Broome to Dampier

Wednesday 5^th August, 2008 Dampier

The southeasterly blew hard in the morning so we stayed put on Sprindrift not wanting to get soaking wet in the dinghy going ashore. After lunch the wind had died down enough to get ashore and have a hot shower, and wash some clothes at the Hampton Harbour Boat & Sailing Club. Once ashore we met Brad Beamount a school colleague of mine at Carnarvon 40 years ago. Brad invited us to dinner at the HHBSC which we gladly accepted. Brad is a local authority on William Dampier who sailed through the area twice the second time as captain of the Roebuck in 1699. Whenever the names of Australian navigators and explorers are mention the name William Dampier is rarely if ever mentioned. The brief history Brad gave us of William Dampier was very interesting and clearly significant achievements for their time which history does not seem to have much credit to.

Tuesday 4^th August, 2008 Dampier

Late start to the day. After 4 days and 3 nights of sailing from Broome the crew was tired and hit the sack early I stayed up an hour longer for blogging duties and by about 9pm the snores coming from the bunks in both hulls was probably keeping the crews of adjacent boats awake.

Did some housekeeping during the morning, cleaned the boat up (a bit) and cleaned up the spark plugs on the two Yamaha outboards.

After lunch Narrelle Dale, Phil Wood’s daughter, picked up the Spindrift crew and took us into Karratha where she gave us the use of her car for a couple of hours so we could do our shopping. Narrelle and her husband Stu put on tasty evening meal before Stu returned us to Hampton Harbour with our fuel cans full.

Karratha is one crazy place at the moment, gas developments and iron ore mining expansion have Karratha busting at the seams with new houses going up everywhere trying to keep up with the demand for housing. House rents are $2,000.00 per week and caravans at the local caravan park are costing $400.00 per week!

Monday 3^rd August, 2008 at sea east of Cape Lambert

Motor sailed through the night. With the predicted strong wind warning we put a reef in the mainsail and as has now become customary took down the genoa and put up the staysail for our night sailing. The night itself went smoothly we passed two other vessels which were probably trawlers but with the moon only 3 days old it was again another very black night so there was no way of determining what the vessels were. Dawn saw us approaching the Cape Lambert iron ore ship loading facilities. Business is booming in the iron ore business and Cape Lambert is no doubt cashing in on record prices for iron ore. They had two bulk carriers tied up to their shiploader and were constructing an extension to the shiploader to allow the berthing of another two bulk carriers.

The southeasterly wind arrived early morning as predicted so we made our way to the old port of Cossack. Only one problem, the entrance to the creek which leads to Cossack has a sandbar across it and we arrived at low tide and touched the bottom well before crossing the sandbar forcing us to abandon our plans for Cossack. By now the southeasterly was piping and the next best option was to head for Flying Foam Passage. It was a dead run to Flying Foam and we covered the 27 plus nautical miles in less than 4 hours which set us up to transit Flying Foam Passage just after the full tide. The Fremantle Sailing Club’s Cruising the Western Australia Cruising book, (the bible of WA cruising yachies) had plenty of warnings about Flying Foam, strong tidal movement, pearling leases to avoid, shallow water and rocky outcrops. The recommendation was to use the passage at ebb tide. We arrived at the entrance to the passage just after full tide and with the wind behind us we choose to shoot the Flying Foam Passage. And shoot the passage we did, with a reef in the main, and the genoa set and a strong SE wind, and the tide behind us we maintained 7 knots and on a couple of occasions reached 11knots. Barry kept an eye on his Raymarine box of tricks and shouting out headings, George an eye on the depth sounder and I was on the helm. In 45 minutes we were down Foaming Passage and in the harbour of Dampier. Barry gave Dampier Port Communications a call on the radio who cleared us to travel to the Hampton Boat Harbour. The trip down through the port of Dampier was a sightseeing tour of Australia’s resource exports. Out to sea was a big oil rig, we passed by the LNG plant as a LNG tanker ship was being berthed with the help of 4 red tugs, then came a small jack up rig which looked like it was part of a small scale on shore oil or gas processing plant, then came the general cargo jetty, and next the star attraction was Hamersley Iron’s Parker Point iron ore ship loaders, one ship the Boasteel Elevation was loaded to the gunwals and ready to sail, another three bulk carriers were taking on ore as we sailed past. In the distance we could see Hamersley’s East Intercourse ship loader and slightly further on was Dampier Salt’s shiploader.

Finally at the end of all of this was Hampton Harbour, we motored in to the anchorage and dropped the pick at 3:30pm. We had arrived in Dampier.

Sunday 3^rd August, 2008 at sea east of Turtle Island

Sailed through the night again using our 1 hour on 2 hours off roster. The southerly sprang up in the late evening and together with some short sharp seas we had an un-comfortable couple of hours when our speed dropped to only 3 knots. The turning of the tide around midnight leveled things out and our speed slowly increased. By mid morning a light southeasterly helped us along but this was gone by lunch time. In the early afternoon a northwesterly came in and along with a favorable tide and plenty of help from our motors we managed to maintain 6 plus knots for the afternoon.

Our plan for the day was to pass Port Hedland during daylight so that we could see (and avoid) the shipping associated with the iron ore mining of the Pilbara region. We passed Port Hedland about 15 miles out to sea at 4:30pm. Nine bulk carriers were anchored waiting for their payload.

Saw many humpback whales again. They were either jumping vertically almost full length out of the water often twisting and flopping back first into the water making one huge splash or swimming in pairs with one whale lifting a flipper high out of the water and repeatedly slapping it back down on the water.

A phone call from Kay warned us of strong wind warning for tomorrow morning when 20/30 SE winds are expected. Time to start looking for an anchorage protected from the southeasterly.

Saturday 2^nd August, 2008 at sea off eighty mile beach

A good night running a 1 hour on 2 hour off watch roster. Barry set a waypoint the previous night 95 miles ahead and each of us took it in turns to keep the boat on track and avoid any other maritime traffic. The moon is in it’s new moon phase. It was a very black night so the Raymarine box of tricks with its radar overlay on the GPS map was a useful tool.

A gentle southerly wind blew all night. We sailed on the main and staysail . At dawn the every reliable southeastly wind burst into life, we unfurled the genoa and gave the engines a rest as we sailed on at 6 knots.

By mid morning the southeasterly died out and we raised the genica and started one of the engines to keep Spindrift moving along.

As we crossed 122 deg longitude we started using charts loaned to Spindrift by Gary Wescott. All through the Kimberley we used a set of beautifully laminated charts loaned by Phil Woods the one and same who crewed Spindrift with his wife Silvia to Darwin. Ray Ellis has also been kind enough to lend us some charts. Charts are an expensive item each one costing about $32.00 more it you want them laminated. We use roughly one chart each day, so loaned charts for this one way trip is much appreciated.

1^st August, 2008 Broome

Up at sunrise and launched the dinghy and took Kim to the beach so that he could go into town and pick up George Barnetson. George had taken the Greyhound bus from his hometown of Nabawa just east of Geraldton to Broome a 26 hour journey which had landed him in Broome at 7pm the night before. George had spent the night in a motel.

George and Kim returned to the beach at 7am and soon both were onboard and we had breakfast together. At 8 30am I returned Kim to the beach for the last time. Kim went off and returned the Mini Moke to it’s owner and then flew back to Perth.

At 9am we raised the anchor and with a strong south easterly wind were on our way south towards La Grange. Just off Gantheaume Point we encountered some rough tide versus wind water but once across the deep water channeling into Roebuck Bay this flattened out. With the SE wind we were for a time making 7 knots but as the SE wind died out and so did our speed. For a short period we had to down sails and motor until a westerly wind arrived and gave us some assistance. The arrival of the westerly wind caused us to re-assess our destination as La Grange Bay is very exposed to a west wind, we chose instead to sail on through the night. In the late afternoon George caught a small mackerel on the lure we were trailing and this became a tasty meal for dinner.

Another day of hectic whale activity, just out of Broome a large whale and tiny calf surfaced within about 30 metres of Spindrift, in other places there were groups of 2 or 3 whales jumping out of the water and making huge splashes as they re-entered the water. We will keep at least one motor running at night in the hope whales will hear us coming and get out of the way.