Tuesday 16th July 2019 –Cape Leveque to Cygnet Bay

The alarm went off at 05:00 but I was reluctant to get out of bed as I had a healthy fear of today's passage to Sygnet Bay via the dreaded Escape passage.

This is the treacherous passage between Sunday Island and the mainland that Stokes named after Phillip Parker King who got sucked through backwards in his sailing ship, swirling around in whirlpools out of control narrowly missing rocks and reefs while surveying the area.

It is advised to only transit the passage during neep tides at slack water and the Admiralty pilot stipulated local knowledge is mandatory. As well as this, the wind was forecasted to be around twenty knots right on the nose.

What could possibly go wrong ?

We headed out of the anchorage at 06:45 into a twenty-four-knot head wind and instantly I was doing nine and a half knots. I’m guessing the current must be around five knots as we headed for the funnel of Karrakatta passage.

At times it seemed we were not moving at all, yet the GPS told me our speed over ground was ten knots. It was such a weird sensation then all of a sudden as we were spat out of the Karrakatta passage the sea rose up as the current fought against the wind and swell.

We were thrown around in the washing machine and there was nothing you could do but keep going. Fifteen minutes later we had to veer to starboard directly into the wind and the main sail started to flog and the boom swung violently from side to side and I had to go on deck and drop the main asap.

It was too rough to secure the main and, in the rush, I forgot to tighten the lazy jacks, so the main looked like a pile of dirty washing hanging over the boom as we were sucked into Escape passage.

Once in the passage, the sea state calmed off, so I climbed up onto the cockpit roof and tidied up the main. We were flying along at times up to fourteen knots surrounded by whirlpools and crazy tidal streams.

Speed over ground is 14.2 knots into a 25 knot head wind !!

It was exciting and we were totally in control as long as we continued in the one direction. The bottom on the sounder was also crazy, going from eighty meters up to twenty meters and back down to fifty meters almost following the rugged terrain above the water.

The whole time we had Fonster with us and eventually he passed us and led the way. After an hour we were eventually spat out into King Sound doing a crazy sixteen knots into a twenty-four-knot head wind.

The exit was violent tidal streams and whirlpools that eventually smoothed out as we turned to starboard and headed to Cygnet Bay. By now we had a favourable fifteen knot breeze, so I turned off the engine and rolled out the jib for a pleasant sail for the last five miles.

As we approached Sygnet Bay, there were pearl lines everywhere and I had to be very careful not to get thousands of dollars worth of pearls tangled around my propeller’s.

I dropped the pick near Fonster at Shenton Bluff in eight meters of water. It was a nice sheltered location as it was forecasted to blow twenty-four knots tonight.

Right away a bloke in a large RIB motored over and asked us is we were interested in doing a tour of the pearl farm or a boat tour and we said we wanted to go ashore to have lunch at the pearl farm.

As it was a hassle launching our dinghies and allowing for the big tides, so we asked the pearl farm if we could pay them for a pick up and drop off and they said sure, $300, so we then decided to launch our dinghies.

We drove the couple of kilometres into the homestead and right into a film shoot and got asked to “get out of the fu@%$ way”. Not sure what that was all about, but we got told to leave our dinghies in the mangroves out of the filming.

It must have been some sort of promo for the pearl farm, and there was a huge film truck and dozens of very important movie people all over the place. We didn’t care and just strolled in anyway.

We ordered lunch and a few drinks at the restaurant and took a stroll around the homestead and viewed pearls in their gallery. We were all wanting to go swimming in their beautiful pool, but a cold wind was blowing and the pool was icy cold. Putu went for a quick dip and got out very quickly.

We hung around for a while chatting and eventually decided to go back to the boats. By then the tide had gone out a fair bit and we had to drag both dinghies back into the water which was hard work.

It was a long-wet ride back to the boats and I dropped Putu off on Fonster for the afternoon while I went fishing. I caught a couple of GT’s and then got busted off by a large mangrove jack, loosing another lure, but I had a great time anyway.

By now it was an hour before low tide and my dinghy was starting to get sucked out by the massive current, so I headed back to Fonster to pick up Putu.

Whilst on Fonster, I enjoyed a beer with Garry before heading back to Sirocco for the evening. We enjoyed another feed of my massive mackerel as we listened to all the strange sounds outside in the calm conditions.

I updated my blog as this may be the last phone signal we receive until we reach Darwin in September.

Track Sirocco’s progress

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