Sirocco Sailing Adventures: Monday 27th May 2019

I had a bit of a nervous sleep as the depth dropped off to 1.3 meters overnight. Officially Sirocco draws 800 mm, but I like to keep at least 2 meters under the hull.

Over breakfast I called the VMR to ask about getting fuel on the commercial jetty and bugger me, you have to have a Baileys card (whatever that is) to get fuel from Denham onward. So, we get given a number for DPI in Carnarvon and give them a call. They say we have to speak to Baileys in Perth.

Baileys in Perth say we first have to register an account and then do the on-line safety induction, and then they will send us our new Baileys plastic card to our nominated address. (Bloody hell)

So luckily by now in Denham we have mobile phone coverage, so we go on-line and create a Baileys account. Then we took the tender ashore and find the Denham post office and organise to get our new Baileys plastic card sent to them. Then we call back Baileys in Perth and organise to get our new Baileys plastic card sent via priority post to Denham post office which was now going to take around two days to get here.

Rather than waste our time sitting here waiting for our shiny new Baileys plastic card to arrive, I thought if I pore a couple of jerry cans of diesel into Sirocco, we can then keep going and move around to Monkey Mia and further south down the eastern gulf and when the card arrives, Putu can hitch a ride from Monkey Mia to Denham to pickup the card and return to Monkey Mia where we can fuel up.

Old pearling lugger

One of the original houses made out of hand sawn shell bricks

Close-up of the shell bricks that are unique to Denham

But it turns out there are no refueling facilities at Monkey Mia, (as it irritates the dolphins blow holes) so it would mean back tracking all the way back to Denham. So now we go to plan B.

Maybe if we hang around the fuel dock, we could ask someone who has a Baileys fuel card if we could use it to fuel up and pay them cash. Luck had us meeting a local fisherman who said just give Macca a call and he will look after us. He didn’t have Macca’s number, but just said go ask in any shop as everyone knows Macca.

It didn’t take very long and we had Macca on the phone and he said no worries, so we said we’ll meet you in an hour after we go and get some cash. Well, three broken ATM’s latter and only being able to get half the amount required from IGA, we had to call Macca back and ask if we could do it tomorrow. (Bugga)

This all took the best part of a day and we were getting sore legs from all the walking. We were killing time in a tiny little gift shop and I mentioned our plight to the old lady and she handed us ten whiting fillets which was lovely of her.

The day was shot, so we walked back to the dingy and took an empty petrol drum across the road to fill up at IGA and we asked if we could borrow a shopping trolley to carry the fuel drum back to the tender. They said no problem and it was a funny sight pushing our fuel back to the beach in a shopping trolley.

On the trip out to Sirocco we stopped off at a trailer sailor to chat with the lady on deck. She was very nice and we were there for twenty minutes when her husband motored up and he offered me a beer, so we stayed for another twenty minutes. They were up from Pemberton and had been cruising around for the past week.