fit and very easy to have aboard. Unfortunately because of the change in the weather, his first two days we were marina bound. However the next day we set off in a good wind and sailed across to Nara inlet, a favourite first night destination from Airlie. In the morning we had a lovely pre breakfast swim. The water is 27 degrees, a very pleasant temperature. We then sailed in sunshine to Cateran Bay on Border Island. We picked up a mooring and had the whole bay to ourselves. We snorkelled over good coral with a wonderful variety of fish. After lunch, we sailed back to Macona inlet for the night. Next day, when we came to weigh anchor, we found that we had a problem with the instruments which we diagnosed as a loose connection somewhere. We did get intermittent depth but no wind speed and direction and the chart plotter did not work. Fortunately we have plenty of back ups and, if we were really pressed, could go back to using a paper chart and dead reckoning. I do miss the depth though in these narrow passages with coral everywhere. We went round the eastern side of Hook island, round the top and picked up a mooring in Butterfly Bay for lunch and more good snorkelling. By the time we left the wind had all but disappeared. We made our way through the the very beautiful passage between Hayman and Hook islands, north of Black and Langford islands and across to Woodwark bay. The sky became more and more grey and eventually we had some short lived but heavy rain but this had cleared by the time we dropped anchor. We had a beautiful sunset in a very peaceful bay. Sadly at about midnight a swell developed and this got larger and larger so that none of us was able to sleep. By about 1 am things looked quite unsettled and we decided to haul up the anchor and set off back to Airlie. It did give Lawrence a taste of night sailing and his keen eyes were very useful as we made our way through the anchored yachts just outside the marina. By 4 am we were safely in our berth and how glad we were that we made the decision. It started raining between 6 and 7 am and it has barely stopped all day but the main thing was the wind. For about 4 hours this morning it roared and was well over 40 knots at times. We couldn't measure it accurately as our instruments are not working. We slept in and then enjoyed a bacon and egg breakfast before finally venturing to the shower, launderette and the coffee shop. Lawrence left us at that point and we were sorry to see him go. Tomorrow we must get the instruments fixed before ours next crew member joins us.

Lawrence taking the helm as we left Airlie Beach and looking as if he'd been doing it all his life.