Lady Musgrave Magic

What can I say - Lady Musgrave would have to be one of the wonders of the world. A true island paradise.

Lady Musgrave Island - the photo failing in the attempt to show the real beauty

We left Bundaberg, Saturday 15^th July, with no wind and motored most of the way, taking the opportunity to run the water-maker while the engine was going. It is strange though, to have to motor all day with the sails only up for an hour. It doesn’t quite feel right.

We kept a lookout for whales, not seeing any but we did see more dolphin!!! They again came to play, at one stage we had three different groups all having fun.

Boats anchored in the protection of the coral cay

Having never seen or been in a coral cay we were understandably apprehensive about entering especially as we had heard so many opinions – don’t go at the middle of a rising tide, don’t go in at the middle of a falling tide, don’t go in in dark, go in when the sun is overhead, its best to go in after 10am and before 2pm, etc, etc. so we made the executive decision to anchor just outside, in the lee of Lady Musgrave Island, for the night. And what a good decision it was. We caught many fish, mostly too small but as two committed suicide by swallowing the hook we ended up with a lovely fish and salad dinner!!

Map of Lady Musgrave Island

The anchorage was calm but deep, we dropped the anchor on a patch of sand amongst the coral in about 12 metres of water and settled down for a peaceful night. But, the anchor chain rubbed on the coral bottom all night, a terrible sound making you think that the anchor is dragging along the seabed but it is not – enough to ruin a good night’s sleep though. Your mind knows (and the hand-held GPS proves) that you are held fast, but your ears hear different so sleep is evasive. And I had visions of all our beautiful new galvanising lying on the sea floor below us!!!

There were a couple of smallish tinnies which came out and anchored near us to fish, one of which held some very friendly young men, Carl, Craig and Dan – who were camping on the island and spending their days fishing, eating, drinking and generally having fun – as one does. They invited us to come and check out their campsite later.

We waited until midday Sunday to pull up our anchor and enter the cay. We had worked out that the sun was at the best point, the tide was perfect, we were giving ourselves the best opportunity for an easy passage. All would have been well if we could have gotten the anchor up!! The anchor chain had wrapped itself around a lump of coral and did not want to budge. We went forward, then backward, then left and right, to no avail for near on an hour. We ended up just using the anchor winch to shorten the chain and letting the swell pull us away kind of like reeling in a fish. It took some time – but it worked!! Phew

Getting through the entrance turned out to be a doddle. Maybe as we had set ourselves up so well for it. Anyway we were in and anchored amidst about 30 other boats, and alongside 2 other Schionnings!! within the hour.  The water is so clear and blue.

We lowered the dinghy and went ashore for a quick look around, the beach is white - predominately coral, broken coral in all shapes and sizes, and I found it easy to collect the letters to make a name plaque for Lilly – now I just need to find something to attach them to!

Early next morning we joined the crews from another 3 boats for an expedition around the coral reef at low tide. The reef is a truly remarkable place and we saw a diverse amount of splendid sea creatures – including - sea cucumber, sea slugs, sea urchins, clams, crabs, starfish (bright blue, orange, brown) and in the shallows were turtle. We spent about three hours walking around oohing and aahing at the incredible sights.

We went and visited the boys at their campsite, an exceptionally well setup campsite it was too, with everything imaginable for comfort. One of them – Carl, aka Captain Chaos, has been coming over here with his tinny for the last ten years for two weeks holiday, no wonder he now has it so well sorted. They had had much more success with the fishing too than us, evidenced by the beautiful coral trout and red emperor they proudly showed us. They invited us back to share the sunset at their campsite, but sadly, a conflicting invitation meant we had to refuse.

We returned to SOL, collected the laptop and both phones which we took to shore where we went to the light tower, the ladder up was caged and padlocked to prevent access however by climbing around the back of the ladder and squeezing through between the girders we climbed to the top where we managed to get enough reception to send a message (just letting the children know we are still alive!!) The view from the top was outstanding and being such a clear day, you could see for miles. This turned out to be a super place to whale watch – we saw many, some were just outside the reef jumping out of the water, smacking their tails, and blowing stuff out their blowholes – as whales do!!

Next morning we said farewell to Lady Musgrave as the weather was predicted to be unfavourable for the next few days so a mass exodus occurred as we and about 20 other boats left. We chose to shelter in Pancake Creek, haha, as did everyone else it seemed. Leaving Lady Musgrave the wind was fairly fickle, we seemed to be continuously altering our mode of propulsion – starting with the screecher up for a couple of hours, then when the wind died, one engine was turned on, then back to screecher, engine, screecher, engine, then thank god, the wind started to fill in and we could finally turn the engine off, raise the jib and the main, and for the next three hours we had a very agreeable sail.

We were escorted from the island by large numbers of whales, some coming really close to us. Nature is wonderful.

Lady Musgrave, we will come back to your beautiful coral cay again.