Winkali: Yorso Good

The weather was fine, I had a couple of weeks off and so did Ian. There was only one place to go - Low Isles (again). Well, we never tire of it. It has every ingredient of Tropical Paradise.

Besides, Ian has been working on Yorso (see Yorso Vain/Stupid in "The Great White Hunter Strikes Again" http://winkali.blogspot.com/2012/08/great-white-hunter-strikes-again.html

Having lightened up the steering, tried a few variations on his pulley systems and gathered up new determination, we headed out in an ideal breeze.

After careful balancing of sails and fingers crossed, we handed the steering over to Yorso. . . . . and off he went, all by himself.

Ian sits and relaxes while Yorso does the work

Yorso didn't know what the fuss was all about. He could have done this for us last year when we headed out on our trip. There was no need to have stayed up day and night tending the helm till we were exhausted. All we had to do was lighten things up a bit and he would have done the rest.

Oh well, better late than never. This makes places like Lord Howe Is and New Zealand a possibility after all.

Now that knew we had Yorso on the team, we sailed back to Low Isles and re-anchored.

Now it was time to try out my new flippers, goggles and underwater camera.

"Oh no", you say, "before it was all the bird photos, now it's going to be fish photos".

Well, I tried but I think that birds are a lot easier. With the current and waves bobbing me about, all I could do was hope that the lens was pointing in the direction of my subject when I pressed the shutter.

After a while, I started to get the hang of capturing stationary objects.

Now, I'm not as conversant with the names of things at the bottom of the ocean as I am with creatures of the air but I do know that the object on the left is a very nice piece of pink coral.

After I managed to photograph the coral, I headed for something more tricky - something that moved. I located this lovely blue starfish as it slowly made its way across its coral surrounds. I didn't actually see it move, but I know for a fact that they do.

Then, I mastered the art of photographing fish as they darted in and out among the coral. How did I do this? First of all, I located large schools of fish. Then I pointed the camera in their direction and pressed the shutter like crazy before they all swam away. As you can see, I managed to get the last few stragglers.