We left from Burnett Heads, the mouth of the river that leads up to Bundaberg, and headed for Lady Musgrave Island. Lady Musgrave is a cay island and lagoon complex at the southern end of the Great Barrier Reef. It is about 100km or more than 50 nautical miles out to the island, where the lagoon was breached to form a channel into the lagoon by guano miners more than a 100 years ago, and anchorage can be taken in the shelter of that lagoon.
SeeBeeZee was leaving heavy, being fully loaded, intending to stay away from the coast as we head north, and following the Great Barrier Reef along from the southern end of the Bunker Group of islands, through the Swain Reefs, and next approach civilisation again at Airlie Beach, in order to re-provision in a couple of months.
We had the mainsail hoisted before the anchor was up, and were under way down the river to the sea within 15 minutes of waking before sunrise. Within the hour, we were on course, and had the spinnaker up with light but favourable breeze, which hovered between 10 and 15 knots all the way out, making for a perfect spinnaker run, with runs of more than 6nms every hour, and were even entertained by dolphins playing in our pressure wave.
SeeBeeZee was anchored up inside the lagoon hours before sunset, as all the public mooring buoys were already occupied. Beyond the range of mobile phone, our weather forecasts were obtained by listening the HF radio weather schedule on our little Tecsun receiver, or putting a mobile phone at the top of the mast with a wifi hotspot turned on. Planning routes without the internet is surely more difficult and less reliable.
We stayed here in the lagoon for almost a week, enjoying weather, the clear water for snorkelling, and walking the island, before heading out and further north along the Bunker group with more favourable weather.
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