We departed Cape Heirisson around 09:00 headed for Boat
Haven Loop. As we left the sheltered waters behind Cape Heirisson, the wind
picked up to 18 – 20 knots, right on the noise of course, so for the next
couple of hours we flogged heavy punching into the messy slop and half meter
swell.
On the passage we passed the Useless Loop salt works with
the massive piles of white salt waiting to be offloaded on the adjacent wharf.
A little bit further we passed the closed township of Useless Loop.
The entrance to Boat Haven Loop is a maze of sand bars and
small shallow channels. The Navionics charts on both Sirocco and my phone were
near useless at times and once again I relied upon Google Earth imaging.
Google Earth imaging running on Open CPN on my laptop
Several times we nearly run aground when we lost the channel
and at times it was quite stressful, but once inside, the main channel
broadened and is was easy cruising. We winded our way nine miles up the inlet where we anchored
close to a beach and took the dingy to shore to do some beach combing and
stretch our legs.
It was interesting to see all the Kangaroo tracks down to
the waters edge where they were either getting some salt for their diet or they were
thirsty, and they were having a drink of saltwater. The country here is very
dry and harsh and there is very little feed and water for the wildlife.
A baby shovel nose ray I caught by hand in the shallows
Lovely little beach in the southern reaches of Boat Haven Loop
We had passed a more interesting location, so we decided to
move back there and anchor for the night, but the wind came up and was blowing
twenty knots when we arrived and the location didn’t provide any shelter and
was also lee shore, so we continued back out of the inlet looking for a sheltered
anchorage.
The problem was the inlet runs north south and the wind was
blowing from the south and I couldn’t find any protection. By now it was
getting late and I was regretting moving from the beach which had good
protection, but it was too far up wind to go back, so we continued on.
I decided to anchor at the entrance of the inlet at the tip of the Carrarang Peninsula. It didn’t look far
on the chart, but in reality, was a lot further and I also had to negotiate all
the stressful shallow channels and sand bars back at the mouth of the inlet.
Finally, we made it back out into the deep water, then we
had to venture around the corner and then run in as close as I can, until the
water shallows to around 2.5 meter where we will anchor for the night.
The anchorage was a bit rolly, but it offered pretty good
protection and is about the best I could do. The anchor hit the bottom just as it
turned dark. I need to plan a bit better in future as I missed my 5 o’clock radio sked with both Don in Perth and also with the Kimberly Cruising Yacht Club
cruisers.
We had BBQ ribs for dinner and I opened my first bottle of
red wine…………better put the anchor alarm on just in-case.
No comments:
Post a Comment