The evening of Tuesday March 20, 2007 looked great for a dive despite the pending storms.  As the bridge was closed we decided to try Michael McFadyen's Bare Island Isolated Reefs option 5. We battled with a few fishers who got quite cranky with us.  We had selected our entry point to be away from their lines and slipped in quietly.  One took offence at our presence and became abusive, swearing and threatening.  We dropped to the bottom as soon as we could but Robert was having mask trouble so we had to surface again.  We are sure that rocks were thrown at us.  It would appear that one took his anger out on Wayne's car, putting a deep scratch down the right hand side.  Viz was poor so we stayed close following a SW bearing across the sand.  We swam over a long rope lying on the sand, but didn't have time to explore what was on the end of it.  After about 9 mins of steady swimming we reached the reef, first seeing the large timber pylon.  Then we hit the anchor and where our slate was meant to be.  Yep, it would appear that some one had stolen it as we it could not have come adrift from the rope on it's own. 

We then headed along the reef to it's end and then due East towards the BI West cave.  The current was strong once we left the reef, and we swam diagonally to it until it eased.  Maybe 10 mins later we hit the cave.  A quick peak around the corner to sea horse rock then back along the North side of the reef and across the sand once the depth hit 4m or so.  This put us at the exit point on mainland below the path to the bridge which is an easy exit.

timber pylon	sponges	a gutter	Robert in the gloom	the anchor
ring	rope that our slate should be on	cutttle	Wayne	puffer fish
Wayne		Cave	end of reef	cuttle
bullseye at end of reef

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