Thursday 26 February – return to LBJ

We had to get the tide right, we needed to do the channel after 1pm, so we were not fighting the current. That meant we had a leisurely morning, we were pleased to see some sunshine too, which makes a nice change. We went and had a snorkel around the corner towards the other entrance of the crescent, we were not going anywhere near the aggressive Komodo dragon beach, which was the other snorkelling spot on NFL that we had not been to. There was a little current pushing us along as we did a drift snorkel. We saw plenty of nice purple/blue coral, lots of soft coral and anemones, but only small fish, a lot of the anemones did not seem to have any clown fish which was odd. We think it has been seriously overfished here, out of the way of the park rangers. We were pleased to see a couple of turtles though.

We set off around midday, it was a lovely peaceful motor back to LBJ, wind is always against us here. Rowan timed the tide just right, we got there just as it was turning, it felt a very calm passage through the channel. We passed an island with a beautiful beach that is forbidden to visit as it is a turtle breeding beach, such good news that places like that are being preserved.

It felt very familiar getting back to the anchorage in LBJ. We were dismayed to arrive and find no mooring ball available. We moved up the far end to see if we could anchor, but it all looked a bit tight and not comfortable. We were just wondering what we would do when I spotted a phinisi leaving and could see their ball was available. We dashed over relieved to see it looked good. We thought it would be an easy hooking of the ball as Rowan went up the mast this morning and adjusted the camera so he can see the front bow. I managed to get the leash alright, it had a hard plastic sheaf on it, but as we started drifting away, I could not get the boat hook off the plastic and had to drop it. We have just broken our boat hook last week and luckily had this spare, we did not want to lose it so quickly. Rowan had suggested I jump in the water to get it, ugh nothing was going to make me get in that water, it was filthy in amongst all these phinisis. I managed to get in the dinghy and row like mad to get the boat hook before it sank, which luckily I managed to do. It made sense then for me to get our lines through the leash while I was in the dinghy, so much easier. Finally we were on and secure! Always a bit of angst when you are in amongst so many boats.