Routine

No beaching today although it seems sunny enough at 19°. The last of the Christmas decos were taken down, alternately you could call them Christmas barbed wire and getting them back in the container is tricky. The Christmas Tree had already been picked up last week. The mega blow up bed was deflated using the inbuilt electric deflater. Very convenient.  To cement the return to routine, the grass was mowed and I need to do some edge trimming but that can wait. Ho Hum.

Christmas wire

from this

To this

Tough Beach Day

We hadn't been to any Torquay beaches for at least two years since we moved to the Bellarine.  We new the temperature was up there and a North wind was coming in but the tide was favourable being low at 3:40pm. This means you may be able to snorkel the Jarosite reef. We have previously been in the pool that has been scoured out there but it really needs to be calm, which it wasn't. The kelp started coming as well and we had trouble keeping the umbrella up but the water was cooling and we went in at least six times.

All Calm

 It blows a lot here but last night was complete calm. We went on a beach stroll just before sunset.  With the tide out you can walk further along the pylons.  There were still people packing up but we had it mostly top ourselves. 

poles apart

Surf's Up Dude

 I have been getting consistent with the swim lately and on some days have done it twice.  This morning I got in before the Sunday crowd.  Not really a crowd. Fifty people is a crowd on our beach.  I saw a large banjo ray out along the pylon line and hundreds of those puffy ugly fish just drifting in cloud formation. The breeze was up a bit so you can feel water slapping your face as you move along.  I have finished a few more videos from last week but I can only place clips due to the size.

                                                                    Balcony Bomber

                                                                           Hey Dude

Asher tags a long

Whatcha doin Pa?    That's how it came out most of the time with a screwed up nose as well.  You can't get away with much when a two year old is on the scene. I was mostly caught out eating eg If I was eating fruit when she was supposed to be eating her sandwich well that did not work out at all. The best trick was bribery eg you finish your dinner then I will get out the ice cream, except don't pack the cone with ice cream like I did the first time. We had a balcony barbie last night as the weather has been perfecto. Asher had a swim this morning and as the tide was in it was good snorkeling.  We saw a small ray doing some feeding and some quite large fish. They may have been Perch.

Cool Dude

Balcony Fare

The Higher the Better

 Went to the beach a few times yesterday. The first time I snuck out while Asher wasn't looking and the tide was high.  I did the swim with lots of fish action. The higher the tide the better as I saw three rays which seem to be more relaxed when you swim across the top of them while there is plenty of water between you and them. I went back late in the afternoon with Daniel and the tide was opposite.  We waded thru mushy grass to get to the deeper sections. Those flutter fish were there in their hundreds. We also had some spear gun snorkelers to contend with.  They spend 30 minutes squeezing into wet suits but the water is a perfect temperature.

Asher tackles the waves

 After a 10 to12 hour sleep Asher was full of beans.  Perhaps enough beans to take on some waves. Before that I went down to our beach for my groyne to groyne swim. This worked well, with the total score being htree rays, one star fish, many other fish and one golf ball.  We got to main beach around Noon. The southerly was a bit fresh but the tide was out so lots of space for running around which was a good thing as there were  thousands spread as far as the eye could see.  Asher is a lot more confident with waves coming in although we did stick to the shallows.

Jelly

Crowd

Asher Stomp