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We got up early (very early when you consider it was a Sunday) and made our way out to Montgomery Reef. We got there just on low tide, which was the best time to get there. The reef was very exposed and there were numerous waterfalls flowing from the pool of water on top of the reef. A strange and wonderful site.

We parked Camelot near a channel in the reef and took the dingy in, parking it near a waterfall. On the way in we saw five or six very large turtles and lots of fish. Rob decided he was unlikely to encounter a croc out here – especially after Royce said the charter boats go snorkelling here – so he took his snorkelling gear with him and jumped in the water whilst we explored the top of the reef. We had a great time with our cameras – it was like doing underwater photography but on the surface as we snapped away at numerous clams, a blue spotted stingray, anemone and various soft and hard corals. Meanwhile Rob was busy building on his own photo collection snapping away at a Trevally, a reef shark, angel fish and batfish. After half an hour exploring the reef we wandered back to the dingy and explored the channel as the tide quickly came in. We had a great time photographing turtles as they swam all around our dingy. We found a deep trough in the bottom of the channel with lots of batfish and a grouper – we threw Rob over the side for some more photos as we floated above the fish. Occasionally a turtle would flash past through the channel underneath our dingy in the clear water.

Back on Camelot we took advantage of the tide to motor along at 9knots with a following current. Half an hour into our journey we came across a mother and baby Humpback, which came in quite close as they made their way across our bow. Kim thought he had died and gone to heaven after watching the whales broach a couple of times.

We got to Raft Point at about lunch time just behind My Sharon, a large power boat from Europe, heading back to Brisbane and then over to the Carribean by Dockwise. The Pommie skipper liked Europe better than Australia – not enough people to talk to in Australia.

We had to park around the corner and take the dingy around to the path up to the Aboriginal Art. Te walk up was quite hard in the heat and took us about 20 minutes to get to the ledge in the range where the art was. This was the most spectacular of all the art we’ve seen with large pictures of dugongs, x-ray fish and men with two penises (according to Kim) – I think he was a bit disappointed to find out he only had one – everyone else seemed to have two.

The ride back to Camelot in the dingy was rather rough and we took in quite a bit of water coming round the point. Royce and I decided we needed to empty the dingy by driving really fast with the bung out down some crocodile invested river with mangroves closing in on either side. Royce took some video as we had fun zooming down the narrow waterways. Still no crocs but!  Finally finished our fun and went and took some photos of Camelot set against the spectacular headland of Raft Point.

Coming out of raft point we hit some amazing steep waves as we rounded the corner. There was a mad rush to shut all the hatchways as we took a lot of water over the tramps and the roof. This lasted for a couple of minutes before we were through them and then we had a great sail as we headed towards Talbot Bay. Everyone agreed it was a great way to end a great day. However it was a long one for Royce and Deb as we made our way through a myriad of islands, pearl leases and reef to get to the Horizontal Falls just after midnight, in preparation for tomorrow.  

For some reason (which I need to look into), the airconditioning only comes on with the genset, so we didn’t usually run it when we are motoring. Hence it quite often only came on around midnight or so – at which point we would hear what became a rather familiar refrain from Kim as he (loudly) uttered "Thank f**k for that!!" as the air conditioning kicked in.