Wednesday 15th May 2019 – Cervantes to Jurien Bay

The wind dropped off to nothing in the anchorage last night and I woke up several times with the very large mooring buoy banging against the side of the hull. I even had to get up at 3am and start the engine to move away from the buoy, so we were both pretty tired when my alarm went off at 6am.

We departed Ronsard Bay Cervantes at 08:00 with a 16 knot breeze pretty much right on the nose, so we spent all day tacking slowly up the coast. For a while the wind increased to about 23 knots so I had to throw a reef in then around midday the strength dropped so I shook the reef out and gradually the wind decreased, so I made a decision to pull into Jurien Bay for the night, a pathetic 12 nm. 

Sea state was choppy and confused with a 2m swell which made for a rather uncomfortable ride.

I hit one cray pot today and it snagged around the prop or rudder but thankfully it came off itself without any intervention.

Using my Google Earth charts I pulled into a beautiful sheltered little bay over sand behind Boullanger Island in 2m of crystal clear water. As soon as I dropped anchor a baby fur seal came over for a visit and I was wishing I had some fish to feed him.

After a lovely feed of pasta, Putu did some washing and bathed on the back steps, I did some maintenance and lubricated all my cam locks and then gave every thing else a squirt of CRC.  Maintenance is never ending and if you don’t keep on top of it everything will go bung sooner or later.

Once again conditions on the VHF radio were excellent and I was picking up AIS station as far away as Shark bay (250 nm) and VMR Mandurah loud and clear.

As we are both very tired tonight listening to the waves wash onto the shore and the sea birds flying overhead, I don’t think it will be very long till we both crawl into the fart sack.

Track Sirocco’s progress

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