Thursday 16th May 2019 – Jurien Bay to Port Denison

Well the day started off pretty good with masses of sea birds from the Boullanger Island nature reserve taking to air and heading off for a feed. Our pretty anchorage had glassed out and we watched a magnificent sunrise while having breakfast and preparing the boat for the days run.

There was not much wind predicted for the day so I raised the main while still on anchor. I had a bit of drama removing the chain hook as the pin had jammed. I’ve never had a problem with this before, but I think the sand here is so fine it had penetrated the pin mechanism and was preventing it from moving. A bit of grunting and the odd naughty word did the trick and off we went.

I made a decision to make Port Denison by sunset and at around 60nm, we had to maintain a good pace averaging over 6 knots all day.

With only about 7 knots of wind, the swell was right down and I was able to take a small short cut over the reef back out into the Indian Ocean.

Passage through the reef

With nothing in between us, all the way to South Africa, this coast line of Australia is notorious and can be extremely hazardous, with a constant large swell rolling across, a dangerous fringing reef preventing access to the coast line running for a thousand miles, very few Islands and no rivers to offer shelter or protection and the few ports scattered along the coast offer limited access and protection and add to this the whole coast line is a lee shore, it makes for one tough place for passage planning and sailing.

All morning we motor sailed on a calm sea and it was a pleasant run allowing me to do some more maintenance, cleaning all the rust stains and reorganising things on the boat, un-packing cloths and sorting out the bathroom and throwing out some old things.

We had a few rain squalls roll through that I monitored on the radar. I managed to out run most of them, but got a sprinkle of rain from one. I put a second reef in the main to be on the safe side.

Trying to out run the squall shown on the radar

Approaching squall

At one point I glanced a black fin only about 100 meters out to starboard and I casually said to Putu there are dolphins on the bow when suddenly a massive hump back whale larger than Sirocco broached completely out of the water and crashing back down with a huge splash.

Broaching hump back whales

This scared the shit out of me but was so spectacular. Within seconds Putu was up on deck and we watched about 4 hump back whales including a baby broaching and fin slapping for the next 20 minutes until they faded from sight in our wake.

It was very tempting to pull up and watch the action, but as strong winds were forecasted to hit between 06:00 – 07:00 tomorrow morning, I wanted to make sure we where tucked up safe and sound at Port Denison by sunset.

Around 15:00 I started to notice a change to the sea state and could tell a change was coming and it wasn’t long after this the wind started picking up and before long we were surfing down 2 meter waves with a 30 knot wind blowing from the south west.

Lovely view through the escape hatch

It was exhilarating and scary at the same time and I had to hand steer quite a lot to prevent us from gybing as we were moving so fast at times the auto pilot could not keep up. We broke Sirocco’s speed record with a peek speed of 16.5 knots and for several hours we were constantly peeking over 13 knots.

16.5 knots through some very rough seas

By now the sea state was very rough with lots of breaking rouge waves and the wind was 30 – 35 knots and we were looking forward to refuge at Port Denison. I tried to call Port Denison VMR on channel 16 to inquire about getting a mooring or tying up to the jetty for the night but I couldn’t raise anybody on the radio. I waited until we had mobile reception and then called them on the phone but no body answered.

Finally, my phone rang and it was the guy from Port Denison VMR who was out playing golf. He was quite vague and just said maybe tie up to the jetty. I always like to try and get permission in these small ports as they are really only for the commercial fisherman and don’t cater for the occasional cruising yachts.

The passage through the reef proved to be non-eventful and we entered the refuge of Port Denison about 30 minutes before dark. I cruised around looking for a place to pull up, there were several yachts tied up to the small jetty and several yachts on morning.

With 30+ knots blowing onto the jetty, I didn’t really want to be banging against that all night so elected to find a mooring for the night. As I expected most of these mooring to be private, we could be asked to move on at any time, but we took the chance anyway.

I picked the largest one that had bird shit all over the ropes that I expect is a government mooring that obviously hasn’t been used for quite a while and tied up and relaxed for the evening after a very challenging day.

It would appear the weather model was about 15 hours early and some of the models conflicted with each other. We woke up at 07:00 to a freezing morning, with dew all over the boat and without any wind. I check all my weather sources and was debating whether we should get fuel and head off right away or spend the day here on the mooring and waiting for the blow to move on.

My gut feeling was that the wind would probably come up within a few hours and as we were both very tired, I made the call to stay put for the day. I’m glad we did, as sure enough within an hour or two the wind steadily increased, gusting to 18 knots within the harbour, so I would expect it would be 30+ outside.

I spent a few relaxing hours writing up my blog and doing a bit of passage planning while Putu played with her phone. She asked me several times if we could go ashore and I said yeah as soon as I finish doing what I’m doing. I asked her to see if she could see a fuel bowser through the binoculars as we needed to get fuel before we depart, but she kept playing with her phone.

Suddenly she snapped and threw a massive tantrum, put on her wet-suit and a life jacket and packed a back pack and then put this on as well and attempted to swim ashore. I couldn’t stop laughing but she was deadly serious. I wanted to take a photo but I was afraid of getting the phone put somewhere uncomfortable. Too bad if we were in some remote part of the crocodile infested Kimberly!

So, we dropped the mooring and headed over to the large jetty to get some fuel. I put the fuel nozzle into my tank and swiped my credit card but nothing happened. I called the number on the fuel bowser and a lady answered and said yeah that thing keeps buggering up, I will call Brian and get him to come down.

Three hours later after we had gong for a nice walk around the beach and had some fish & chips for lunch Brian turns up and resets the power and said “she’s a goer mate” and drives off.

Of course, when I try it again it’s still buggered up, so I call Brian back and he does his magic power reset and this time it works, so I put 132 liters in.

While at the jetty I thought I might as well fill the water tanks also and while I was down below looking for a hose fitting the lone ranger drives up and says I’m charging you $70 for pulling up on the commercial jetty and I’ve written down your registration number.

$70 to park while taking on fuel

What a tosser and after paying tens of thousands of dollars in tax and $700 a year for rego, I can’t even pull up for fuel and water. This is what I hate about Australia, its all about the dollar and you get nothing in return and there is no consideration for cruising boats coming in for refuge from the dangerous weather conditions. 

Anyway, after I cooled down I thought stuff it, I will plug my power cable in and charge my batteries, I filled both my water tanks (700 liters) and we both had very long hot showers using as much water as we can and then I hosed the boat down giving it a good clean trying to use more than $70 of power and water. And I hope he is watching us.

I don’t mind paying for a mooring or pen, but when I asked the VMR guy yesterday he said we can just park anywhere and also Brian the fuel guy (who is also a fisherman here) said we can stay on the fuel jetty for the night yet the lone ranger says all the information is on-line on the DPI website, yet there are no signs on the jetty.

Anyway, got to go, need another hot shower.

On the left is a typical Western Australian cray boat up until recently and on the right is one of the latest generation cray boats. Don't get me wrong, these blokes work bloody hard for their money but there is certainly a lot of money to be made. 

Check the LED lights

$53.15 / day for pen rental with almost enough guano to start a mine 

The huge wooded jetty, built at the turn of the century was pulled down during WW2 to prevent the Japanese from landing here

The beautiful harbour of Port Denison

Track Sirocco’s progress

https://forecast.predictwind.com/tracking/display/Sirocco