saloonpassage

We had a great day today (Sunday) it went something like this:-
Woke up after a very restful night (with no rocking n rolling) and felt fantastic. I laid in bed putting together the post for the day before’s blog, while Gaz tidied the boat (even vacuumed) and brought me tea and toast in bed – such a sweetheart 💖 it’s a real treat!After that, we were to join the others and go on a dinghy cruise around to the south edge of the island, John (Staples) had seen a small channel that went in through the rocks, it was suppose to be the place to catch lobsters (not that we had any gear required to do so! 😄). But first we wanted to go ashore for a very quick swim, the quick dip turned out to take nearly 3 hours! We discovered the little cove we’d gone to had great areas for rock walking and lots of pretty shells plus interesting bits of driftwood that needed collecting (to add to the copious amount we’d already gathered), ignoring the boys protests. Then found a sort of cave that went from the back of the beach through to the waterside, at high tide the sea would gush through it. The walls of the cave had amazing colors, it looked like an oil painting! Sue reckons the cave was a fossilized dinosaur skeleton and it kind of did look like it – maybe we’ve had too much sun, haha!

We then teamed up with John and Shelly for our dinghy cruise. John and Shelly took their dinghy, we went in John and Sues as our little 5hp outboard wouldn’t stand a chance alongside their 15 hps. The ride over to the channel was a little hairy (well I thought so anyway) as we had to maneuver the boats through areas of submerged rock. This large outcrop also had forests of kelp swaying around with the incoming swell. So glad we had the sense to take 2 boats for safety, because a small dinghy wouldn’t stand a chance if a motor died, it could quite easily be swept out to sea.

When we got to the channel it was absolutely amazing (worth every second of the trip over)! The water was calm, looked very very deep (even though you could see all the way down) and it was freezing, you’d need a wetsuit to swim. We’re all in agreement that John was right – there must be lobsters down there! But there wasn’t one of us brave (or stupid) enough to dive down to get any! On the way out of the channel we discovered large crevices in the rock face where the sea flowed through to big alcoves and deep rock pools (kind of like rock cathedrals), words can’t describe how amazing it was, pictures don’t do it justice either as it was a little shaky there.

We headed back to the big boats, to my (secret) relief – I’m much braver in Saloon Passage than I am in a little rubber dinghy! 😰. We gathered some food and drinks and spent the afternoon on the beach all of us gushing over how wonderful it is here. The four of us have decided to stay at least 1 more day (can’t seem to drag ourselves away). John and Shelly have to leave by 5pm as they’ve got some appointments on Monday morning back in Nelson Bay. We four stayed on the beach for a while longer (till nearly 7), then reluctantly dragged ourselves back to the boats for dinner. We’re starting to scrape the bottom of the barrel in the food department but think we can easily manage another couple of days, but the vegetables will be mainly the canned variety. A BBQ on Saloon Passage, entertaining ourselves with a slide show of the photos snapped throughout the day, it was the perfect way to finish a perfect day.

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