The Roaring Forties are the motorway along which the engine of wind in the Southern Ocean powers unimpeded by any land and has its head during the Southern Hemisphere winter. So this area is best left alone for those months. During the summer months from November to May, while cyclones bare down on the northern latitudes of Australia and cause havoc from the south west Pacific Islands to the west coast of Australia, it is possible to ride the winds on top of a High Pressure System passing eastwards to the south of the Australian Bight and make that progress west in relative safety. If you spin a disc lying in the Bight on a chart anti clockwise then that’s what you have.
As these winds reach the barrier of the vertical cliffs around the northern Bight of the Nullabor they strengthen, so it is a good idea to leave from somewhere up the eastern side like Streaky Bay or Ceduna and go straight across to the Recherche Archipelago, so that is what Zoonie did.
Zoonie slept under the moon on her last night in Ceduna, as you can see from Kylie’s spectacular photograph for which Rob and I are very grateful. Then in the picture from the chartplotter where there are to pink lines drawn from the pier head light you can see how her anchor was secure within the area once dredged for the trading vessels when this was the only jetty. If it was good enough for the three master in the black and white photo it was good enough for Zoonie.
We motored towards the winding channel we had only previously seen at night, past the two ship loading berth at 8.45 in the morning of the 12th February heading for Middle Island 530 miles away and so named because it is roughly half way along the Recherche Group.
Our friends Jeannie and Merv on their 45 foot yacht Meridian Passage had started out on this passage on the 10th February 18 years previously and we had a copy of their log around to Fremantle to give us something to refer to in our decision making process. We also had their pilot book, in places marked with successful anchorages etc but now of course it was well out of date.
The paper charts Carmen in the Red Cross had printed out did not cover an area for six hundred miles from a third way across the Bight so we were down to the chartplotter and eyeball navigation. Would it be enough?
Bight down gently please.
Soon Zoonie was rollicking along with a 17 knot wind pushing from her port stern quarter.
By the next morning, as expected with the passing of the High, the wind was dropping and moving towards Zoonie’s stern, so out onto the stage of the foredeck after too long an absence strides the Diva and gives an impressive ‘come back’ performance for 47 miles while a mystery unfolded on board. I could only find one slipper, the other black with gold polka dot slipper had disappeared. We both searched and eventually Rob thought back to the possibility that he had gathered it up with the sheet while tucking in my side of the bed. There it was, flat as a pancake between the mattress and the base. I soon rectified its shape and order returned.
By mid-afternoon the wind was veering forward of the Diva’s workable quadrant so while being watched by a pair of shy albatross were escorted her into the wings for her own safety and re-set the genoa. By midnight we are careering along again with the moonlight casting slithers of glass on the dark ocean and at 0500am we are HALFWAY across.
Day 3, the 14th February brought a Valentine’s gift of a calm sea, virtually no swell and good progress for our ship under full main and genoa and the promise of strong winds ahead as two High pressure systems squeeze together when we near land. Shearwater birds mass together, floating on the gentle sea in good numbers.
Once again we are gauging our speed so as to not arrive on this complex archipelago in the dark and cannot help but enjoy Zoonie’s unhindered progress on a flat sea, reminiscent of the South Pacific crossing as we remember it.
Early morning on the 15th with 135 miles to go and the barometer is still steady, will we make it across before the strong winds arrive? On his voyage of exploration Matthew Flinders was using the same barometer as Cook had used thirty years before. He noted that the barometer rose before a change from the land breeze to a sea breeze and vice versa so he could use the barometer to warn of wind changes, this became known as The Flinders Bar. So we also use ours in this way and we know a rapid drop warns of the approach of a frontal system. The barometer arm started moving left steadily dropping millibar by millibar so we reefed Zoonie leaving out more genoa than main to help pull her along the course held by the auto helm and soon we had 27 knots of predicted wind.
Suddenly there was a flash and it wasn’t the smoke alarm periodic flash either. Then, in the fading light of a threatening sky Zoonie was lit up as if in the limelight. Sheet and fork lightning was all around us so we put all our mobile devices in the oven and prayed the mast would not be struck. The wind increased to 34 knots, a full gale with rain. ‘Ah good’ I thought, that will wash some of the salt off. We had the engine running in case her batteries were hit and we wouldn’t be able to start it.
While we were sailing through this maelstrom twenty four racing yachts, (I think they must have meant dinghies) were in a race off Esperance when the wind rose from 8 to 56 knots instantly and capsized twelve of the fleet, fortunately the victims were plucked safely from the water.
Despite sleep being a distant prospect we did our routine watches, at least one can relax while horizontal and tucked behind the lee cloth and while Rob was resting I wondered if the welcome light of dawn would come before we reached Middle Island.
The refreshing scent of pine and eucalyptus was all around and as 5.30am passed the clouds to the east grew silver linings, or more appropriately for us ‘every silver lining has a cloud’.
We were entering the weather of a squash zone and fog was rolling over the vague outlines of the distant islands with the wind doing a 180 degree turn to send us 20 knots on the nose.
When Meridian Passage came this way all those years ago Jeannie and Merv also experienced a frontal system of high winds (45 knots) anchoring first in Middle Bay and then moving across to Goose Island to give protection from the NW winds. Merv dived on the anchor to check it and found it was buried in sand. They may have used their 29kg fishermen’s anchor which we now have on board Zoonie, or they found a patch of sand in amongst the seagrass. Rob cannot use the anchor as it is too heavy for him to handle and risk his already weakened back and when we tried five times to anchor there using our Delta it dragged every time, combing the grass and bringing up with it a massive ball of 26 types of grass. Well out of the world’s 60 seagrass types 26 thrive here and even though there may not have been 26 types there was certainly a great diversity in the anchor ball samples. Oh for a 25kg fishermen’s.
I was so sorry because Matthew Flinders had anchored here on two separate circuits of Australia in 1802 and 1803 and I would have loved to go ashore and explore the island he described.
His first visit was a happy and productive one. His crew soon found the beautiful pink lake and took onboard the purest white salt from its shores that only needed to be dried before it was ready for use. His seven crew members, including John Thistle and midshipman Taylor, who weeks later would perish in the rip tide off Cape Catastrophe were still alive, chatting, laughing and making the most of their busy lives.
His second visit 17 months later was part of an unfolding tragedy. Lack of fresh water sources along the north coast of Australia drove Matthew to sail to Coepang in Dutch held Timor to fill up with water there. As the Investigator moved south down the west coast one by one his men fell sick and died from dysentery and Matthew himself commented that it must be the water. As his ship rounded Goose Island his boatswain, Charles Douglas breathed his last and was buried on Middle Island. His name and the ship name were carved on a sheet of copper that was only found in 1999 and it is thought to be the oldest marked grave in Australia. He must have requested a land burial instead of a watery grave poor man.
I can imagine her anchors would have been so heavy and big they would be more likely to sink through the grass into the sand than our plough shaped hook even though it has a long ‘nose’.
So, despite my comment “I’m not going back out there” into the strong head wind and fog, unlike Investigator and Meridian Passage (MP) we have our chartplotter and Zoonie has an engine powerful enough to make slow progress, so we turned out towards the passage we had chosen through the archipelago.
MP had an enjoyable island hopping trip using the fisherman’s where there was thick weed ‘Stopped for lunch in N.E. Bay Twin Peaks Island’ but for us it was a case of staying underway and heading for the northern bay at Hammer Head. By this time the day was wearing on and Rob was getting fed up with what he termed “all the disappointments”. On the way in we noticed fishing pots marked by white buoys and we had to take action to avoid one of them.
I said nothing but I was not holding out much hope for this place either and indeed, as the sun set, Zoonie’s anchor dragged once more. Frustrating to have the solution on board but knowing it was not worth the risk using it unless we were facing an emergency. Also I felt quietly pleased that in this part of the world the diversity of seagrass is thriving along with all the diversity of plant and animal life it supports.
“As a last attempt let’s try Duke of Orleans Bay,” I suggested and we motored around there just making out a small offshore island we needed to hug to avoid two small rocks in the bay itself.
MP reported no sand patches there, so they changed to the fishermen’s and stayed there overnight, but it was back into the black night for us.
Looking down at the chartplotter to our black route line on the way into the bay I was concerned about those pots with their long rope lines to the seabed that could so easily wrap around Zoonie’s prop, “Rob would you mind going to the foredeck with a torch when we approach our inward route please and look out for pots.”
I just had a feeling.
“Halt” he yelled and shone the light dead ahead so I could instantly put Zoonie into neutral, stopping the prop and turn the wheel so her forward momentum moved sideways and we watched silently as the potentially lethal two white buoys passed close down her port side. Phew.
Rob had put Waypoints in to take us close to the mainland, past rocks, islands and reefs to Woody Island where Hannes had recommended we visit and sit on one of their six substantial mooring buoys. Hannes had let Rudi and Frauke, who manage the Eco Camp there, know we were coming and the thought of a mooring buoy was very welcoming.
Infront of us lay two 10 mile stretches and then a few short doglegs through the obstructions, so we took turns in having one hour of sleep on each of those first legs. It was some of the best sleep, as our heads reached the pillow we were out like a doused candle and wide awake when awakened with a kiss.
I thought that to get through there, motoring in the black without catching a pot would be a miracle, the same miracle as when we came into Studland Bay near Poole after midnight one night to anchor and next morning saw all the pots we had missed. I had to temper the euphoric feeling that we were nearly there and focus on the task in hand. Looking on Rob’s Google Earth we had decided on which of the mooring lines we would pick up, the one just past the jetty. It came up quicker than we expected so I let Zoonie slow to almost a stop just before it, shone the 12 volt light onto it and motored just above tick over to sit with her bow in the vicinity while Rob picked up the line and attached it around the starboard cleat. I then shone the light up the beautiful pink granite rock face just a few metres infront of us. At last, after 647 miles we could stop. It was 03.45am and we relaxed with a gin and tonic before hitting the sack.
The Navionics charts on the plotter had been totally accurate.
Les Andrew’s Woody Island
I sat on the side of Zoonie’s cockpit the next morning admiring the honey colour of the pink granite rockface enhanced by the early sun. You may be able to make out some concrete blocks moulded to the rock face descending from left to right and the weeping rust marks of the bolts that supported the original jetty that Don Mackenzie and his sons built there back in 1972/3 when he was given a permit to start his tourist business. There is an old photo of the jetty, number 037 and of Don infront of his visitor boat 036. I wondered how on earth anyone could built such a structure in that dangerous location and Don himself named the slope ‘Cardiac Hill’ after he and his sons lugged the massive timbers up there from the boat.
There was certainly a demand for visits to this the only Recherche Island with soil deep enough to support trees. But there were also risks. The island has been swept by fire a number of times, the most recent being in 2006, and if that happens again the resort would be a total loss. Also there is no natural water on the island. Rainwater is collected from the roof of the lodge and stored in tanks and some of the loos are composting ones that use no water and do not smell. This is a real ‘out on a limb’ enterprise.
Rudi appeared on the terrace of the lodge and we waved. I called him up on the VHF and we agreed he would fetch us shortly.
When we arrived at the lodge coffee was being served and the other visitors sat at tables and on the settees.
Les is the one with the mug of coffee and with his partner he owns and runs the Woody Island Eco Tours business. We joined him for a chat. A clever businessman and builder Les has a number of motels he built and this enterprise is run from one of them in Esperance. When he took over the DOEC lease and tourist business from Don Mackenzie’s sons it was in a run-down state, but by adding six mooring buoys tied to the seabed on railway carriage wheels and piles of ships chain, a liquor licence and accommodation at both ends of the fast cat ride he has sown the seeds of success.
The buoys are used by weekend sailors from Esperance and the venue is becoming popular for seasonal celebrations at Christmas and Easter and for music festivals. There are many tents, some with wooden floors, and chalets with balconies where visitors can sit and take in the peace and views to the mainland.
Les hadn’t been planning to come out from Esperance on the morning we met him but two American couples were prepared to pay over the odds to get what they wanted, a trip to the island. The island has a network of walks that are dotted with neat information boards and tame birds fly close to one on their daily feeding errands. There is the beautiful rugged coastline and the movement of the ocean around and over the rocks is mesmerising but the Americans missed all that and instead sat in the dining area for the duration of their four hour visit.
Their loss was our gain because otherwise we would not have met Les until a few days later. He instructed Rudi, who had collected us from Zoonie earlier, that as international yacht visitors we would not be charged for the mooring for the duration of our stay. We appreciated his kindness.
The crew of a small aluminium fishing boat with a cabin had picked up the buoy near us and we learned from the young skipper that he and his German wife had towed it by road from their home in Bunbury so they could bring her visiting parents out to the island on their fishing trip. He told us about the marina in Augusta, just before Cape Leeuwin if we needed to wait for favourable weather before continuing around to his home town in Zoonie. There’s nothing like up to date local knowledge from those in the know, you know.
Exploring the riches of Woody Island
The early dawn vistas you see on the second file of photos reinforced the saying ‘Red sky at night shepherd’s delight, Red sky in the morning shepherd’s warning’ in more ways than one.
For one thing between four hundred and five hundred sheep at a time were grazed on the island for ninety years between 1864 and 1954 until it became a Nature Reserve. They had to be fenced in so they wouldn’t eat poisonous plants but they led a stress free life largely in isolation and with no dangers from dingoes and blow flies, their ‘shepherds’ living a short boat trip away in Esperance .
Secondly, for the few days we were there a strong NE wind held sway over the area meaning that from late morning until around midnight Zoonie pitched furiously into the sizeable waves that marked the end of the fetch over the waters of Esperance Bay. Sometimes the peaking waves were so high Zoonie’s bow would completely submerge and then as it sprang up so her stern would slap the water with a big bang and she would make her shudder all over. It was partly the sun warming the land that added to the effect with daytime variations in barometric pressure causing a sea breeze early on and then changing to a land breeze in the afternoons, that added to the trending NE wind while the High System moved eastwards beneath us. Early on our first morning we looked down into the clear water to see the chain of the mooring buoy disappear into the sand; we learned from Les that the sinker was a railway carriage wheel laced with a massive ship chain. It was a different story later on after all Zoonie’s frantic tugging, when we snorkelled the area just before we left, but I’ll tell you about that later.
Thirdly, the slanting orange/pink rays of the early morning sun caught the smoothed granite face of the rocks, already pink for millions of years and intensified their colour like rouge on the cheeks of an English rose.
Rudi came to pick us up and gave us a brief tour around the corner to the skinny dippers beach. On special occasions hundreds of people come to the island to wait for sunrises and sunsets and take advantage of the usually sheltered side of the island. The bay where Zoonie was moored was a great place to swim and snorkel but for most of our stay, until the last few hours, was just too rough. The day trippers swam just off the shore and around the jetty but no farther out.
Rudi told us about the walks and we photographed the routes so we couldn’t get lost. We went first through the camp exploring the accommodation that is loved by many locals from Esperance who enjoyed the island as children and then bring their children and grandchildren back many times. We were glad we followed the advice of wearing strong walking shoes as the ants of all sizes scrambled for a taste of our blood, as did the early ‘March’ flies, like the cattle gad flies at home, and boy did they hurt. There were peaked ants’ nests two metres in diameter up near the weather station and right across the path that had me running at times to get the ants off my legs and escape the ant fields.
Rudi suggested we went this way because by taking a right turn across two planks laid across the path and along a branchy track we came to the rock surface above where Zoons was moored and so would have a great view over her and the bay. But we weren’t sorry to backtrack away from the little nippers.
Back towards the Camp we joined the loop walk that would take us to the southern shores of the island, Twiggy’s landing and then up to the summit for a fine view westwards over our next route and Esperance in the distance.
Twiggy was the Don’s family dog, a liver and white coloured Labrador mix. On an excursion in the boat she was lost overboard and her absence was not noticed straightaway. An unsuccessful search led the family to the heart-breaking conclusion she had drowned. But she swam to shore and since the boat was in the area off the photos of the water’s edge the family later assumed that was where she came ashore.
Three and a half months later a family member spotted a very thin Twiggy alive and reclusive, having supposedly survived on lizards and chicks. She was very reluctant to approach her family at first but Don encouraged her with some food and when she got close enough he grabbed her and she launched into a wild display of affection and relief at being reunited. She was not the same after the reunion and died just over a year later, but at least she had a year of enjoying her rescue.
Just above that beach, within the green shrubbery, are many shearwater tunnels where these masters of the oceans come ashore each night to look after their young at this time of year. One photo appears to be of twigs over an area of ground; that is how well camouflaged the burrows are. And you can also see there are killing fields on the shore where the birds fly high with shellfish, cuttlefish and squid in their bills and drop them from a height to break the shells. A lot of nature goes on at Twiggy Landing. Out to sea from there is the wreck of the Sanko Harvest which shed her load of oil back in 1991 and is now the second biggest dive site in the world. Nature dealt with the oil over years burying it in the sand, just as she did with the oil from the Torrey Canyon off Cornwall.
The climb to the summit was over a natural track with some shallow steps and all along the way there were small information boards with just enough information. I was reading about the Fearless Bush Minstrel and when I looked up into the branches just above, there he was, “Ok you can take a photo of me, here’s my best side, ok?”
Woody Giants and Hungry Kangaroos
In our scramble over the smooth pink granite rocks that make up the Woody Island shoreline we found chitons and limpets that were at least four times the size of the ones we had seen before in Tonga and New Zealand and we wondered why this phenomenon did not apply to other island dwellers. Maybe the rock huggers grew to an older age and therefore bigger size. The area was full with colour and in the rock pools bright red algae stared back at us.
I was peeping through the undergrowth with the hope of seeing some of the illusive kangaroos; thirty were brought to the island many years ago and on our previous walk we wondered what they ate. Rob spotted some scrapings in the path and wondered if they ate roots. He was right, that is one of their staples. There was a time, after the sheep were taken off, when they would have had access to grass and oats but the natural undergrowth has returned since the 2006 fire and the recent drought dried up lots of their fresh water puddles so they rely on a water supply and food at the lodge and Rudi and Frauke happily oblige with water, sheep nuts and oats. The older roos are so conservative and will not try the salad left overs that Rudi puts out, but the younger ones will give salad a try. Animals have to be adaptable in this environment.
They come to the lodge after the daily visitors have left so we were hoping we might see them. Meanwhile back in the lodge the Fearless Bush Minstrel I had seen before in his own tree was paying a visit. Commonly called the Golden Whistler he hunted for crumbs before moving on.
We sat with Rudi and Frauke and her son Michael, who was on a brief visit from Germany, and chatted over various things before returning to Zoonie for the roughest night yet. We were planning to leave the next day, the windows of favourable weather come and go very quickly here so as there is lots of cyclone activity going on up north which draws on wind from the south, as one source of fuel for their demanding engines, we decided to take advantage of the favourable 15 – 20 knot winds. Just this time the unpredictable movements of the current cyclone gave us our opportunity.
The next morning Frauke told us how violent was Zoonie’s pitching that it worried her, but because we were sleeping in the saloon in the middle of Zoonie’s length we didn’t feel the extreme extent of her up and down movement and we slept well.
We sat on one of the settees chatting to a lady from Perth who resumed her caravanning holidays three years after her husband’s death once she had worked through her grief and loss of confidence. The first thing she did was replace the big car and caravan with a much smaller version of each and now she takes herself and any friend who wants to join her off on long rambles north and south through western Australia. We admired her resolve, a traveller like us.
Frauke’s iced coffees were delicious and overflowing!
The sun moved across the island casting shadows over the area around the lodge and the kangaroos arrived, eight of them and we leaned over the banister to take photos and watch them, watching us and enjoying their supper. The biggest has a crumpled right ear and Rudi can get within a half metre of him while the youngest was the boldest with strangers, lying not far from us and paying only scant attention to our movements.
We said our farewells to our new friends and headed back to the now very still Zoonie, the wind having dropped and veered leaving her in calm waters. I squeezed into my wetsuit and carrying our masks and flippers aft we were determined to explore underwater world in the now attractive sea just before leaving for good.
The sea grass and weed was abundant and the submarine growth on the pink granite rock faces was a multitude of bright colours. The wreck Rudi told us about was there; a small wooden vessel well rotted so we could see the seabed through the missing hull timbers. We swam with thousands of clear jellyfish which had no visible tentacles and were not a problem. There was a variety of fish, many of them recognisable from previous dives but we did not find any sea dragons, I think that would have taken a longer dive to the other side of the jetty.
By far the most interesting find on this trip was the sinker to our mooring; the railway wheel and ship chain. The wheel was now clearly visible and the heavy chain pulled away from it, while still attached, in a straight line. Frauke had done a comparison of our position with previous photos on her phone of other moored yachts on the same mooring and our findings confirmed the fact Zoonie had played her part in re-positioning her buoy.
Rudi gave us a fantastic send off as you can see, a knight on his yellow mount with banner flying, and Frauke took photos from the pier but after only a few minutes we were in for a shock!
Zoonie rounded the island and we had two waypoints to reach before we could set the course directly for Albany. I had filled in the log book before we departed and the barometer read 1013 mbs but when I checked it again after half an hour, almost in passing, it had dropped to 1010 mbs an alarming drop in such a short time.
“Rob if that drop continues we will have to go back, 6 mbs in an hour is unthinkable.”
“You must be kidding,” Rob said, disappointed. Fortunately the dark blue pointer stayed on 1010 for the duration of the passage; so what had caused the drop? 1) The weather was benign with a settled cloud state and calm water so that didn’t seem likely. The sky was grey but not threatening or particularly dark 2) our location behind the island? Well partly I think linked to 3) magnetism in the pink granite or 4) Flinders Bar; Matthew Flinders noted on his barometer on the good ship Investigator, the same barometer as used by Cook thirty years before, that the mercury rose when there was a change from a land to sea breeze to a sea to land breeze and vice versa there was a fall when the sea to land breeze changed to a land to sea breeze as one might expect as the temperature of the air over the land cools in the late afternoon.
Apart from a cheeky 28 knot blast of wind between the islands as we left the conditions we had no more alarms until we arrived in King George Sound when the man overboard alarm sounded; a quick head count proved there was no action necessary.
Frauke and Michael had been to a killer whale feed above some deep canyons (Bremer, Hood, Henry and Knob) wedged in to the continental shelf just off Bremer Bay. Like me the Orcas like to feed first thing in the morning and in the evening so our timing did not fit and we saw none. I wasn’t too sorry, admiring killer whales on their passage is one thing but watching them feed on giant squid and whales by rounding them up as they rise toward the surface on a cold water upwelling is another. The first photo on the chartplotter shows the waypoint just infront of Zoonie where the whales do their fishing. Some of the squid are 10 metres long.
The next morning was overall grey and the wind was falling weak so we had to motor sail for a while. There were lots of shearwater fishing and relaxing on the water surface. Suddenly the chartplotter turned itself off. The gremlins were at work again. Just as well I had recently recorded our position and we have GPS backups aboard. It soon came back on again thank goodness.
The wind was rising as we approached the Albany entrance as we knew it would; another short weather window was ending. As Rob changed our course on the chartplotter the man overboard alarm went off and a rummage for the manual told us to press the button for four seconds to cancel it. We also learned that the autopilot is disconnected if the alarm goes off so that rescue procedures can be instigated. Cool, learn something every day.
Another yacht was anchored in the shelter of a bay to our left as we motored around the ship wharf towards the marina. We wondered how he was managing on what was likely to be a reedy bottom. We found out later.
The Western Australian Government’s Department of Transport owns and runs these marinas and they had allocated us a nice easy pen to enter so all should have been straightforward, but the wind caught Zoonie and at the same moment the bow thruster decided to take a break, literally the fuse blew, so Zoonie drifted very gently across to rest on the big motor cruiser next to us. No problem, I thought, I’ll just shimmy on to it and clamber onto the pontoon across Zoonie’s bow. No chance, the sides of that vessel were vertical and as I’m not into abseiling we just waited as Zoonie’s stern crept back towards our own finger and I was able to jump ashore. Maybe the rope going around the prop in Portland had caused some damage. The choice of our mooring pen proved to be fortuitous when we met Mark, from the First 40 sailing yacht next door.