Enter The Kimberley:

26th July – 6 August 2010

We had finally finished repairs, filled up with fuel at the expensive Broome Dock,  re- stocked the yacht again, finally heading off to the wilderness.  James Price point our first stop, then on to Beagle Bay. Going into Beagle Bay we thought we saw in the distance quite along from shore something that was heading to Broome.  Was it our first croc sighting?  Little did we know that we would not see a croc until we got to King George River. 

We nearly ran over a sleeping whale on our way out in the morning.  


Next stop Pendle Bay, much to our surprise there was a café there.  This café must have one of the best locations in WA, amazing views with whales often playing in the Bay. Jill, Paul and Cathy went  a shore for coffee.  Mark’s ankle was still infected ( a saga that would continue for many months) so he stayed on board.  We got ashore and decided to order pizza’s.  They were very tasty but the time they arrived the tide had turned was disappearing fast.  Elevation’s tinny was heavy and the wheels decided to get a puncture, I thought we were all going to have a heart attack trying to drag it out.  Eventually help arrived when 3 men, couple of kids, a dog and a baby turned up and gave us a hand.  Unfortunately by that stage Paul had hurt his shoulder quite badly.  

The next stop was Cape Leveque which was has stunning landscape and another café. Since leaving Broome we enjoined light variable winds up to about 15 knots, calm evenings, this was about to change.  

Another high went  through the bight and we copped up to 45 knots.  

Note to self – “if you want the yacht to stay white don’t anchor down wind of a big red hill”. We found out later if we had anchored further down the coast behind the white sand hills there would have been TV reception and Cathy could have watched the Dockers play.  We spent 4 days at anchor just waiting for the wind to die down.  


We eventually headed off to cross the notorious waters of Sunday Straits in King Sound..  We had  found the tide certainly pushed us north until it changed and started to push us south.  We had planned to stop at Hidden Island  but Silver Beach was disappearing under a high tide.  This was the first time we felt our Garmin chart plotter was missing a few details, like some of the rocks we could see.  A large barge appeared and was making its way to Cockatoo Island so we followed that.  

We arrived at Coppermine Creek and Elevation had already made their way down the creek past the island on the left side and were anchored so we followed their instructions and made our way in.  
Calm flat waters what a welcome relief after Cape Leveque.  

We spent a few days exploring Coppermine Creek, tried fishing, found a few oysters but most of all we just really enjoyed the serenity.  We were feeling a little pushed for time as it was now the beginning of August and we felt we should be in Darwin for the end September, so we could make our way on to Indonesia. The  last night there our sat phone rang, it was a lady from Queensland who said “Whitehaven” a yacht that was from Fremantle and heading to its new home in Queensland was having a few problems and trying to contact us.  We eventually got them on the VHF and they were not too far away, so we gave them directions on dropping their anchor at the mouth of Coppermine Creek that night and we would come out in the morning and they could follow us to Crocodile Creek. They had no idea what they were in for!