Author: Ning Xue

05/07/2020

Before lunch, wind became weaker, put on all the gears we jumped into the water, snorkelled to the closest coral group to the boat. The first time I watched the coral so close, I was amazed. It’s such a psychedelic garden, with small fishes swimming around it, and big fish coming in and out of the caves. This scene has only been seen on TV and in the aquarium before. Although it was noon, the water was still quite cold, and I still felt a bit cold in the diving suit. After returning to the boat, we ate a bowl of hot spicy shin ramen and felt warmer instantly.

After lunch, we re-anchored closer to the island, put on the snorkelling gears again, jumped on the motor dingy and came to a larger coral group, dive in the water again to start another psychedelic trip.

When the sun shines into the water, a rainbow-like grating is produced at the edge of the coral. As the water waves sway, the light is dazzling. Groups of fluorescent-colored fish kiss the coral’s tentacles. Many peacock-green short-tailed big fish spread their wings, flying under the water, sometimes gnawed at the surface of the coral with relish, and I can hear the munching sound, very cute. In this colorful environment, various creatures also try their best to develop into various shapes, and then choose a few exotic colors to put on, like they have the best imagination…

Passing by a huge rusty anchor, half covered by coral, it should be old enough to let that much coral growing over it, I wonder how it went pass all the layers of coral barriers and got stuck here.

We don’t have underwater camera, so I try my best to record everything in mind. I tried drawing a scene in the water based on memory in the style of children’s paintings, because I remembered when I was a child, I joined many A4 paper together to make a long scroll, and drew all sorts of fish going to a underwater palace for a big party, can still remember the feeling of being completely immersed in imagination.

The dinner I made was my first Waterloo. My plan was to stew the potatoes, carrots, cabbage and vermicelli together with the sauce of braised belly that had turned into jelly. After boiling, I tasted the sauce and found that it had turned sour, so I tipped it out and started all over again. The final outcome was not too bad.

04/07/2020

In the morning, wind was strong, water rushed out of the channel of the lagoon. Two boats outside were waiting to enter. One was rushing in with full engine power, and the other was waiting for a while then return without success.

Since we can’t go out and play, lets do some experiments instead. There are three bottles of powder for cleaning the seawater desalinator. The labels had been corroded and they are unrecognisable. We only know one is acid, one is alkaline, the other is preservative. How to identify which is which? Just take some blueberries from refrigerator then we can start the litmus test: crush blueberries and squeeze the juice into three transparent containers, labeled them with letter ABC. Take the powder from each bottle and add into the juice in front. Observe that the colour: A becomes dark purple green, B turns orange yellow, and C does not change colour. From the result we can see that A is alkaline, B is acidic, and C is preservative. This experiment used anthocyanins in blueberry as tester, which is the same as litmus reagents. Using blueberries for this experiment is much cheaper than buying test strips, and the rest can be eaten, yum.

In the afternoon, wind was weakened a lot, and we took the motor dinghy to explore the island. the beach is covered with dead corals, there is a nice forest in the middle, the moon rises from the east of the island and the sun sets in the west, the sea turtles are swimming around and sea birds flying over, what a nice little shelter in the ocean.

Made fish-flavored eggplant for tea tonight.

03/07/2020

At 12am last night, J came and took over the shift and I went to bed. At 2am, my alarm rang. I asked J if he wanted to change shifts. J said he was not sleepy, so let me continue to sleep. I fell asleep and woke up at 5am. Got up and take over, at this time the Venus has risen, a layer of clouds was floating on the horizon, the wind was tighter, the jib had been pulled in a bit to slow down the boat, because we didn’t want to arrive at the island too early then we have to wait for the noon tide to enter. The boat was still traveling at a speed of about 6 knots, with this, it only need another three or four hours to reach the destination. I thought that the wind should be evened out to yesterday’s.

At sunrise, all thoughts in my mind were blown away like clouds in the sky, and it was a new day…

We were close to Lady Musgrave Island before nine o’clock and had to wait three hours. J adjusted the angle of the jib to cancel the wind with the main sail, it is called ‘heave to’. This way the ship can stay almost still.

The boat was swaying in the waves, and while I was about to fall asleep, it came a family of three whales. They decided to give us a show. They jumped out of water and spin, made big splashes. Bravo! I don’t know why the whale love jumping out of the water with so much effort. It must felt good getting out of the water and into the air. Whales and dolphins always want to jump out of the water, while people want to dive into it, whether it is to take a glance at an unfamiliar world.

At 1:30pm, the tide began to flow into the narrow lagoon entrance. We dropped down the sails and started the engine to cross slowly. The water changed from dark blue to turquoise, and the bottom was so clear so you can see coral beds underneath. Many boats were already in, so were many big ugly power boats.

This coral cay Island has an area of ​​14 hectares and is located at the southern tip of the Great Barrier Reef. It is navigable in the lagoon. However, we must pay attention to the ‘Bommies’, they are coral group under the water. Some conjectures saying that this deep water channel into the lagoon is not natural phenomenon, it might be dug by Taiwan or Japanese fishermen in the early days. From satellite image, you can bird view the whole lagoon.

We chose a flat sand bottom and dropped the anchor. We ended the 100-nautical mile voyage that started yesterday morning, and the rest is just to have fun.

Made spaghetti with vegetable protein for tea tonight.