Thanks for the comments guys.
It is interesting that on the other forums I posted these people thought #2 is the better shot because of the colour but there is a problem you can only see in the full res version. I used a grad nd filter which I reversed to give me a hard line on the horizon, the four stops under exposure gave me the colour. However the line on the horizon is very hard and not level, it dips below the horizon on the left and above on the right. In the full res shot you can see the different exposure on buildings in Caloundra which is dead centre on the horizon. Stuffs up what is, what I thought an otherwise acceptable shot. I find it very hard to line up the nd grad filter when I use it reversed, I may have to buy one of those expensive Sing Ray reverse grad filters.
I have printed up the first shot (A4 at the moment) because I like the wave actiion and the subtle blues and greys. The wave action is what I was trying to achieve and I am happy with that aspect of the shot. I have not tried a mono conversion yet but will give it a go on the weekend. Will also try the pano crop and extra saturation.