Morning Has Broken: The Kimberley

 

Luckily, nothing else has broken on the boat, so far!  After the first 8 hours of waves over the beam the boat is covered in salt again, then we get a call from Canberra that an EPIRB has been activated in our vicinity (they know this from our AIS) so Peter got the coordinates and we were asked to search a 2 nm radius.  He called the other 2 boats to turn starboard 40 degrees and start the search, not knowing what kind of vessel or how many people were involved.

We soon spotted and upturned tinny with 2 blokes clinging to the hull, circled around and dropped our sails then manoeuvred as close as possible with ladder down and throw rope out.  They’d been in the water about half an hour, had lost everything except one wallet and the EPIRB.  The skipper was relatively calm but the passenger was going into shock by the time we got him aboard, so I grabbed some towels to wrap around him and gave them both some water.  They only had a few scratches but were not injured so Rescue Helicopter asked if we would take them back to Dundee Beach where the Water Police would meet us.  As we anchored the Water Police arrived and took them to shore and waiting families.

Returning to our trip across the Bonaparte Gulf, known by yachties as the “Blown Apart Gulf”, we anchored at Blaze Point which was much calmer by then, and left early again to catch up with Duet, ExHale and Nomad Davina for the overnight sail across the gulf in fairly light winds and mostly calm seas (a nice change!).

First light in WA and we could see the ancient rock escarpments of the Kimberley, what stories they could tell over thousands of years.

We passed Uncle and Aunt Islands and reached Reveley Island to await the tide to head into the Berkley River.  Just one small croc was sunbaking at the edge of the mangroves, so we decided not to go ashore, apart from being exhausted.  Now for the real start to the Kimberley adventure: into the Berkley River.  The charts are dodgy up here and Navionics had us motoring across the banks and escarpments, which was a bit of a worry!