Low Isles

November 14th--Today was a wonderful and a great way to finish up our time here in Port Douglas. When we got up this morning, we had sunny skies. The kids had done so good at snorkeling in the rain on Thursday, we decided to spend another day on the barrier reef...this time in the sun. We booked another tour with Quicksilver, but this time on their sailing catamaran. We left at 9:30 on the shuttle bus to the marina and boarded the Wavedancer. We sailed for about an hour out to one of the small islands located within the Great Barrier Reef known as the Low Isles. The weather was gorgeous today which made the sail very pleasant. We arrived at the island a little after 11:00 and had to pick out our snorkeling gear at this time. The Wavedancer ties onto a platoon out in the water and then there was a shuttle boat that took us to the island. So, we took the shuttle boat out to the island and got our snorkeling gear on. We all really enjoyed snorkeling around the reef. There were times when the tide got so low that we barely made our way over the reef. Right before getting out of the water for lunch, we found Nemo. There were 4 little clownfish swimming around an anemone. It was so neat to see them in their own environment. It is definitely better than seeing Nemo at an aquarium. After about an hour snorkeling and being on the island, we took the shuttle boat back to the Wavedancer for a buffet lunch. On our way back, our driver helped spot a turtle. It was pretty big and staying with the theme of Nemo, we named him Crush. The lunch was really good and filling. So, after that we shuttled back to the island to do some more snorkeling. At 2:30, we had to catch the shuttle boat back to the Wavedancer for it to depart back to Port Douglas at 3:00. We all laid out on the deck of the catamaran and enjoyed the sail back to Port. We arrived back at the marina in Port Douglas a little after 4:00. We told that the shuttle bus wouldn't leave until 4:55 so we had 30 minutes to kill. We decided to sit down and have a snack at one of the restaurants by the marina. After we finished up, we went to get on the shuttle only to find out that it had already left and would be back in 10 minutes. At this point, the kids were getting hungry for dinner so we made an executive decision to go back to On the Inlet for dinner, hoping that George would grab the bait this time. We arrived at the restaurant just as they were starting the feeding. George was a lot more active tonight, but still didn't clamp on successfully. I'm starting to think that this George thing is just their way of getting people to come eat at the restaurant. At least the food is really good too. Anyway, after a long day and an early dinner, we returned to the hotel for showers and bed.