After the hike to the top, we walked
around to the resort to see if we could get a drink and maybe a meal. The resort
definitely did not look like anything special, particularly not A$800 per day worth.
On entering the restaurant, we were politely but firm told that yachties were not
welcome there. Being the type of
people that can take a hint, we left and walked around to the research station on the east
side of the island. There marine biology students from all over the world come and
run experiments experiments on the various inhabitants of the reef. We talked to
several Ph.D. candidates from Europe and the US as we toured the facility.
After walking back to Watson's Bay Inke and Meno went
for a swim and some sun bathing on the beach. When they came back we noticed
remora's swimming under the boat. Remora's are fish, about 65cm long that have a
sucker disk on their head. They use it to attach themselves to sharks and manta rays
and then feed off the scraps as the host eats. Seeing remora's usually means that
there are sharks about. Sure enough there basking in the shade under Dragon's
Toy were a pair of 2 meter long black tip reef sharks. For some reason, nobody
wanted to go swimming after that.
That evening we had a wonderful little party on Meshugge
with the South Africans (Nick, DeDe and Phil) comparing Afrikaans to the Dutch spoken by
Meno and Inke. The mono-linguistic capt'n just sat back and enjoyed his beer.
About midnight, we said our good-bye's to Nick and Dede, weighed anchor and rode out on
the tide heading for Cooktown.
