A few weeks in Dampier

We’ve been anchored off Dampier for about three weeks and we are ready to go, but need to wait just a little longer.  Our cruising permit for Indonesia isn’t valid until Aug 19 and of course we will time things so that we sail in favourable weather.

So what does one do in Dampier??  Dampier is a tiny town with a small and expensive grocer, no post office, no banks, one pub, a bowling club and the sailing club.  Wednesday and Friday nights we can go to the sailing club for happy hour and we generally have dinner there on Fridays.  Sundays we go to the ‘all you can eat’ BBQ at the pub and then, having exhausted the entertainment options in Dampier we look forward to our weekly shopping excursions to Karratha.  Having no car, one of the weekly highlights is the Tuesday bus to Karratha.

Karratha is pretty remote, about 1000 miles from Perth and it is a town of about 16,000.  The prices are pretty outrageous.  Fuel (gas or petrol) is about $1.66 per liter or about $6.30 per gallon.  Stopped at McDonalds in Karratha one day to use the free wifi for some computer downloads and saw an Angus burger for just over $12.00 and a cheeseburger for over $5.00.  Beer wasn't too bad...here in Dampier we could get a 30 can block for $55.00 but over in Karratha the same thing was $37.00, and they had 24 can packs of coke at 2 for $33.00.  Nice cheeses are a few dollars more than in Perth too (and yes…we thought the prices in Perth were high after 14 months in the USA).  We saw ears of corn and zucchini for $1.98 each (yes, each ear, each little zucchini) and we are so grateful to the plantation owner in Carnarvon who loaded us up with so many beautiful (and free!) fruits and veggies which have lasted well and we are still eating.  I don't think anything is grown up here...it all comes from Perth.  Oddly, even though most things are grown up near Carnarvon, it is all trucked to Perth and then back on trucks to the grocery stores around the state…including Carnarvon.  How weird is that?!

Karratha is all about the mining...no other reason for it's existence.  There is a big north west shelf oil and gas project (one of the world's largest LNG producers), and salt mining in addition to the HUGE iron ore mining.  They can load 10,000 tons an hour per ship and fill a ship in 24 to 36 hrs with iron ore, and they load about 4 ships at a time on one jetty.  There is also the largest privately owned rail system in Australia up here, and it is exclusively for hauling the iron ore to the ports. 

One recent day we entertained ourselves by removing one of the major plumbing pipes (lg hoses) which connects the aft toilet with the thru hull fitting at the rear of the boat.  It is about 9 ft of hose and it was completely blocked with calcified material.  Now it is clear and the toilet flushes.  We were expecting a visitor on the weekend and thought maybe we should figure out what the problem was with the plumbing in that bathroom.

We’ve (primarily Phil) recently been engaged in the installation of some new batteries.  Long story, but we ordered 3 new 165 amp deep cycle batteries for our house bank...two 220's are coming out and we have another two 80's in there.  Chris and I have to help...those things are really heavy!!  The 165's weigh 46 kg each, and we are barely able to lift the 220's.  We managed to get them out without messing up our backs.  Bears really don’t do manual labor.

When not engaged in boat maintenance, eating seems to preoccupy Phil and Chris.  Phil's been testing a variety of bread recipes.  Yum.

 

As I mentioned, we had a visitor on the weekend.  Every Friday night, since we left Fremantle, Jean, Jerry, Phil and Chris get together in some pub or sailing club and take our photo and send it to John saying, "here we are...where are you?"  I guess it finally got to him.  John flew up on Friday and turned up at the sailing club with his rental car.  He lives on a boat so staying with us wasn’t a new or unusual drama for him (aside from having to share a cabin with a bear).  We visited the nearby sights and enjoyed his stay.
Here we are in checking out some of the old buildings and the old harbour in Cossack.

We ran across this sailing club out here too.  Looked pretty desolate but it must get busy on other weekends.  There were three vessels out the back on the hard.


One final note...WHO has been drinking my RUM??!!!

The leg to Dampier

 Today we experimented with a new way of preparing the blog post.
These photos are from Serrurier Island, where we had a picnic on the beach and then go through our cruising over to Dampier.  We had a good range of conditions...one day some nice down wind sailing where we put on the pole, and another day we were even able to fly our spinnaker.
   
Another day we saw the demise of another bottle of Mount Gay Rum.  Chris hardly shares any of that with Phil or I.  Below is a photo of the three of us enjoying happy hour on Basanti.  We stopped at Onslow and had Sunday Roast with Jerry and Jean at the pub.

  
We all behaved ourselves so as not to be banned.
   
Along the way Phil fished and caught a few mackerel, yum, and did some splicing jobs.  Never a lack of things to do on the boat.
We passed a big dredging and works area not far from Onslow, and Chris has the job of filleting fish.
  

Closer to Dampier are all the iron ore and salt ships. 
  

We are all pleased with the reception in Dampier...friendly sailing club with showers and laundry facilities and even a nice dinghy dock.  The weather is warm and we look forward to exploring a few more islands and bays before heading to Indonesia.
  

Beyond the North West Cape

We've finally sailed past the North West Cape.  Fifty hours of sailing took us from Carnarvon north and around the cape to Serrurier Island, a small island just north east of Exmouth.  We saw a few whales but as soon as a camera is at hand, the whales disappear, however we managed to catch two tuna during the trip.

Three days at anchor in the bay at Serrurier was pleasant and we enjoyed a bit of time ashore exploring and looking for turtles.  Yesterday we sailed over to Onslow and are currently anchored just off the pub.  It is Sunday, so we will meet the Tigress Too crew for Sunday roast dinner around lunch time.

En route to Onslow we sailed through a busy dredging operation and an oil and gas mining operation.  Our AIS beeps all the time now with the proximity to oil rigs and workboats up here.

Happy 4th of July for while we were out sailing.

One last comment form Carnarvon...

Well...we hope this is our last post from Carnarvon. 

We went walking the other day and ran across this...

 

What??

59 catapillers in a row all following the leader.  One of the odd things we see here.  Later we had afternoon tea out in the bush near the Gascoyne river.

 

 Before departing Carnarvon we've completed a variety of jobs on Basanti.  Chris looks after the winches, taking care not to drop parts overboard.  No way would anything every be found at the bottom of the murky boat harbour here.  Phil installed a dual fuel filter system and now we're ready to go north. 

 

 

 

Plantation visit

We thought we'd seen everything there was to see in Carnarvon, but yesterday we had a real treat.  Dean and Sue invited us out to see their plantation.  Dean keeps his fishing boat in the boat harbour where we are currently moored, thus we are temporary neighbors and Phil struck up a conversation with him.  Dean came and collected the four of us from the boat harbour and we drove out across the Gascoyne River and out to his farm.  They raise Capsicum (Peppers), and our mouths watered at the sight of so many beautiful vegetables growing on the vines.  You have to see it to believe it.

After a good tour of all the crops we enjoyed a delicious afternoon tea and then we filled boxes with capsicum, chillis, tomatos, citrus fruits, avacados, custard apples and more.  Both of our boats are overflowing with fresh fruits and vegetables, just in time for our departure.  A huge thank you to Dean and Sue.

 

Some folks you just can't take anywhere...

 

 

Once we got everything home we had plenty to do.  Most of the fruits and veggies were washed in a disinfecting solution to retard spoilage...obviously refrigeration on the boats is a bit limited.  Chillies were strung up for drying and peppers were slices and roasted for preserving in jars. 

 

 

On both Basanti and Tigress Too, stuffed peppers have featured on the menu.  Yum...delish.

Photos from Shark Bay

Limited internet and phone access at Steep Point prevented loading photos, so while we are in Carnarvon I'm loading a few.

 

One day the crews of Basanti and Tigress Too decided a walk to the lighthouse was in order.  Got us all off boats and exercising.  There are plenty of sand tracks to walk along, and we went up and down for hours before finally reaching the lighthouse.  What a disappointing little lighthouse...what a lonely little thing.

 

 The scenery was nice, brilliant blue ocean and bay and even spotted a few roos near the cliffs.

 We thought we'd never get here.

 

After the storms and big winds, we headed to Denham (written about in previous posts) and caught some fish!  Go Phil...yum!

 

Chris has to deal with the killing and filleting once Phil catches one.

 Once in Carnarvon is was time to relax.

 One day we went out to see the Museum of space and technology.  In the 1960's NASA had a tracking station here (just outside of Carnarvon).  It was a pretty large facility but shut down in the '80's and now becoming a museum.

 There are still a few huge antennae around the facility.

 

The weather is looking good next week for us to sail further along to the north.  We'll keep you posted.  Is anyone out there actually reading this??

Shark Bay

We finally have some phone coverage!  No fancy internet connection, but at least I can write a little update.

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.