Monday 4th November 2002

At around 8:30 we got picked up at a busstop across the street of our hotel, which takes us down Shute Harbour to board the Maxi Ragamuffin, a former racing yacht, taking us to Blue Pearl Bay fringing reef.

Maxi Ragamuffin is a 80 ft (24 m) sloop, launched in 1979. It took part in 8 Sydney to Hobart races in the '80s, finishing second once and third twice. It draws 14 ft, has an 18 ft beam and a 105 ft mast. Aboard we get the obligatory security speech and then make ourselfs comfortable on deck with a cup of (instant) coffee. After leaving the harbour behind us, the sailes are raised. There's only a 10-12 knot wind, which apparently isn't much, but enough.

We then got our snorkling introduction on board. We decided, then and there, to also do the introductiory scuba diving session (A$ 59/pp extra). After a 2 hour sail we arrive at Blue Pearl Bay. It has a white, coral beach. It does look nice from a distance. But it actually are small pieces of broken off coral, pretty nasty to your feet. It's immediatly obvious we're not alone here. The beach is pretty much crowded with snorklers and divers, and their accompagning boats ankered around.

We put on a lycra suite (protection against the stinger jellyfish), a wetsuite (to keep us warm when diving) and snorkling gear. We go snorkling, while the experienced divers are first taken down. The snorkling is incredible: lots of colourful fish coming towards you (who's looking at who?), and big magnificent corals. We had only snorkled once before, in Key West (Florida), but this was completely different, much nicer. I take pictures with an underwater camera, but the pics turn out to be with little or no colour (greenish).

After an hour it's our turn to put on the scuba diving gear. Radz, JJ and a japanese and a german girl form the 'beginners' group. It's pretty hard standing up and still with all this gear, wearing flippers on a loose seafloor. We get in on our knees and stick our head into the water, breathing through the mouthpiece. This feels weird, breathing under water. We need to be able to do 3 basic actions before going down: taking our mouthpiece out of our mouth and put it back in, empty our goggle of water, and use the emergency mouthpiece. Radica has trouble breathing properly and panics. The instructor tries to help her, but she decides to give up. Five minutes later the japanese girl gives up too. The three of us go down 10-15 meters, in between the coral, with even more and bigger fish. It's pretty hard floating around, keeping height. Or you drop down to the bottom, or you float up to the surface. But it's very tranquile down there, very peaceful (although it's seems I'm breathing like crazy). After 30 minutes we go back to the surface. A unique experience.

We then head back to the boat for lunch (cold buffet). At about 2:00 the captain sailes us back to the harbour. We participate in the sailing by raising the sails. And then chill out on the deck. At 4:40 we're back in the harbour, the bus drops us of at the hotel. We first take a dip into the jacuzzi and the pool, before freshening up.

Tonight's 'Kentucky Fried Chicken' time, a whole bucket of spicey chicken with a bottle of white wine, on our balcony. And then head for bed. It was a very nice, action-packed day...

Zzzzzzz,
JJ & Radica