Day 131 March 20th 2007, "Lost" Season 2 Epsiode 23 - Stonehaven Bay to Hook Resort via Blue Pearl Bay and Butterlfy Bay

Running off an island in the middle of the night totally freaked out and having to drink the best part of half a bottle of gin, was not what I had in mind when I signed up for this trip but thats how today ended. Think eposode of Lost but first the prelude.

Just North of Stonehaven bay is Hayman Island and the beautiful Blue Pearl Bay, we managed to get in some reasonable snorkelling here and spent some time feeding the bat fish which were hovering round the back of our boat.

After a quick trip to Butterfly Bay on the North of Hook Island we headed South East towards Hook Resort. With wind against tide and gusts of upto 25 Knots it was a little on the rough side, not wanting to loose any of the crew I had them sitting in their lifejackets.

On arriving at the mooring off Hook Resort we were unable to reach the guys on shore so myself and Shelley took the tender out for a look. There was an underwater ovservatory on the Island which looked like it had been built in the 70's, the only building to survive a huge cyclone that came though here some time ago. This is when the Lost feeling started to creep in.

Opening credits for episode of Lost!!

To access the underwater observatory you had to climb down a set of spiral staircases into a dark room with small port holes, occasionally a fish would swim past. We then headed onto the Island and found the hotel owners sitting round having a beer, it turned out that their radio was off, with no ice either due to the ice maker being broken it did seem that this place was a little in disrepair.

On returning to our boat the crew we left on board were feeling a bit of sea sickness so after a quick dinner we decided to go ashore to relieve the symptoms. Before we left we decied to check out if the resort had any rooms, instead of reaching the resort Shelley managed to get in touch with somesort of Russian research vessel moored off our port bow on the other side of the channel.

They were happy for us to come across and stay but we thought better of it. Given it was now dark we had to make our way back to the pier on the tender via torchlight. After scaring Kirst and Jules with a visit to the underwater observatory we started to make our way along the pier to the start of the short bush track to the resort.

A huge gust of wind nearly blew us of our feet and we had to work to get to the end of the pier, climbing the steps to the start of the track I froze before quickly backtracking and nearly knocking over Kirsten, there in the path was 3ft long brown snake, not scared at all of us it started to advance. Sankes being my worst phobia I was outa there, running quickly back to the observatory where we had left our life jackets.

About to head for the tender a large rat, Shelleys worst phobia appeared in the middle of the path staring at us, shortly followed by an appearence of Kirstens worst phobia a cockroach. Not waiting for Julies' phobia to appear we were back in the dingy with the outboard running in seconds. Not before Mr Rat swam past the boat.

Back on "Turn 12" I manged to quickly put away almost half a bottle of gin to calm my nerves. We later found out that the snake we saw was more than likely an eastern brown, one of the most deadly in the World.

Highlights: Blue Pearl Bay