CLIENT: Gold Youth Voyage
VOYAGE NUMBER: 20220703
FROM: Townsville to Cairns
DATE: 8 July 2022
POSITION: Fitzroy Is
REPORT BY: White Watch
After a night of festivities, we woke up to Edan attempting to play the bugle. As everyone was slowly waking up and eating their cold and hot breakfast which consisted of the usual cold breakfast and baked beans with eggs for the hot. The sunrise was again, very stunning and warm which had everyone excited to start the day’s sail. We departed at 8:30am and headed towards Fitzroy Island which was a 42 nautical mile sail. The wind was brisk, a 15-20 knot breeze pushed us along with the sails at a port tack which later changed to a starboard tack. With the sun shining strong and everyone grasping for a slight but noticeable tan, we had a cruisy sail to Fitzroy for a solid 7 hours.
As we arrived at Fitzroy Island, the water was flat, clear and very inviting for everyone aboard. We were all itching to go snorkelling and feel the fresh cool water. The Skipper granted us from 3:30pm to 5pm to go onshore and explore the waters so we eagerly headed to shore and did exactly that. We had our hopes low as we wanted to be pleased no matter what, but the snorkelling areas well exceeded our expectations. The heroic and legendary White Watch Leader Dale risked his life by hitching more than 18 crew members back and forth from the ship. Everyone grabbed their snorkelling gear and swam out to the rocks to find whatever we were lucky enough to be in the presence of. Colourful coral, all kinds of fish including, parrot fish, grouper and multiple other kinds. The two highlights of our snorkelling experience were the luxury of being amongst a pair of turtles and a few crew members getting uncomfortably close to a white tip reef shark. With everyone overly pleased with their experience so far, we all had our heads-up high glancing at the mesmerising sunset, waiting to finish our South Passage voyage strong on Command Day.