We had a late start today, departing the tip of the Carrarang
Peninsula around 09:00. We woke at 07:00 as usual, but after some delicious pan
cakes for breakfast, I raised the dingy onto the davits to drain all the water out
from inside the hull.
I forgot to put the bung in when I first launched it and I
think it wasn’t done up tight enough and was letting water in. A LOT of water
came out and it’s so much easier now to get up on the plane, I just hope there
is no leak and now that the bung is very tight, no water gets in.
We set sail for Freycinet Island
and it was a really uncomfortable ride bashing into a twenty-knot wind and
sloppy confused ocean. I cranked both engines to get there as fast as we can
but it was heavy going for a good hour and a half.
On the way the dingy was flogging hard as we were towing it
just by its painter and sooner or later something was going to give, so I
pulled up in very rough conditions and replaced the painter with a very long
stretchy heavy duty braided mooring line.
This worked a treat, but I now have
to be so careful when I stop that I don’t get this tow line wrapped around the
propeller or rudder.
Gradually the conditions moderated and we arrived at
Freycinet Island and dropped the pick and went ashore in the dingy after we
circumnavigated the Island.
The Island was very rugged with its own beauty and had a
small sandy beach in the middle where we landed the tender. The cliffs and
topsides were covered in nesting shags and sea gulls.
There were hundreds, maybe thousands of individual nests all
with 2-3 eggs or babies.
Trying not to disturb the birds, I climbed to the top of the
Island where several sea eagles had their nests; what a life they must have.
On the top of the Island lots of rocks were stacked up like
walls. They looked to be too well placed to be natural, so I wonder who did
that? I know a lot of these small Islands were mined for guano at the turn of
the century, so it could possibly have been a camp at some time past?
I was very weary of snakes, but I never saw any. Back at the
beach we watched half a dozen small sharks cruising around in the shallows and
we saw a couple of baby turtles on our way back to the boat.
I fixed up the problem with my bait casting reel on the way
down and I dragged a popper behind the dingy for twenty minutes and never got a
sniff, but I’m so happy its back in action.
From Freycinet Island we set a course for 3-Bay’s Island
which is shaped like a three bladed propeller. Along the coast from Giraud Point
north, we could see quite a few people camping on the beach as there is an
access track through Tamala station.
All this region was first charted by Denham in 1858 sailing
HMS Herald and I don’t think it has had much surveying done since, but the
water down this end of the bay is deeper and navigation is so much easier. The
water is also much more saline and colder as this end of the bay doesn’t get
flushed very well.
On the journey to 3-Bay’s Island we saw quite a few dolphins
and one dugong dive when he saw us. We arrived at 3-Bay Island around 15:30 and
anchored in 2.5 meters of water and immediately headed off in the dingy to
check it out.
This Island is shaped like a star and has three beautiful
little beaches and we pulled up on the closest one and went for a walk. The
lime stone formations were really interesting and there were quite a few large
caves, one of them went back about twenty meters and would sleep twenty people.
I thought I might see a python or some bats but not this time.
We walked up onto the rough summit over razor sharp lime
stone covered in stunted scrub and succulents. There was a large sea eagle
sitting on the tallest shrub that took off as we got closer and I was looking
around to see if it had a nest nearby.
These twisted knarly trees look like they are hundreds of years old
Suddenly the eagle caught my eye as it swooped in low and
took a large baby seagull from the nest as two squawking seagulls looked on.
The eagle labored to get altitude with the large bird gripped tightly in its
sharp talons. It was marvelous to see such a thing but I felt so sorry for the
poor seagulls who have labored all season to raise their only child.
We didn’t walk to the other side of the island to see if the
eagles had a nest there, instead we motored about a mile over to the main land
to take a close look at all the campers on the nearby beach before heading back
out to Sirocco.
There was a large carn on the headland and a small cave that
had been decorated that looked pretty bizarre. After a quick look it was
getting dark and cold and so we headed back to Sirocco.
I put a few calls out on the HF for the 5 o’clock radio sked with
both Don in Perth and also with the Kimberly Cruising Yacht Club cruisers and
heard nothing from either. I then switched to 80m and heard some of the boys in
Perth booming in so I chatted with them for the next hour and a half.
While cooking dinner one of the galley LED lights had a melt
down and took out the circuit breaker. Lucky, I have some spares and was able to get it
replaced and working again quite quickly. Once again there was very
intermittent mobile phone coverage at this anchorage, but the digital TV worked
fine.
Track Sirocco’s
progress
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