We had hoped to start heading south but have changed our plans. We are staying a little longer for Bengie to see the vet again and luckily are enjoying a calm week at the reefs offshore of Cairns.

Bengie Update

Exactly a year ago, when Bengie was not at all well and we took her to the vet in Cairns, it was found the reason was bad teeth and gums. A clean up and a few extractions sorted things out. We discovered she also had the start of kidney disease, so she was put on a renal food diet to preserve her kidney function. Since then, our Bengie has been good: healthy, happy, feeding well.

Twelve months pass and our pussycat receives a reminder from the Cairns vet that it is time for a dental checkup! “Tell your parents to bring you here” the email said! We thought we might as well get it done while waiting for the bad weather to pass.  

Just imagine the rigmarole: dinghy trip with Bengie from the boat to the public jetty, Uber pick up to the vet in her transport cage, examination, return trip home, no food overnight pre-op which she objected to loudly. Back we go the next day in the dinghy and the Uber car to drop our starved pussycat off for the vet to do his thing, and finally the last of the Uber trips to pick her up in the afternoon.  It is not easy when you live on a boat and not cheap either! When it’s not one cat costing us a bomb, it’s the other! But we love them both and do what we must.

Our dear ship’s cat had the works done: physical examination, and while under anesthetic the full blood and urine analysis, nails clip, and dental clean… There were good news and bad news. The vet found she was in good nick for her age: alert, playful, nice soft shiny coat, moving well despite a bit of arthritis. Her teeth needed a good clean up but all okay. However the pathology tests showed she was anemic (linked to kidney disease) and had suffered a severe urinary tract infection which required an injection of strong antibiotics, to be repeated 10 days later. We are glad we decided to get her checked up but sad they found what they did, particularly since we did not suspect anything.

Bottom line: we are staying at this latitude a bit longer to enable the vet to see her again and give her another dose of antibiotics before we head off. All the way through this, our Bengie has behaved like “what’s all this fuss about? I’m just fine, leave me alone!”

Back to the Reef

Staying at this latitude does not mean staying in Trinity Inlet! We are a bit over it and even moved to Cape Grafton then Fitzroy Island to sit somewhere without midges before escaping to the reef when the weather allowed.

With a few days of calmer conditions, we spent this week reef hopping. It was lovely to not be rushed and enjoy a few different spots. Here is a satellite map of the area.

Sudbury Reef

From Fitzroy Island, we sailed to Sudbury Cay at the northern tip of the reef, where the public moorings were vacant, and we stayed there overnight. Drone flight before a few too many other boats arrived, snorkel, early morning walk on the sand cay… Although the islet is not vegetated, it is not one of those shy cays as we call them which disappear at high tide.

The snorkel was a bit ho hum: poor water clarity, not a lot of marine life. However a nice surprise was this little turtle.

We then moved further to the eastern side of Sudbury reef, where we had not been before. It is always a thrill to do something different and anchor at seldom visited spots away from other boats. The anchorage was a very tight fit to get in and we absolutely needed the sat map to guide us as well as a lookout on top as we were squeezing through a very narrow passage between coral bommies. But once in, the sand patch was roomy, comfortable and spectacular from the air!

No cay where we ended up, but a gorgeous spot to stay. We liked it so much we stayed there for two days. The water clarity and state of the coral were again a bit ordinary, but we still had fun. We snorkeled the gutter you see in the image below, as well as the outside wall of the reef near the entrance passage (bottom right in the first aerial), which was somewhat better.

Here are a few images.

Wade was able to spear and caught us a Sweetlip one day and a Coral Trout the next.

Chris spotted the trout in a gully and pointing it out to Wade who was nearby. Here is a series of shots showing Wade catching the trout then bravely swimming back to the dinghy with the fish on a stick as we call it, keeping it out of the water. He managed to get back to the dinghy without drama. Chris had stayed back near the gully where the trout was caught. Within seconds, three Blacktip Sharks came rushing in. They were all rather frisky, swimming fast, circling tightly, doing rapid criss-crossing very close. Great for photos, but a bit unnerving! Here is a sequence of shots in a slide show.

Elford Reef

Next was Elford Reef, just north of Sudbury, again a new to us spot. This was another ‘interesting’ access. We wanted to avoid having to go right around the eastern side of the reef to reach our sandy anchorage, which meant squeezing through a narrow gap in the reef and snaking our way past two more tights spots along the way. The good thing was that there were two large deep pools where we could pivot around if we needed to abort. We inched our way through the passage, sat map overlay on, Wade on the port wheel, Chris at the top of the cabin on the starboard side, headphones on… It’s not good for our blood pressure but we are very pleased we did this, saving ourselves some 10nm by going through the shortcut.

Although quite comfortable, we found there was a bit more swell rolling in than at our nook at Sudbury. When you look at the sat map, Elford Reef is open to NE swell with nothing between it and the edge of the Continental Shelf.

Snorkels and spearing were of course on the activity list. The state of the coral was poor. It reminded us of the southern Swain Reefs, looking like a severe Crown of Thorn outbreak had devastated the area.

As usual, we focused on the little patches of life and colour. The fish were certainly plentiful with schools of surgeonfish, paddletails and parrotfish. Wade managed to spear a trout. Here are the highlights in a slideshow.

As we post this we are at Elford Reef for another day. We will then return to Cairns ready for the vet shuffle to get Bengie’s second dose of antibiotics. After that it is likely we will start heading south.