It blew 16 – 20 knots for some time in the night, but the
Wilya Mia anchorage was nice and calm with good holding. After breakfast we
went for a short dingy ride to shore to take a look at the old pearling camp.
There wasn’t much there but it was interesting just the
same. All that was left was the main building slab and upright columns as well
as the old wood stove, an old windlass, lots of broken bottles and heaps of
pearl shells everywhere you look.
What was interesting was the small size of the pearl shells
compared to the ones in Broome.
There was lots of interesting bits and pieces
on the beach also with lots of bronze nails, pieces of lead and I also found a large pistol
shell.
There was also some anchor chain that had been sitting there
for a hundred years that had returned back into iron ore.
After this, we pulled anchor and headed off down to the
bottom of Useless Inlet to check out a possible anchorage for the night in an
inlet at the end of the causeway. Useless Loop salt works have cut off the southern end of the
inlet with several causeways for their salt evaporation ponds.
After a pleasant two our run in windless conditions, we
arrived at the inlet and anchored Sirocco in two meters of water, then went
exploring in the dingy. We saw heaps of baby turtles in the shallows and plenty
of sting rays, small sharks and lots of fish.
I dragged a popper around while we were exploring hoping to
jag a queeny or mangrove jack, but never got a touch. We ventured up a mangrove
lined creek for about a mile before it got too shallow. I reckon you would get
a few crabs out of the area, but we decided to keep moving.
We up anchored and headed all the way back out of Useless
Inlet with a plan on heading to Boat Haven Loop. It was a lovely cruise back
out in breathless conditions with a few dolphins riding the bow wave.
The norther end of the inlet has lots of sand bars and
shallow channels to negotiate and it was rather stressful at times. My
Navionics charts on both Sirocco and on my phone were very inaccurate in a lot
of places and once again I relied on Google Earth imagery on OpenCPN.
By the time we got to Cape Heirisson, time was running out,
so I made the call to anchor in the lee of the cape for the night in three
meters.
With a beautiful sunset, Putu went to take a shower and very
quickly discovered we had just ran out of water, so for the first time we had
to start up the reverse osmosis water maker to fill the tanks.
It was a noisy evening as it took about five hours to fill our
two 350 litre tanks, but at least we had TV reception and mobile phone coverage
to pass the time.
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