Shark Attack!

0800 position 31-33S 159-05E. On a mooring off of Lord Howe Island, Tasman Sea

You might notice from our position description above that we are now in the Tasman Sea when we were in the Coral Sea yesterday. There has been much debate aboard the good ship Van Diemen regarding which sea Lord Howe Island lies in, Coral or Tasman. The mystery was solved yesterday as I was reading a Wikipedia description of Lord Howe Island to the crew that Lori had emailed to me. It stated that the island lies in the Tasman Sea, and as we all know, Wikipedia is never wrong. There you have it.

The first half of our day yesterday was similar to the day before. The morning was spent on the boat doing more laundry and relaxing. The wind backed off a bit during the morning and just before noon we dinghied in to drop off Geoff and Marie on the beach close to Van Diemen where they had stashed their rental bikes in the bushes the afternoon before. Rob, Michael and I continued on north to the jetty where we landed and set up the folding bike that Rob had brought ashore from Van Diemen. We all met up in the Anchorage Restaurant again for WIFI and lunch.

After lunch our three bicyclists took a beach tour of the island. Michael and I hiked the hills in the middle of the island and it was close to one of the windward beaches that we came upon an endemic and endangered Lord Howe Woodhen, of which a mere 220 remain in the wild. This little guy was nosing around in the leaf litter looking for lunch just three feet away from us, and Michael got some great video of him.

Michael and I returned to the same beach we did the day before at 430PM for a dinghy pickup. Geoff and I were carrying hand held VHF radios, and the plan was to call Van Diemen for pickup when we were ready. There was no dinghy hanging behind Van Diemen though, and nobody to call. It looked like our other three adventurers were still ashore. At 515PM the dinghy came around the point and into view with Rob, Geoff, and Marie aboard, but something was clearly wrong. They were all sitting on the same side of the boat. As they approached the beach to pick us up there was a sense of urgency in Rob's voice. "You need to get aboard in a hurry! We can't linger here!"

The starboard tube of the inflatable RIB dinghy had a two foot long tear in its bottom and was completely empty. It is within the realm of possibility that the dinghy was attacked by a great white shark, but the evidence seems to indicate that minutes earlier they ran over one of the many spires of coral or sharp basalt that litter Lord Howe's lagoon. Fortunately, the port side and forward tubes were still intact and full of air. It was nip and tuck getting the dinghy, now with five of us aboard, back to Van Diemen without swamping. We made it, however, and got the dinghy hoisted safely up on deck and secured.

Van Diemen cocktails were required all around to steady our nerves after that near death experience.

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