TripSailor.com® Sailing Blogs

We left our anchorage shortly after dawn and made our way back up the King George river. Took us an hour to reach the mouth again and along the way we were delighted with the early morning light on the sandstone faces of the rock. We managed a few photos with the reflection in the water creating a near mirror image. Coming out over the sandbar was very easy with an extra metre of water under our keels. We ran across a Nautitech 44 catamaran at the entrance, preparing to rush off South to Geraldton.

We were a little more leisurely and took our time calling into Calamity Bay where the M/V Koolama was bombed by the Japanese in WW2 and where the passengers got off and camped for the night before a bunch of them set off by foot to Drysdale mission, 75 kilometres away.

Coming ashore ourselves, we spotted crocodile tracks and droppings and Rob thought he saw a tail in the water. We didn’t need any more convincing to get back in the dingy and hightail out of there. Back on the boat, we headed for Cape Londonderry, the northern most point of WA. On the way, Royce decided he’d drop the dingy whilst we were still doing 6 knots and go and do some exploring along the coast. Royce had a “Love Me Tender” moment as things went awry with the dingy tipped completely sideways still hanging from the davits, with Royce hanging off the back of the boat and shoes disappearing into the ocean. We managed to restore order and Royce went off in the now upright dingy to retrieve the missing footwear. Amazingly we retrieved everything in the dingy except for one shifter (which we had in there as our main weapon against crocs).

Royce pulled alongside and then headed off with Deborah to explore some of the beaches and reefs as we stayed on board tracking the coast a couple of nautical miles out. Royce and Deborah came back to the boat with stories of turtles, great coral and dolphins as well as an unnamed island. After consulting the charts and confirming that it didn’t have a name, Royce declared it (some would say unofficially) Deborah Island. Deborah described her island as luscious and exotic with abundant food sources. She didn’t want to give away anything more as she didn’t want to attract any of the low rent types (see below). 

The rest of the day was spent cruising round Cape Londonderry and towards our anchorage for the night at Sir Graham Moore Island. On the way we were buzzed by a customs plane, who we called up by VHF and let them know what we were up to. Heading towards Graham Moore Island we passed by what could only be described as a low rent island called “Kim Island” (which Google Maps amazingly knows about). Kim tried to play it up into something it clearly wasn’t and immediately put it up for sale, rattling off some impressive real estate talk – the only one that got some bite was Kim Island came with its own mobile security force. Deborah was clearly unimpressed saying her island was clearly much better. This “my island is better than yours” banter went on for quite some time as we all sat up the front on the trampolines and watched the sun go down.

We made the anchorage a little later than we wanted to, about 10 minutes after the sun set beneath the waves and preceded to lower the levels of beer, wine and some Myers Rum that Deb had bought in Singapore. Royce worked out that Kim Island was 2.1 nautical miles away and the capital of Kim Island was 2.3 nautical miles away – he seemed quite chuffed we these facts. The night was hot and muggy and  air-conditioning soon came on so those down stairs could sleep. Didn’t make it up to Rob who had once again claimed the top of the cabin roof as his sleeping spot.