Macona Inlet to Butterfly Bay
The perfect weather has continued. Today we'll sail up the western side of Hook Island, travel through The Narrows between Hayman and Hook Islands and then turn into Butterfly Bay on the northern end of Hook Island. When I traversed this stretch of water with David and Anne a week ago it was overcast, threatening rain and with a nasty wind-against-tide sea surface. Today will be a completely different story. The sun is shining, we have a lovely following breeze and the seas are smooth.
In fact, conditions were so perfect that Celeste fell asleep on the cockpit seat during the passage, a result I think of long hours being put in at work over past weeks (can I put in a plug for Celeste's work ethics here?). Having reached Butterfly Bay we were extremely lucky to find the innermost mooring buoy vacant, which provided the best possible protection from the swell that can find its way into the mouth of the Bay and which we had to suffer through on our visit last week.
We'd snorkelled here last week, with limited success. However since then I'd listened to talk amongst locals and other sailors about where the best coral was (even getting advice from the crew of one of the Hayman Island Resort guest boats), and we spent a good part of the afternoon and the following day hitting those spots. Although still badly damaged by Cyclone Debbie we enjoyed these sites tremendously. We ended up spending two days in Butterfly Bay and I must say it was one of the most relaxing, peaceful and enjoyable periods of the entire cruise so far.
An additional plus is that the moon is almost in its new phase, so we're being treated to beautiful, clear night skies. It doesn't take much to get me started on the topic of stars, planets, galaxies, and the cosmos in general. (Carl Sagan began his TV series with the words "The cosmos is all that is, or ever was, or ever will be." A pretty inspiring idea to consider.) It's entirely possible I rabbited on too much, sitting on deck looking up, but Celeste remained interested throughout.
Butterfly Bay is certainly beautiful, but simple photographs don't do it justice. It's a longish bay, flanked by coral reefs on each side and surrounded by tall hills. The best approach to recording it all was via the drone, which you can see in both the following interactive panorama and the video. I hope you enjoy it all.
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