Herald Bight was so enchanting that we ended up staying there for several more days after we last wrote.
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| Exploring the Herald Bight mangroves |
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| The gang on the spit at Herald Bight |
As always, we were watching the weather forecasts and as the
south easterlies freshened again we let go of the plan to go to Monkey Mia and
further south on that side of Shark Bay in favour of staying in the sheltered
shallows of Herald Bight. Here we were surrounded
by curious turtles, leaping dolphins, all kinds of shore birds foraging at low
tide, the usual small sharks and rays, and onshore emus, kangaroos and feral
goats wandering the beach.
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| Great Egret |
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| Eastern Reef Egret - grey morph |
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| A poised Pied Oyster Catcher |
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| What is this? |
Shelter from the Sunday Storm
With a forecast north easterly change in a few days, it was time to head back around to Denham on
the other side of Cape Peron, pick up our mail and groceries and seek better
shelter from the north. By then the forecast
was starting to look a bit ‘fresh’ and had become Tropical Cyclone Mangga
heading straight for Shark Bay and teaming up with a south-west front to create
nasty weather all down the coast of WA. With 60 knots (120km/hr) winds forecast
on the Sunday we needed good all-round shelter.
After considering our own knowledge of Shark Bay and
consulting a couple of experienced local seafarers, we headed over to the aptly
named Sunday Bay at the south end of Dirk Hartog Island. This is a great sheltered anchorage with the island
providing protection from the northeast to west and south, and a shallow weed
bank on the east keeping the swell out. This
was Friday so we had plenty of time to prepare ourselves for our first cyclone.
We dropped our trusty super-sized big anchor at the northern
end of the bay and buried it completely in nice white sand with lots of chain
out and extra lines (snubbers) securing it to the boat. Our second anchor was hanging from the bow
ready to go just ‘in case’. We took all
the sails and covers down and stored them below to reduce windage, and anything
loose or flappy on deck was stowed or securely lashed. Phones, radios, headlight torches charged. Safety gear checked. Everything shipshape and all ready for the ride!
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| Stripped and ready for the storm |
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| Storm anchor set up |
Saturday was that lovely calm stillness before the
storm. Sunday morning the wind started
to build from the north-east and brought an incredible red dust storm from the
desert reducing visibility to a few hundred metres at best. The northerly winds were gusting up to 50
knots by lunchtime but we were snug in the bay and spent the time loafing
around in the cabin reading, cooking and resting in between checks on deck to
make sure everything was okay – and watching the poor odd bird trying to make
some headway.
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| Dust storm and 40 knots |
By mid-afternoon the wind dropped and the red dust turned to light red muddy rain. Finally, the wind swung to the west bringing heavy rain to wash all the dust off – with a bit of assistance from Mr Flottmann’s deck scrubber - and even put a bit of clean rainwater in our tanks.
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| Muddy red rain |
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| Scrubbing the decks mid storm |
We then had a night of 40 knot (80km/hr) south-westerly winds
and woke on Monday morning to a very benign feeling 25 knots. All was well on our good little ship Upstart.
Carnarvon
A few weeks later we now find ourselves in Carnarvon, a
medium sized town by rural Australian standards at the northern end of Shark
Bay. It wasn’t on our bucket-list for a
stopover but during the course of routine boat jobs, Chris found some worrying
corrosion in our chainplate bolts. The chainplates are stainless steel plates
embedded in the boat that the rigging wires attach to and are an essential bit
of kit for holding the mast up – not something that you want to have fail out
on the high seas!
We needed to find somewhere we could go with the facilities
to have the mast removed. The choices
were Carnarvon about 70 miles north, or Geraldton 180 miles south. Carnarvon was clearly our preference being
north and having a small friendly yacht club, however the channel into the
Fascine (the estuary in town where the yacht club is) is very shallow and officially closed
having silted up in a big storm in 2017, so we were unsure if we could get
in. By chance we met Lee from Carnarvon
Yacht Club on his catamaran in Herald Bight and he assured us that we’d have
‘no worries’ with our keel up at 1 metre and the right tide.
We said a final farewell to Denham and headed north with an
overnight stopover at the beautiful big Broadhurst Bay just south west of Cape
Peron.
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| The first human footsteps on the beach at Broadhurst Bay since the storm |
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| Poor drowned echidna - victim of the storm |
Arriving in Carnarvon at dusk, we
anchored outside the channel for the night and set off in the dinghy the next
day to explore the way into the Fascine and check out the yacht club. With our trusty oar as a depth sounder we
plotted a course over the bar and through the channel with enough water depth
that would see us safely through on a high tide.
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| Where the Fascine channel was before the 2017 storm |
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| Baby ospreys watching the boats go by from their nest atop a channel marker |
The following morning we had perfect conditions for our adventure across the bar and came through with plenty of water underneath us. We certainly turned a few heads when we arrived at the yacht club as we are probably the first big monohull to come in since the 2017 storm. Comments like "how the hell did you get in?" and then the "aha" moment when they learned of our lifting keel – a rarity in yachts of our size in Australia.
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| Through the shallow shifting sand banks into Carnarvon |
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| Tucked in the Carnarvon Yacht Club |
We were welcomed at the club with great friendliness,
allocated a pen in their new floating dock marina with all the facilities and
offered all the help we could possibly need. There's a great bunch of interesting old blokes here
who work tirelessly for their club. They
have been running their own dredger for the last two years to make a channel
out of the fascine, restoring old Windrush 14 surfcats to build a racing fleet,
rebuilding marina walls, plus loads of other projects.
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| Exploring the Fascine on foot |
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| Succulent samphire thriving in the river delta |
Carnarvon
although only having a population of around 4,500 is the centre of the Gascoyne
region and services the mining, pastoral, plantation and fishing industries. It has a good array of shops and small businesses for all the services, bits and bobs
we need for the job ahead. We are now waiting for the crane to come and lift
the mast sometime this week.
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| Hope this is not the crane we have booked |
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| Old Carnarvon tramway station |
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| Freight train |
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| with rolling stock |
We expect to have the mast off for a week or so then be ready to head off again in early July, when the next full moon high tides occur. Meanwhile, we are enjoying Carnarvon and the lovely winter weather of warm sunny days, light winds and cool clear nights. With such great facilities and people, we have joined the yacht club and plan to come back and base ourselves here for the summer cyclone season after exploring Ningaloo and the Montebello Islands this winter.
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| Little welcome swallows trying to move on-board |
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| Plotting the next leg up the coast |
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| Another gorgeous sunset |
