Moreton Island – Tangalooma Resort - Feb 20
It’s been a long time since we have used a ship’s tour. We went to our meeting place to wait for our tour to be called to get on a tender. Not sure why they called by tour number A1234 instead of saying the name of what you are doing. Most people know that, but not the number, though it is listed on the tickets. We were loaded onto the Moreton Island Ferry to be taken ashore here. Strict instructions were given that it was forbidden to take the ferry to Brisbane. Our tickets were supposed to give us access to kayaks, snorkel equipment, sail boats, fishing etc. It was a bit of a mess at first with having to stand in line to get your wrist bands and then find out we were in the wrong line. So, start over at the back of another long line to rent the Kayak and get our wristbands. Sailboats were not included. Fishing was but you had to buy bait. (Princess charged us $100 each for this pass) We could have rented the kayak directly from the resort for $60 total instead of the $200 with Princess). It also cost extra to rent a locker. The Kayak had a $50 deposit that was returned when we returned the kayak.
It is a beautiful island, and the resort has several restaurants. The beach was very nice, and the sand was soft and easy to walk in.
It was high tide, and the current was strong. I don’t have full use of my right arm, so Greg did all the work in the kayak. We finally got down close to the sunken shipwrecks. A total of 15 vessels were sunk – five in 1963; five in the 1970's; and a further five in the 1980's. We tried to snorkel out to them, and it was a struggle the whole way and terrible visibility. We scrapped going to the one farthest out and went to some of the others. Unfortunately, the visibility was crap and worse than that it was a “fuster-cluck” of jet skis, kayaks, boaters and snorkelers all clustered in together. I was afraid I’d get clobbered with a paddle or run over, so I decided to snorkel back to shore. About the same time, Greg gives me the “cut and run” signal and I nodded “yes”. OMG, I thought it was going to take forever to get back to shore. The tides just kept sweeping me sideways. At one point I just relaxed and drifted a while to catch my breath. Then, resumed the struggle. Almost to shore there was a guy that was in trouble and yelling “help” Greg was trying to help him, but a jet ski came and helped the guy and pulled him to shore. We both finally made it and were exhausted. We did see a few nice fish and a large school of Needlefish. Not many corals that we could see with the terrible visibility. We also saw a woman snorkeler actually standing on one of the wrecks.
The evening show was Top of the World with Sharon Calabro doing a Karen Carpenter tribute. She was quite good. We then went to the “Fill in the Blank” game show. It was very funny. The questions were all about the Cruise director and his three assistants. Always “leading” sentences like Cole and Mark were in the hot tub when all of a sudden “blank” floated to the top”. Andela (pronounced Angela) is Serbian, and her answer was “a Serbian”. Which then became the answer to many other statements. Other answers were fart bubbles or turd. Yep, a real class act, but so entertaining! We are going to miss Cole, the Cruise Director when he leaves the ship in Darwin. His replacement will have big shoes to fill. He truly is the best cruise director we have ever had on any ship on any cruise line.
We now have one sea day before Airlie
Beach. (Whitsundays)
For larger photos: https://photos.app.goo.gl/HR3CinMiqwPLymCKA
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