Raft Point

11th 12th & 13th August 2010:  

We stopped overnight at Melomy’s Bay, when Cathy woke early next morning she nearly had a fit. 

I had anchored in plenty of water, but it was rather like a soup bolw with rocks all around us. She made me promise never to do that again.

The rock on the left nearly took out the rudder

Raft point was another form of excitement, for us both this time. As we entered the recommended anchorage I noticed a lot of rips and tidal flow. We had seen this before neer Cape Veveque, however this time it was far more powerful. The current was almost as strong as our 47HP Yanmar at full noise. After we had anchored I showed Cathy our track line on the chart plotter and then pointed to the exposed rock that very nearly took out our rudder…… Way to close for comfort!!

We went ashore to view the rock art, the climb up the hill in the midday sun was not easy but well worth the trouble. The aboriginal rock art was really impressive. 

In the afternoon we were joined by “Elevation” and the current was still very strong, watching them come into the anchorage sideways was quite impressive.

We left early next morning, hoping to see the water cascade off Montgomery Reef. We missed the tide by about half an hour and the only managed 0.5kt against the current for the following two hours.

The Kimberley can make even the usually simple task of anchoring for the night a challenge. We choose our place to anchor in Kid Inlet, only to find that it was far to rolly. We moved around the corner into Deception Bay and had a peaceful two night stopover, before setting sail for Sampson Inlet.