Back from Carnarvon

What an adventure!

It all began at Two Rocks Marina, leaving at first light heading for Dongara, an all day – all night – half of the next day sail, by far the longest we'd ever done, and our first all-night watch.

I was mesmerised by the blackness of it all, although there was some moonlight, it seemed velvety and inky, and the stars! I knew they'd be bright, but I didn't expect to be able to actually see the galaxy.

We recuperated for a couple of days in Port Denison, then headed to Geraldton, a short day hop away. The yacht club there provided us with an overnight pen, and it was a pleasant place to be, apart from the abundance of seagull crap!

Next day, again at first light, we headed out for Steep Point, some 180 nautical miles away. Another night watch. I was so excited to see the depth instrument reading "DEEP" for the first time!
The entry into Steep Point is interesting with choppy seas and I was glad we did it during daylight hours. We anchored at Sunday Bay (Dirk Hartog Island) overnight: well, that was the plan – somehow we managed to drag anchor in the middle of the night and got well and truly stuck on a sandbar, and spent the rest of the darkness hours rocking backwards and forwards from hull to hull.....not a fun time, but we all banded together to make Graham feel better about it and managed to make the best of the situation.

At first light we moved to Shelter Bay and anchored for the night to catch up on our sleep and gather our thoughts.

Then it was onwards to Denham: a great sail, and a lovely mooring when we got there. We spent a couple of days there exploring the area and having a little retail therapy – not that there was terribly much to buy!

After Denham, we set off for Big Lagoon, but when we reached the approach, we found it far too shallow, even for our 1.1m draft, so it was decided to head for Herald Bight, overnight there, then set off for Monkey Mia the next morning.

Low water prevented us from going ashore at Herald, but from what I could see it looked pretty desolate and not terribly inviting.

Monkey Mia was an absolute delight, we picked up a mooring quite near to the beach, and we could sit on deck and watch the dolphin feeding . We hadn't been there for almost 20 years, and we both agreed it had changed for the better: the development has been done in a very environmentally conscious way, and we spent some very happy hours ashore there.

Next, we headed off to Carnarvon. What an amazing approach – so shallow and so tight! Graham has a mooring in The Facine, so we hooked up there for our first night. As we had sustained some damage to the rudder at Sunday Bay, Eaglehearts was lifted out of the water the next day, which resulted in us spending the last few hours of our trip on the hard in Fishingboat Harbour. It was fascinating to watch her being taken from the water, we floated her onto an awesome trailer-like thing called a Jinka, which was then pulled out of the water by a tractor.
Repairs were arranged, and it was time for Mike and I to head back to Perth. All the flights were booked out, the cost of a hire car prohibitive due to the one way levy, so we bit the bullet and travelled back on the Greyhound bus......all 14 hours of it.....leaving at 4am and arriving in Perth at 17.00 hours.....YUK!

We had an amazing couple of weeks, learned heaps and boosted our log books by 566 nautical miles. Many thanks to Graham for making it all possible!