I'm sitting out in the cockpit typing this, watching grey clouds approaching - rain?? Darkness is falling & I'm at anchor in lee of Morris Island - just a low sandy islet, on the edge of a large reef, with two palm trees,lots of bushes and what look to me like lots of agave plants. Tern, pelicans and possibly crabs (holes in sand near water's edge at low water when I arrived here) are the only signs of life. Wind has tended to die down overnight & then get up as the day progresses. Today kept reminding me of the Bahamas - sailing along in relatively shallow, pale blue water, with no land in sight, although today's water was around 15-20m deep whereas in the Bahamas it was often 7-8ft! Most channel depths inside the Gt Barrier Reef seem to be 25m or a lot less. The wind, yet again, has varied in strength a lot over the day, meaning I have had to motorsail a little (when speed drops to less than 3knots!), but mostly I had a nice sail on anything from a beam reach to a run (goosewinged) in SE-E winds. The sky has been clear, so it was nice and sunny, but it feels quite cool in the breeze with air temp of around 26C - maybe I've acclimatized! After leaving last night's anchorage, where there was one other boat, I saw two fishing boats but then nothing all day until just now when I saw a freighter passing by in the distance, headed north. Several boobies flew past, as I left this morning - but generally, there has been a distinct lack of obvious life around - no birds seen until tonight, around this islet. It's certainly not over-populated hereabouts!! And if anything should happen, you'd need to expect to be self-sufficient, although I suspect help would be available eventually on VHF or HF (no mobile phone transceivers here!). I'm checking in each morning, as I did on passage from Vanuatu, at 0800 EST with the 'Sheila' Net on 8161kHz - run by cruisers for cruisers - nice to hear a friendly voice! I'll continue to do so until Darwin and on leaving for Bali from there in mid-August.
