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The alarm went at 5.45am on the Raymarine and I quickly went down to wake Royce. Royce doesn’t wake easily or quickly after a late night at Squatters Arms but he did eventually rise and off we went on an outgoing tide to try and make it into Crocodile Creek before too much water ran out. We got their just in time and Royce brilliantly navigated his way through the narrow channel, avoiding the rocks and the shallow sections to get us anchored and tried up to the rock wall behind the waterfall. By this stage most of the crew had managed to wake up and were amazed to see where we were. The creek bed behind us was starting to dry up and we were effectively trapped until the 10m tide filled up the creek again.

Still weary from the night before, we made the world’s shortest dingy ride from the back of Camelot to the ladder that went up to the top of the waterfall. We rigged up ropes so we could just pull the dingy back and forth easily and quickly.

Our first task was to tie up the buoy that had carved out “Camelot – Nov 2008” at the shelter on top of the falls along with memorabilia from other boats that had visited the shelter. Jane had skilfully painted Camelot’s logo on the buoy and it was quite a work of art. The ceremonial proceedings over, we then went on a walk up second waterfall and along the ridge to get a money shot of Camelot against the waterfall, landlocked at the end of a dry creek – what  a  sight.

We came back down, had a swim at the top of the first waterfall and got back and board and watched a bit of “Monty Python and the Holy Grail” to reacquaint ourselves with the origin of “Camelot”. We also tried to see if we could get TV reception from Koolan Island as the Melbourne Cup was on – no luck there.

The tide eventually came in – we watched it until it covered the rocks that Royce pointed out, which meant we had enough water to exit the creek and we were off to Silica Beach. We managed to do a bit of sailing as we tacked between Cockatoo Island and the mainland, but eventually had to motor sail as where we were going was on the nose.   

We tacked our way between Cockatoo Island and the mainland, eventually turning on an engine when the tide started to run against us. Everything is about the tides in this part of the world. We got to Silica Beach on Hidden Island in mid-afternoon. It was a pretty little beach with pure white squeaky sand. Having Beached the dingy, we decided that it was a white wine sort of beach so back we went back to Camelot for some Sauvignon Blanc and some glasses. Another perfect afternoon in the Kimberleys.

From there it was sailing time as we set off across King Sound on our way to the Lacepede Islands. As we sailed across the sound, some of us went up the front behind the tramps and let the odd wave wash over us as it broke through the trampolines.  This is the life.

Day turned into night as the moon came up with Venus close by. It created a nice shimmer across the water as we made our way supposedly south, but quite often towards Africa as we tried to get out far enough so that when we tacked we’d miss a couple of reefs on the way back. Well, we eventually tacked and found we still didn’t have enough room so on came one of the motors.  That put an end to a wonderful nights sail as the motor stayed through the night.