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A DREAM COMES TRUE AT LADY MUSGRAVE ISLAND...continued |
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Above & Right: the lagoon at Lady Musgrave can cut up very rough when strong winds combine with high tide |
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Next morning, paradise was temporarily ruined when a large fishing boat with a bunch of blokes on board anchored right on top of us, dead upwind. 9:30 in the morning and they were all sucking on tinnies. We gave them the “glare”. “We’re only having breakfast,” the skipper called out. “It’s a big lagoon,” I replied. Then added “A VERY big lagoon.” At least they did the right thing and moved, although the clowns in the process of raising their anchor couldn’t stop their boat drifting down on ours. It was a miracle they didn’t get their anchor hooked in our chain. This is one of the least appealing aspects of cruising, and one we seem to be singled out for with regular monotony. We’ve always said we should rename Masala to Magnetism. Perhaps we should adopt friends Selwyn and Barbara’s name for their motorhome, Vortsek, which is Africaans for “F**k off”.
Over the next week we went snorkelling at six different locations. What a great experience. Pity my camera doesn’t work under water. The highlight, or maybe lowlight, was a circuit of a large isolated section of coral wall inside the lagoon. I was quietly finning along when suddenly Leanne gripped my arm and shook it violently, gesticulating ahead. The substantial back end of a shark was poking out of a hole in the wall and threshing from side to side. It was impossible to say how big it was and we didn’t hang around to commit its fin pattern to memory, so identification from our book was difficult. Best guess, Nurse or Hammerhead. Not good.
Leanne took off at a hundred miles an hour straight over the top of the reef on a bee-line to the dinghy. Fortunately there was enough water to do so. I grabbed her to slow her down. No thrashing, please! We got into the dinghy and motored back to Masala. Discretion is the better part of valour. After a packet of Tim Tams, a frothy coffee and a whiskey, the size of the shark just got bigger and bigger. Since we never got to see all of it, there was nothing to limit our imagination. The one good thing about the shark having its head in a cave was that it didn’t see us (we think!). |