From Two Rocks we had two full days of sailing, including an overnight stop in Lancelin, to Jurien Bay which was another nice little town on the WA coast. The humans explored the town a little and I kept track of things at the marina.
After a few days we had a window of reasonable weather for our sail up to Shark Bay. Tuesday night we had a nice roast chicken dinner on board and we departed on a Wednesday morning after breakfast. The conditions weren't too bad although there was consistently more wind than forecast. We didn't carry too much sail as we didn't want to go around Steep Point in the dark, so slowing ourselves down was the trick...quite a different mentality to racing.
About 48 hours of sailing brought us to Steep Point and once across the little bar we were pretty happy sailors to see the beautiful flat blue waters in Shark Bay. The only trouble we had on the trip up was a little encounter with a cray pot.
We really enjoyed relaxing for a few days. The time we spent preparing Basanti in Fremantle was so busy and stressful. Never seemed to be enough time to get everything done (and we didn't!) or see everyone we wanted to see before our departure. We have actually managed to get a lot of the little jobs done on our trip north and test out all our new equipment. So far, we have greatly appreciated all the changes we made to Basanti...the water maker is a real treat, but so is having all the wind and solar power to run everything with, and I could go on about the wonderful extras to the boat, but I won't. Suffice to say, getting all that salt and stuff out of my fur is much easier than I'd anticipated.
Shark Bay is a pretty remote place. We were anchored near a national park where folks come and set up a fishing camp for a week or so on the beach. There is no power, water or rubbish disposal/collection. If you walk to the top of one of the hills, you can occasionally pick up some phone coverage with Telstra, so we were pretty out of touch for the 10 days we were there. Of course our friends on Tigress Too were anchored nearby and we hiked around the park to the lighthouse, the cliffs and up and down countless hills. We'd occasionally talk to the fishermen and try and glean some info about where to catch something good, and one day we went to the rangers house. Swimming didn't seem as popular with Chris as usual. One morning a sea snake popped up right behind Basanti, and then all those sharks...the only swimming that happened was right off the beach.
Sunday night we had visitors. How odd, to anchor in this remote location and actually run across folks you know. Actually, not so odd. Earlier this year was the Fremantle to Bali race and some of the boats are returning now to Fremantle, and some never quite got to Bali. Walk on the Wildside anchored just off our stern, so we invited Garth and the delivery crew over for a pasta dinner. They appreciated the hot food as much as we appreciated the news and gossip from Fremantle and our sailing community. Poor Wildside lost her mast on the way to Bali. Apparently the Longboat
We were thinking of going over to Dirk Hartog Island when the weather changed...we had thunderstorms for a couple of days and then the high winds set in for several more days. The wind was just relentless...we were making so much power on Basanti we ran our water maker just to use some of it some days. Finally, on Monday came a break in the wind and we were able to sail up to Denham. It was time to find a few fresh tomatoes and things, as in the three weeks since we left Fremantle we've used most of our fresh things up. On the way to Denham we were surprised to finally catch a nice big fish!! A mackerel. We had delicious fish burgers for lunch and Tuesday night had fish curry. Jean, on Tigress Too, also had some luck with the fishing and Monday night we all had freshly caught dinner aboard Tigress Too. Yum.
Not going to try and upload any photos now, so you'll have to wait for the photographic proof of the fish and of course of the cakes and things we've been making. Hope to be in touch a bit more now that we've move on from Steep Point.
No comments:
Post a Comment