Port Keats to Wyndham

Sunday 15^th June 2014 – Port Keats to Munda Beach – 14°8’ 158” S  129°28’ 798” E

Got up early so we could make a start around the island today.  Took off at 8:00AM to catch the newly outgoing tide, and made about five knots until we turned the corner around the island, when the tide was against us and we slowed down to 4 knots.  Took us five hours to get around the island to an anchorage point near enough land to get ashore.  The Mustang put some scones in the oven for our visitors, but the oven has decided it doesn’t want to stay lit now, so the scones went to feed the local fish.  Must put fixing that on the list.

Monday 16^th June 2014 – Munda Beach to Yelche Beach – 14° 18’ 529” S  129° 23’ 520” E

Turns out the anchorage we had at Munda Beach is really rolly and crap, so we took off as soon as the wind died down enough (otherwise we would have been going into the wind and across the current – not fun).  There are some nice sand dunes here, but lots of smoke from black lightning fires.  Still, we’ll stay here for a day or two until we have ideal conditions on Wednesday to get to the head of the Victoria River.

 The smoke from all the fires make for some interesting shades at sunset…

Tuesday 17^th June 2014 – Yelche Beach still

Took the Mustang and Buffy the Barra Slayer to the beach today for a few hours – we’ve all been stuck on Charisma for three days and we all need some exercise and a walk on solid ground.  Buffy went schizo again – must have run about 20 kms around in circles and chasing her ball.  There’s no shade here, so we just laid in the sun, gathered some firewood (there’s lots of that) and started a fire.  We brought potato, onion, sweet potato, corn on the cob and pork steaks to cook on the fire (wrapped in foil of course).  What a great dinner!  Buffy the Barra Slayer had the leftovers – she even eats sweet potato!

Beach barbecue

Wednesday 18^th June 2014 – Yelche Beach to Entrance Island (Victoria River entrance)

15° 8’ 344” S  129° 40’ 282” E

Took off from Yelche Beach at turn of the tide this morning so we could time our entrance into the harbour to coincide with the current of the incoming tide.  This meant leaving at 4AM, but fortunately I don’t need as much beauty sleep as the Mustang.  Set everything up and had a nanna nap for an hour before we got into the harbour and I had to start watching for shallow sections.  This area seems to be really well marked and mapped out in Navionics.  Going with the current we got up to seven knots at one stage, but about an hour after coming into the river entrance the current turned against us again so we slowed right back to under 3 knots.  Frustratingly, it seems the current markers on Navionics are a bit out.  We’re going to time the change tonight to see if we can calculate the difference – we really need to be with the current for the next bit going into the river.  after we rounded the point south of Yelche Beach the water turned a lovely brown colour – reminiscent of the river in Roald Dahl’s Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.  Further into the river entrance this changes to a milky tea colour, but the water is still brown, so full of suspended solids with the heavy tide movements.

 Goodbye Blue water and welcome to the south of the Bonaparte Gulf.  Milo anyone?

It took us nearly 12 hours to get here, but we made it.  Great sunset tonight, and leftovers for dinner (crab of course) along with a fresh loaf of Beer bread.  Still have to fix that oven, but made it work for the half hour we needed for the bread.

 Charisma in the Victoria River

Thursday 19^th June 2014 – Entrance Island to Goobaierl Bay – 15° 12’ 313” S 129° 48’ 497” E

Well the tide change brought us out at 8:30 this morning, at which time our depth gauge said we were in 5.0m of water.  The tide moved so fast that it was up to 8.0m by 9:30, and 11.0m at 11:30.  It was a bit rocky for a while as the speed picked up, but we don’t have the gauge set up to tell us how fast the water was moving.  Suffice to say that the bait we had in the water was pulling so hard we had to tighten the drag up several times.  It finally peaked at 11.5m around 12:30, so we gave it another half an hour and started our journey into the river proper.  We estimated that we had about two hours to get somewhere worth anchoring before the tide turned again, so we motored all the way.  With the tide movement we averaged about 7 knots coming in, until we got towards 3:00, when it slowed down.  The water in this river is up to 60m deep in some places, but down to under six metres in other places.  This is why we waited until high tide to come in.  We have anchored in what looks like Goobaierl Bay, at the southern end of it.  There’s rock in front of us and mangroves on the port side.  We’re hoping that when the tide moves it will miss us a bit as we are off centre to the river’s normal course.

While we are underway we usually have lures trolling.  This is Buffy monitoring the lines.  She’s a mad keen fisho… 

Once we were sure the anchor was set we put Merv in the water and I went out to set some crab pots.  There are mangroves and small creeks around us, so I took the reel with 2 deadly as well.  May as well see if there’s anything living in this water.  If not then it will be spaghetti for dinner tonight. 

Picturesque Goobaierl Bay.

Friday 20^th June 2014 – Goobaierl Bay to Black Point

We had a sleep in this morning, and surfaced when we turned around at 9:30.  The timings we have done the last three days seems to confirm that the tide times here are three hours behind those at Pelican Island (which is the nearest tide marker on Navionics).  After a couple of cups of coffee we took off in Merv for a trawl of the creek to see if there are any fish about.  Also wanted to show the Mustang the crocs I saw there yesterday, and we needed to grab the crab pots I had put out. 

The Hunter…

The trawling was unsuccessful – one bite that immediately spat out my lure, and nothing else.  Even the crocs had disappeared, although one of them was back in place when we came back out.  Unfortunately this was where I had left the crab pots.  He was obviously hungry because he had had a go at the float and at the pots, one of which is going to need some repairs before it can be used again.  Bloody crocs.

This is the best picture that the mustang took of the croc.  I think it looks like a stick…  In fact I’m sure it’s a stick… [Mustang: Yes, well, if someone who was driving Merv at the time was able to go in a straight line and not around in perpetually smaller circles, I might have got a decent photo - then it was "Grab the pot, grab the pot!"  So I grabbed the crab pot and gave up on the pictures.  I've only got two hands]

Back on Charisma we decided to go a bit further upriver and took off at 12:15 for a place called Black Point.  There’s a shallow section shown on Navionics (all blue) that we have to get across, so we have to do this now at high tide.  After raising the anchor we were doing over 5 knots with just the current moving us!  Only took us an hour to get to Black Point, but neither one of us liked the look of it as an anchorage.  On Navionics it looks like there’s a point you can sneak around behind to get away from the influence of the tide, but it’s really not there.  The mangroves have grown out too far and it doesn’t look sheltered at all, so we turned around and travelled across the river to a spot that would do until the tide turns and we can go back to where we were.

Saturday 21^st June    Holdfast Reach… Victoria River

Had a bit of a scout around today at low tide trying to get live bait. The mullet were too small for the throw net and my old net eventually disintegrated. 

 low tide bait casting… while the Mustang takes up basket weaving…

Seriously this plate holder has to last another 5 months.

So by the end of today I’m down a crab pot and a throw net.  I’ve managed to repair one of the crab pots that got chewed but another one has just disappeared.  The crocs really have an attitude problem here.  I eventually settled for bait fishing in a hole at the western end of this reach.  I had a 12 foot croc float up and stop about 30m from Merv and I.  He was sort of sizing up Merv.  Both about the same size so I started the motor and zipped around a bit and then the croc continued on floating downstream with the current. The only result for the morning was this gook gook. 

Beggars can’t be choosers so a couple of fillets and some fresh baits. 

The water is cold here (16^o) so it’s not surprising that there are not any Barra about.  They’ll be all upstream in the pools by now.  In fact the fishing has been disappointing.  This section of the Vic is big, wide and has very little structure.  There are very few places to land and that is at high tide only so we will start making our way out tomorrow at high tide.  It is about 3 hours behind the closest prediction at Pelican Island so I’ll be up at 6:00 to get underway.  Almost civilized…

 Holdfast Reach anchorage at high tide.

 

22^nd to 23rd June 2014 – Holdfast Reach Victoria River to Cape Domett  – 14° 49.710 S  128° 23.336’ E

no wind today…

In the end we just kept on going after getting out of the Victoria River and got in here just after 2am.  I’ve been here before so had a good idea of where to anchor.  Absolutely no wind at all the whole day so motored for just over 20 hours…

We had a bit of a break here…

Beach bbq

Climbed a few rocks…

turtle tracks…

Caught a few threadfin.  Nothing really big but just enough for a taste.  I’ve started using my lathe 20’ throw net.  You don’t have to see the bait. I just throw it and usually catch something every throw.  I’m calling it the Blitzkrieg technique.  Hardly seems fair…

Makes you want to just pensively scratch your sagacious chin…

 Buffy and the The Mustang pose for a cliché photo…

The anchorage here is good holding mud but is susceptible to the easterlies when they blow up.  We motored around to the other side one morning to escape it but by the time we got around there the wind had changed so we turned around and came back.  There are a lot of these guys washed up on the beach…

 I wonder what happened?

Other more earth shattering things have happened.  The Mustang has discovered …

  “Fairy Floss Blaster” flavoured icy poles.

 

25th June 2014 –Cape Domett  to Still Bay– 15° 12.303’ S   128° 27.058’ E

Well it was blowing it’s guts out this morning so our planned breakfast on the beach was a fizzer.  Ended up having a lie in and got up when the tide turned at 12:30.  It all became a bit of rush then to get going.  When I put the genoa up The Mustang asked what I was doing.  I replied that “Charisma is a sail boat”. We have been motoring so much I had to remind myself as well.    Here’s a local fishing boat with a really cool paint job that passed us today…

 Acrylic or Enamel Dentistry?

The gulf is very similar to the entrance to Victoria River with clearly defined current  lines except it is bigger. It will take us two tides to get down to Wyndham and the Mustang picked this place as our stop over.  It’s called Still Bay and it is really quite still.  A bit of a back water from the tidal current and some quite spectacular hills to surround us.

The Mustang hasn’t been well enough to enjoy it today.  She finally had her first blow out after not having a cigarette for a couple of weeks and is feeling quite nauseous.  Which is quite surprising considering how still it is…  Did I mention how still this anchorage is?  We actually had a good laugh about how we are going to be the world’s worst ever reformed smokers… We’ve been practicing our haughty cough and smokey sneers…

 Still Bay is actually quite…

Probably the best anchorage we’ve had so far.  Slight breeze, flat calm, a little current, no moon and a gazillion stars…

Thursday 26th June 2014 - Still Bay to Wyndham - 15° 27' 974" S   128° 05' 687"E

We had to wait till 2PM for the tide to be right before we could head further south to Wyndham.  Fortunately the tide times at the nearby locations are actually right.  Still Bay lived up to its name although we did rock around a bit at each tide change.  And when we lifted the anchor it was covered in heavy mud.  We left it hanging in the water for the trip to Wyndham to clean it off, although it'll be just as bad when we leave here again as we're in the mangroves here too.  The trip down was uneventful, although we did see a smaller version of the tooth boat heading out this morning.

At the Wyndham anchorage there is wind over tide which makes it look uncomfortable, but it's not actually too bad just now.  Not sure what it would be like if the wind picks up though.  Have to wait and see.  Tomorrow we'll go ashore and check out the town.  Want to see if we can hire a car here so we can go to Kununurra to pick up some things.  A Google search for that was unsuccessful, but we'll ask around town and see how we go.  Also need to get some more lollies!