As I was saying the journey to Lady Musgrave was uneventful. We were really tired from our previous passage the day before and our short night didn’t help us recovering from it either. As usual for our night passages, once we were away from any danger we set our autopilot and took turns to keep an active watch.

During our 6h motoring Erica took some time to call her mom (before loosing reception for the next few days) and then treated us with pancakes, in the spirit of just having left Pancake Creek.

Note: I couldn’t call my parents if you were wondering. It was the middle of the night for them.

Reef Check list

Along our way up north, I gathered tidbits of wisdom from sailors and cruising guides, and there are a few things that we were advised to do before getting to a reef.

1. Arrive on a sunny day
2. Arrive with the sun behind you to easily spot the reef and bommies
3. Try to be there on a neap tide. During spring tides the swell can get over the reef and make your stay uncomfortable
4. Don’t stay during a bad weather window. Resetting your anchor at night is almost impossible to do safely.
5. Be aware of the current while going in and out of the reef

We had 4 out of the 5, the only point that we were not ticking off was the tide. Our stay was around the new moon and therefore a spring tide. Additionally the other downside was having to motor all the way from Pancake Creek.

Note: This reef is really well documented in cruising guide, online, on charts, on Zulu Waterways app. I am not sure why I was worrying, boats are arriving at anytime of the day in any condition.

With our polarised sunglasses it was easy to see based on the water color. Dark blue where there is rock/reef but it’s deep, light blue where there is sand, and yellow were there are reefs and it is shallow.

But here we are!

This is the furthest North that we will go with French Kiss. After dropping our anchor we have a certain feeling of accomplishment. We made it.

I really thought we would not find anyone, that it was an exclusive place. I couldn’t have been more wrong. There were many sailing boats, motor boats, there is also a daily cruise from Bundaberg, and to top it all there is a hotel (Lady Mustgrave experience). The rooms, aka “tents” seem to book for between $650 and $850 a night.
Thankfully the lagoon is big enough for all of us, and none of that activity takes away from its beauty.

No Internet!

This is also the first time we are almost completely disconnected from internet! Our 4g router was proving internet up to 20 nautical miles offshore, which was 10 miles more than expected! I was glad we installed it on the wind turbine pole.

I say almost completely disconnected becuase every now and then, we would get 3G or H+. Anytime I was getting WhatsApp message notifications I’d know I could try to get the forecast.

Lady Musgrave

We spent 4 days and 4 nights there. We could have stayed longer but the bad weather was coming in and we wanted to get back to Brisbane sometime before the 6th of December when Corinne would visit us from the UK.

Our days were spent either exploring the island, enjoying a picnic on the beach, or swimming and snorkelling around the reefs. To explore those places we finally used our kayak, we could have used our dinghy but getting in some physical activity was apreciated after spending so much time on the boat.

One remarkable thing is that the lagoon changes faces throughout the day.

At high tide and on a sunny day it looks like all the boats are anchored in the middle of the ocean, at low tide we clearly see the reefs surrounding us.
At high tide and on a cloudy day it looks surreal, especially towards the end of the day!

The ecosystem on the island is lively at this time of the year. Here is what you can see in November:

• Black noddy tern nesting
• Migratory shorebirds feeding
• Green turtles laying eggs
• Pied oystercatcher nesting
• White-belied sea-eagle
• Silvereye nesting and chicks
• Buff-banded rail nesting and chicks

Our 4 days passed quickly and then it was time to go. We headed south the long way around Fraser Island back to Moreton Bay Boat Club to get there in one shot which took us 2 days of sailing.