After a nice sleep in, we had breakfast and then went for a
look around in the dingy seeing a small turtle and eventually pulling up on
Sheltered Bay beach. We went for a long walk along the beach and saw a few
small sting rays and a baby turtle.
On the walk back to the dingy we chatted with a few
fishermen who were elated after just catching a 20kg yellow fin tuna. On the
run back out to Sirocco we hit a sting ray. (Sorry mate)
The road out to Steep Point must have been improved a lot as
I am amazed how many people are getting out there now and camping all along the
coast. There are even two nice looking houses that have been built right on the
water. There is a small ferry that operates to Dirk Hartog Island and a few
fishing charter boats picking people up to take them outside of steep point.
As Cam & Billy from Jandu were leaving today, we decided
to motor over to them and say goodbye. It turned out they decided to stay
another day and they invited us onto their lovely traditional yacht for a coffee and we chatted for an hour and a
half then headed back to Sirocco.
We decided we would head off and start looking around Shark
Bay and so we set sail for Useless Inlet after a quick swim.
The little breeze we had dropped off to nothing and the sea glassed out.
It was so beautiful and within the first hour we saw six
dugong basking in the sun and dozens of dolphins. The water was crystal clear
and as most of Shark Bay is, very shallow. I was skirting the edge of the
channel in three to five meters so we could see the seabed and see fish and
sting rays as we passed.
The entrance into Useless Inlet was very tricky as
there are numerous sand bars and narrow channels, strong currents and the
Navionics charts on both Sirocco and the newer version on my phone were very
inaccurate which made navigation rather challenging.
The DPI and Admiralty charts I had were not much help either
as there is a lot of inadequately surveyed areas. We had one small drama where I had
to use Google Earth imagery to navigate through some small channels to make our
way to our anchorage for the night, where there was a shallow area to
negotiate.
The depth decreased to about 1.8 meters giving only about a
meter under the hulls which was very stressful until I managed to find my way
back into the deeper water once again and continue on to our anchorage where we
dropped the pick just on sunset.
This site is called Wilya Mia and was one of the largest and
most significant pearling camps in the late 19th century. Tomorrow
we plan to motor over in the dingy to explore the old ruins and see what's there.
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