Sailing Around Australia; Ok, Nature is here.

02/01/2014 Sailing around Australia; OK, there you are.

After writing in our blog yesterday about the fact that we haven’t seen any sign of sea life since we left Mandurah, we made up for it today. OK so it seems nature is here after all.

This morning the 2 other boats decided that they had put up with enough rock n roll at Dillon bay, so they up anchored and motored off towards Bremer Bay. We had seen various forms of weather forecasting suggesting 30knot winds from the southwest in the afternoon. I thought we would be OK where we were but the disappearance of our comrades brought on the nagging doubt. The books and internet sites that we use as guides, seemed to suggest that Dillon bay (where we were) was a better anchorage for Southwest winds than the other bays where the swell can make it very rough to “park”.

I could understand B2 wanting to find somewhere without swell. He has put up with so much rockin and rollin that I was calling him Chuck Berry,

As I was still quite anxious, Leanne suggested we get in touch with a local named Craig who runs the Bremer dive shop. We had been told Craig a full bottle on the various anchorages and fishing boat harbour around Bremer Bay.

While we were waiting for an appropriate time to ring Craig and there being no wind at all, I thought it was a good time to fix the furler and sheet ropes on our multi purpose sail.

 I got the ropes, the rope clutches, the winch and the various other parts of the task ready and then had Leanne hang on to the end of the sail.  As I started to rethread the desired rope through, a gang of about 30 to 40 dolphins decided to carry on their fish wrangling activities around our boat.

I was very nervous that as Leanne watched the dolphins any gust of wind would grab the sail and fling her overboard or just about as bad, power the boat forwards straight over our anchor. But fortunately the dolphin activity only lasted about five minutes and the wind held off.

So with sail repaired and ready for rapid deployment, armed with information from the local source and camera now ready for our next brush with nature we fired up and headed for Bremer bay.

During our transit we could hear Urchin and Zofia crews discussing that the recommended anchorage and that they were going to check out John Cove.

Just as I was trying to listen to their conversation we were greeted with a welcoming party of dolphins as we motored along through the most beautiful blue water. Not wanting to miss the photo opportunity I left the radio station and dashed up to the bow camera already running. I have uploaded a couple of photos, following.

After anchoring in John Cove Bremer bay  (the worst place to anchor according to the book), we got securely anchored and the girls went shopping while the guys battened down for the strong winds expected amid a constant stream of Bremer bay locals coming by on jetskis, boats and kayaks to say gidday.

 Eva stepped up (or as it happens, off) as our next Awesome Award recipient after falling off the stern of her yacht while chatting with some locals who paddled by on their kayaks.

Later in the afternoon as the wind was absolutely howling around us and as I was still marveling at my dolphin photo’s, Leanne shrieked that there was a seal near our anchor marker bouy. I tried to eject the camera card out of the computer and get it into the camera but all too slow.

So mother nature, apologies for the last blog. Nature is here, now can we just get the timing right.