Start Loc: Butterfly Bay, Hook Island (20o 04.36'S, 148o 55.71'E)
Narrative: We dropped the mooring buoy right on 8:00am and motored out of Butterfly Bay on a heading of 30 degrees magnetic, heading for the “outer reef”. The nearest cluster of reefs to the Whitsunday Islands, some 35nm from Airlie Beach, is named after the fisherman’s basics (although there are several places where fishing is now obviously banned as it is National Park green zone) due to their somewhat imaginative resemblance. So there is Line, Sinker, Hook Barb and Bait Reefs, with Hardy Reef tacked on the back side of Hook Reef. Our first destination was the Stepping Stones at Bait Reef, 18nm from our overnight anchorage.
Throughout the morning the winds moved from E to SE, generally at 5kts but never more than 10kts. With our NNE heading, the apparent wind was rarely above 6kts. We motored and motor sailed, but the motor was not turned off until 11:10am when we were inside the Stepping Stones on one of the mooring buoys (position 19o 48.62S, 149o 03.82E). The trip was great, with whales and dolphins as company again. We had an early lunch and then spent a couple of hours snorkelling around three of the coral pillars that are the Stepping Stones. Magic.
We dropped the mooring at 2:00pm, headed back outside Bait Reef and skirted it to the north, then sailed NE on a broad reach in SSE winds at 10-15kts to the number 2 beacon (a west cardinal mark). Here we dropped sails and motored in to where Line, Hardy and Hook Reefs meet. From here there is a deep passage running SE between Hardy Reef and Hook Reef. The passage is about 100m wide and 55m deep, and is where there are a couple of tourist platforms permanently moored. Instead of heading down the passage we headed east a short way and motored through a break in the coral into the Hardy Reef Lagoon. We had deliberately not left our run too late; the sun was behind us and not too low as we came in so we could clearly see the coral. We had read you can anchor just inside, but we came south a bit and picked up a mooring labelled “private”. It will be good for overnight and if we need to move off and anchor in the morning we will. We were moored by 4:00pm, about an hour before high tide. I was surprised there was no one else in the lagoon with us, but suspect the public moorings at Bait Reef are more attractive to most than anchoring surrounded by coral. Tomorrow, we will have a look around Hardy Reef in the dinghy and do some more snorkelling in the morning. Hardy Reef contains the famous Heart Reef, but I suspect we could go right past it at sea level and not make out the heart shape. I guess it will be the one with the seaplanes circling and the helicopters hovering over it as couples get engaged or married. Speaking of seaplanes, the Hardy Reef Lagoon is a bit of a landing strip for them so we will have to dodge them tomorrow as well. We will leave the lagoon once the tide out the entrance (known as The Waterfall) stabilises, around 12:30pm (an hour after low tide). From there we will motor down the aforementioned deep passage and sail back to Hook Island.
End Loc: Hardy Reef Lagoon (19o 44.36'S, 149o 11.10'E)
Distance run: 26nm (cumulative: 999nm)
Engine hours: 4 hr, 21 min (cumulative: 115 hr 38 min)