Great Keppel Island to Shaw Island

Great Keppel Island to Port Clinton

20 August

Port Clinton reopened after war games and but we had to wait an extra couple of days for a weather window to make our way up there.

We were to make an early start and were travelling with Graeme & Karen on Omega.  The night before our departure, at 11.30pm, Leroy (the dog) jumped up on our bed and sat on me.  He was making this weird clicking noise with his mouth.  I thought he’d got into the bin and was chewing some aluminium foil.  I reached into his mouth to grab it and felt fishing line.  “Michael, wake up.  We have a problem”.  Michael was out of bed and half way out of the boat when I yelled “No, the dog’s got a fishing hook caught in his mouth.”  I pried Leroy’s jaws open to reveal a nice shiny fishing hook stuck in the side of his tongue.  Michael tried gently to coax it out but in the end it was brute force that was needed and finally he managed to remove it.

The events of the previous night meant not a lot of sleep and a later than planned start.  We took off at 6.00am.  We had decent wind and were able to sail without any motor assistance for about 4 hours of our trip.  It was uneventful and we anchored at Port Clinton at 4 pm.  We’d heard tales of unexploded bombs being left around after the military war games but I’m happy to notify you than we didn’t throw our anchor down on any of them.

We want to head for the Percy Islands about 60nm away but tomorrow looks pretty rough so we’ve decided to head north another 20nm to Island Head Creek to cut our distance down to the Percy Islands the following day.

Port Clinton to Island Head Creek

21 August

Pretty rough was an understatement!  It was white knuckle terror out there today.  I must admit, we’ve been in worse but that doesn’t make it any less frightening.  We were in 17 knot winds… which would’ve been great if they were pushing us in the direction we needed to go, but alas, we were fighting against them.  The swell was only about 1 metre but it was hitting us side on and really throwing us around.  The dog didn’t cope well at all and I must admit that I fared only marginally better.

We had sustained internal damage, a door came unhinged (well, let’s face it, why should it act any differently to me), the structure boxing in our toilet workings also collapsed under the turbulent conditions.  Our sound system broke through its ties and was hanging purely by the cables and swinging against the TV screen.  Other than that, there was really just cleaning up to do.

My door fell off 

Graeme & Karen had a tough day of it too.  It took them an hour longer than us to reach calm waters and by then the tide was too low to get across the sandbar to anchor down at the beach with us.  They anchored near the rocks at the entrance to the creek.

When the tide came up again, we raised our anchor and headed up to the mouth of the creek with them so we could make an early start in the morning to head to the Percy Islands. 

We had no phone or internet.  No internet, no work!

Island Head Creek to Percy Islands

22 August

Graeme & Karen decided to stay at Island Head Creek for a couple of days after being knocked about so severely the day before.   Unfortunately for us we had to go in search of internet connectivity… as much as we’d have loved too, we had no time to sit and lick our wounds.

It was a calm day with no winds so we had to motor the whole way, which was actually quite welcome after the previous day.

I kept checking my phone for signal.  Nothing.  The boss (and my best friend) is going to think I’m shipwrecked or dead!

The trip was calm and the sights beautiful.  It was a whale-palooza out there!  We saw so many whales and one even put on quite a show for us.  He spent about 20 minutes leaping and splashing and waving his wingy-fins (I don’t think that’s the technical term) about.  We’re thinking of starting up Kidnapped’s Whale Watching Tours.

Putting on a show

We finally arrived at Middle Percy and anchored at about 7pm.  Again, no phone and no internet.  I just know people are organising search & rescue parties.  We’d have loved to stay for a few days but alas, we will be off early again in the morning looking for internet.

Percy Islands to Scawfell Island

23 August

4.30am and we’ve been woken by whales singing.  We went out on deck to see if we could see them but it was still too dark.  Time to prepare for our departure (by prepare, I actually mean have a coffee and a cigarette).

5.00am we lifted the anchor and started making our way north.  60nm ahead of us and not a breath of wind. 

6.00am Using the steel sail we were motoring towards Sphinx Island when Michael realised we were losing ampage from our battery.  We put Grace in charge of steering and ripped out the floor up to access the motor.  Michael used the amp meter and it showed the alternator was working.  We checked the batteries.  Not quite enough charge, but certainly not dead.  It appears the fan belt needs tightening and we would slowly lose power until the motor cut out.  Can’t tighten a fan belt whilst the motor is running.  With 60nm ahead of us and no wind, we couldn’t afford for the motor to die but we need power so we need to fix one of our two broken generators.  We decided the small inverter generator would be the easier fix.  We thought it was an oil problem and would need to extract and replace the oil.  This meant fixing our broken oil extractor.  Fuck… it’s a never ending fix-it cycle.  We fixed the oil extractor and extracted and replaced the oil in the generator.  Nope.  No good.  We gave up on that and decided to attempt to fix the other generator.  Michael started pulling bits off and we found the carburettor was full of oil.  A quick clean out and by 8.00am we had it going and keeping charge in the batteries. 

Still no phone or internet.

Another lovely day on the water, more whales (in fact it’s starting to get hard not to hit the bloody things).  At one point, I was standing on deck watching a whale behind us.  It was on its back and slapping its tail on the water when I heard this almighty “WHOOSH”… I leapt and turned and shat in one graceful motion to see a whale right next to our boat, if I’d reached down I could’ve touched it.  It was actually touching our boat and had exhaled its blowhole right next to us (that was the noise I’d heard).  They’re amazing but I really don’t want them that close!

The whale that distracted while his mate snuck up on us

Managed to get a text message out notifying people we weren’t dead or shipwrecked.  Still no phone or internet though!

We anchored at Scawfell Island at about 6pm… another 40nm ahead of us tomorrow. 

Scawfell to Shaw Island

24 August

A 40nm trip today… uneventful except for the fact that I got phone and internet!!!!  Wooo hoo!  Was able to get a little work done and berate anyone who had not noticed we were missing.

Motored all day, just not getting any winds to help us along but I’m happy to report that the motor is holding up well (even if it is held together with cable ties and bubble gum).

We anchored at Shaw Island at about 3pm and by 3.05 Jed had landed his first fish.  Gotta love the tropics!

Jed's queen fish