Commodore
October 7, 2024

Tuesday 8 October – windy Champagne Bay

We decided to move the 1.5 miles to the next bay up, called Champange Bay, which we have heard people raving about. Rowan thought it would be less rolly, so we were on our way after breakfast. There were three other boats there, we decided to go in as close as we could to the beach for wind protection. We landed up anchoring in front of one the boats to avoid coral and to find calmer water. The wind is blowing hard until Friday.

The guy on the boat behind us was enjoying wing foiling, we were gobsmacked to see him later on taking his young son out on the board. Quite something, he is obviously exceptionally good at it. During the day another 4 boats arrived, it definitely is popular.

We went for a walk in a little bay next to us, that is protected from the wind. It was great to stretch our legs and have a reprieve from the wind. We followed a little river for a while until the vegetation got impenetrable. There was a shelter that had some old furniture in it, we saw some locals go to it in a long boat after dark. They were using torches and looked like they were catching something, fish or crabs we guessed.

We are so enjoying all our fresh produce we got from Farmboy. Rowan chopped up the enormous local pumpkin we got, we froze half of it and air fried the other half. We had it with a huge salad, with some delicious tangy cheese we had bought in NZ, a really delicious meal. The boat behind us invited us to join them on the beach for a fire , Rowan had a work call, so we declined, we also didn’t think it would be that pleasant in the wind. There landed up being two fires on the beach, one was enormous. The local guys in the longboat pulled up at the beach and I assume asked them to put out the fires as they were both put out promptly, I assume in this wind, the locals were nervous of a fire. The bush is so dry and you can see there have been some big fires about, so very understandable.