Friday 8th July 2022

We said our goodbye’s to Paul and Trish, and headed over to Nevadra. This is in such a beautiful group of little islands, just a couple of hours sail from Musket Cove. More often than not it proves to be a very rolly anchorage, and any stay there really needs to coincide with the right conditions, we get it wrong more times than we get it right, and end up enduring sleepless nights while Daisy does her best to tip us out of bed.

I had my fingers crossed that we would find a lovely flat, calm bay. Sadly this was not to be the case, but we decided to stay anyway, in the hope that it would quiet down as the evening progressed. (It didn’t)

However, we were in for a treat, as soon as I started to drop the anchor, a group of beautiful black tip sharks arrived circling the boat, there were eleven of them that I could count, ranging in size from around 4 to 6 feet. The water was so incredibly clear, it was as if we were watching them swimming in the air. They’re the most graceful creatures that continued to swim around Daisy for several hours, as if sentries on watch. I managed to get some half decent video.

I don’t usually worry about swimming where there are sharks, especially black tips, they’re not typically aggressive towards swimmers, more often than not they’re very shy and will swim away from you rather than approach you (or that’s always been my experience).

Bob and I have come across sharks many times while swimming, and had no problems at all. Having said that, I wasn’t overly keen to get in the water with a large group of sizable black tips; Bob suggested we take the kayak over to the island, but I couldn’t even bring myself to do that, also because the water was quite choppy, and I’m not the most elegant or coordinated these days when getting in and out of the kayak from the boat. So we stayed onboard, relaxed sipped cocktails and just watched the show.

Bob’s last visit here with his crew, they also saw the sharks, and witnessed an unusual display of them leaping out of the water and spinning, we have seen dolphins doing that, but never sharks; sadly we were not graced with their spinning display this time, maybe another visit, that is if I can gird my loins for another rolly night. I was so dizzy when I got up this morning, I won’t be rushing back to Navadra any time soon. As I write this we’re sailing across to Waya, in search of a peaceful still anchorage, (with hopefully, no sharks!