CLIENT: General Public Voyage
VOYAGE NUMBER: 20250513
FROM: Hervey Bay To: Manly
DATE: 14 May 2025
POSITION: Lady Musgrave Is
REPORT: Red Watch
After a lovely hot breakfast of scrambled eggs, beans and toast, we had a knotting competition, showing off our fastest Figure of 8’s and Reef Knots. White Watch won, but Red Watch wasn’t far behind!
After spotting another Dingo on the beach, the crew got together to manually raise the anchor, turning the capstan until we were free of our anchorage. We set sail and the good ship “South Passage” departed Rooney point, K’gari at about 9:30am, with a light south easterly breeze, and beautiful clear conditions.
It was smooth sailing with agreeable seas, although the lighter airs meant it would take us 10 hours to cover the 70nm from Rooney Point to Lady Musgrave Island.
At midday Hugh called us down for a marvellous lunch of Hamburgers. Real Hamburgers with beetroot. Yes!
After lunch, we had the pleasure of seeing three beautiful dolphins join us to play around the bow of “South Passage” as she sailed through the waves. They danced and weaved whilst we watched for a good 10-15 minutes, before they went on their merry way.
In the afternoon, Matt pulled out his travel guitar and amp, and sang some tunes those old enough to be grandparents knew well (which would be most of the crew, ha!). Some of the crew joined in the singing, causing the remainder of the ship’s company to retire to their bunks or to the bow of the vessel.
Hugh treated us to an early supper of beef stew with a chaser of strawberry cheesecake prepared earlier by his friend Ms. Sara Lee. As we approached Lady Musgrave Island we were treated to a beautiful South Pacific sunset – the kind where the underneath of the clouds glow orange. Shortly after that a bright yellow full moon peeped through some clouds and red watch enjoyed some satellite and star spotting while the helm was pointed to the lighthouse on Lady Musgrave Island. The sailing master called up the lighthouse requesting it to move to avoid collision but there was no response.
We dropped all sails around 7:30 to find ourselves in a calm and peaceful anchorage in the lee of the island, a whimsical moon illuminating the promising silhouette of Lady Musgrave Island, which we are eager to visit tomorrow.
Helen’s Anzac cookies, were searched for, but alas (and alack!) they had already been devoured. We wished there were more.