Thursday 25th July 2019 – Raft Point to Red Cone Creek to Raft Point

Fonster departed Raft point around 06:00 heading for Montgomery reef then onto Kingfisher Island while we slept in and I had an early morning fish on the low tide.

I only caught some small trevally which I threw back. We waited for the tide to turn so we could go with the current the ten miles east to Red Cone Creek.

We arrived at Red Cone Creek around 15:30 and right away I went trolling up a couple of the creeks near the top of the tide and this place looks really creepy and I was on edge the whole time looking out for croc's.  I checked out Sapphire Falls and it was dry, so I didn’t bother climbing up to look for water holes.

Two charter boats arrived while I was out fishing and they launched a heap of tenders which all headed off towards Ruby falls.

I went back to Sirocco and re-fuelled the dinghy before heading off again to look for ruby falls. It was a long way up a mangrove crock infested creek where finally the mangroves give way to a nice rock canyon where a small waterfall was flowing.

On the way in there was a three-meter croc watching me on the surface and as I headed over towards him, by the time I got my camera out and turned on he had submerged. Must have been camera shy, I guess?

I tied the dinghy to the rock wall and climbed up to the first water hole. It was nice and clear but there was no way I was swimming in there as a salty could easily climb up in there during spring tides.

The waterfall was flowing quite hard and up above it there was another smaller waterfall and beyond the smaller waterfall was a series of beautiful crystal-clear ponds with water lilies.

I walked back to the large pond and had a lovely swim washing my cloths at the same time. The water was beautiful, and I could have stayed there all day.

After a nice long swim, I wandered back to the dinghy taking lots of photos and by now the tide had turned and it would also be getting close to sunset by the time I got back to Sirocco, so I had better start making tracks.

The croc was nowhere to be seen when I got back to the dinghy and I was sure he was waiting for me underneath it, so I jumped in and got the hell away from there.

I couldn’t resist casting a few lures before I departed and bugger me my lure snapped off, so I had to go and retrieve it, then sit there threading the line and tying it back on, all of which seemed to take hours and in slow motion when all I could think of was that dam crocodile biting the side of my inflatable dinghy.

Finally, I got the job done and off I went. No barra for dinner once again, but I had a fantastic time. It was a fast twenty-minute dinghy ride back to Sirocco, and I decided to head off back to Raft point for the night and to get an early start off up the coast tomorrow.

Its unwise to travel at night in uncharted waters in the Kimberly, but I followed my track in and used Radar to get back to where I was anchored the past two nights previous and I dropped the anchor back in the same hole.

My only concern was hitting a drifting log, but it was only eleven miles back and all went well.

Dave from Fonster gave me a call on the way back and we chatted for a while before losing communications. They were anchored up at Kingfisher Island.

Once back at Raft point, we had dinner and an early night. The midgies were really bad once again, so we locked ourselves inside with the fan going once again.

Track Sirocco’s progress

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