Hello Percy!

As soon as we could leave Mackay we turned Manatee's bow to the Percy Islands, often described as the boaties mecca. The weather was perfect, but as usual, not for sailing! We were heading SE and the wind was SE at 5-10kts. The seas were glistening.
We managed to snag a massive fish on our new lure when trolling but couldn't land it as it was so big and feisty. AK wasn't really sad to see it get away, although losing our new lure was a tad tragic.

An overview of the recent history of Middle Percy Island is on this link.....http://www.theage.com.au/national/the-possibility-of-an-island-20121218-2bl9b.html

It is around 65nm to the Percy's so we broke the trip up with an overnight stay at Double Island where we anchored at 1700hrs. We all enjoyed a peaceful night, sleep interrupted by fishing boats shining spotlights on Manatee intermittently. Must be a good fishing spot!

Anchorage at Double Island

The following day brought fine weather with S-SE winds at 10-15kts. We had trouble raising our anchor due to the rocky bottom so headed on to Percy (still 28nm away) at 1020hrs. After orientating ourselves to the Percy's (there are 3 islands-Middle, South and North East) we let out Manatee's anchor at 1720 at South Percy in Rocky Shelf Bay. Lucas describes this anchorage as having 'a difficult to define fringing reef of rock and coral which can prove hard to see except at low tide.' We managed to get Manatee's anchor to set in sand, which had good holding.

 

Anchorage at South Percy

We enjoyed a quiet night with two other yachts in the anchorage. Marg braved a swim the next morning and reported that the sea wasn't too cold.. The winds were forecast to turn NE 10-15kts (just our luck!) which would turn our anchorage into a lee shore. We headed over to Middle Percy looking for another anchorage only to find the latest weather (midday) was winds SW/SE at 20-25kts. As we were contemplating West Bay- the site of the A-frame- radio scanning conveyed a fishing boat reporting that there was a 'white-out' with very gusty winds and horrible seas. West Bay started rolling and the lone yacht at anchor was bucking so we upped the throttle and took off. We had a southerly chasing us!

 The roll of grey/black cloud was similar to a blanket being pulled up. It caught us on the eastern side of Middle Percy- we got hit by winds to 32kts-it was very uncomfortable-especially when visibility dropped to less than 50', but we were reasonably protected by the islands cliff face. We decided to head for Blunt Bay at North East Island but had to hold our heading as we were getting hit by broken 3m swell on our beam. Marg, who was helming did a large arc and we arrived at Blunt Bay at 1410hrs, just as the front menacingly rolled on its journey north. We had only been out in it for 1 1/2 hours, but it felt like days-needless to say we had a very quiet afternoon and evening!

 

 

 

Anchorage at Blunt Bay

The next morning a woman from one of the other yachts at anchor came over to check that we were OK- both yachts had been watching us during the front and were glad that they were at anchor. We spent the day exploring in the dinghy- what a beautiful spot!

The other two yachts headed north the next morning with a warning that a low was coming and they weren't hanging around! Kay said the Percy's had been 'a monkey on their backs' and they were glad to have had a reasonable visit (this time) but wanted to get going before the monkey grabbed them again!

We couldn't get radio coverage at Blunt Bay so headed over to the Middle Percy anchorage at West Bay.