WIIN The Montebello’s

We only stayed the one night at anchorage at Onslow, the boat rolled all night, so was uncomfortable and difficult to sleep. We are now heading for the Montebello Islands, and day-sail over the next five days to reach them.
First we head along the coast and anchored at the creek entrance at Yammadery Island. The creeks were lined with mangrove trees and very muddy, so we tried our luck at mud-crabbing, but only managed to catch a small shark, which was untangled from the crab net and released back into the creek.
The next day we headed for Weld Island, skipped over a sandbar, depth down to 1.5 metres, oops! Managed to keep moving and the rest of the trip was incident free. We are sailing in company with Vin and Rachel on Sail Away Too, and we tried our luck crabbing again at Weld Island, and ended up with several tasty blue swimmer crabs for our entrée that night.
The winds are light and we sail under MPS to Pasco Island at the southern end of Barrow Island. A lot of the waters in this area are uncharted, so we are extra vigilant, and one of us keeps watch on the bow as we near the island. We enjoy some great snorkelling, and the next day head for Flacourt Bay at Barrow Island, were we meet up with Quattro again and catch a feed of fresh crayfish for tea. A petroleum company has tenure of Barrow Island and landing is prohibited. The anchorage is rollie and we leave the next morning for the Montebello’s.
Steve try his luck at fishing with a new squid lure that Vin has given him, he gets a few quick big hits but they get away, very strange? Oops the protective plastic sheaf was still on the hook, and once removed, he soon had a nice mackerel on the line. We saw whales today, and they put on a good show, breaching, with the resulting splash huge! Luckily we were a fair distance away. Also several large sea snakes slithered past, and turtles stuck their heads up for a look as we sailed past.
We spend the next nine days at the Montebellos’ first anchored at Brooke, then Alpha, then Trimouille Islands, exploring these and many more of the islands.
The Montebello’s comprise of around 70 islands and cover approximately 10 nautical miles from north to south. The islands are reasonably flat (highest point 37 metres), predominantly limestone and coral, with no trees to be seen anywhere. Three nuclear weapon tests were carried out on the islands in the 1950’s by the British and there are signs ashore on Trimouille Island warning people of possible radiation, advising not to spend more than an hour ashore. There are pearl farms everywhere and some of the bays have been taken over completely, so boats can no longer anchor or transit in these areas, which is disappointing.
We spent our time exploring the islands, snorkelling, and fishing. We are living off our catch – fish, squid, and chickens of the sea (crayfish), the freezer is still stocked with meat from Perth. The snorkelling was fantastic – very warm water, and lots of good places to go. We saw all the usual coral and fish, including moon ras, lionfish, nudibranks, crays, leopard and reef sharks, and even a family of “nemos”.
While we were at Alpha Island there was a gas pipe explosion on Varanus Island (part of the Lowendal Island Group). This was about 13nm from us, so we could see the black smoke, and after dark the red glow in the sky. We listened to the ABC news to find out what had happened. It is having a huge effect in WA with the reduced gas available as a result .
The last few days we had strong winds while anchored at Main Bay at Trimouille. Also in the bay was Quattro, Sail Away Too, Fremantle Doctor (on the way to Cocos), a rig safety tender from the drilling rig, and a large luxury boat. The last night a front came through with rain and strong wind – everything got drenched and we checked regularly through the night to make sure we didn’t drag anchor.
The next morning we leave early for a 70nm journey to Dampier, passing close by one of the offshore drill platforms as we leave. We start with 18 to25 knots of wind but end up motoring the last 6 hours as the wind dies out and we have glassy smooth seas, we catch a nice size mackerel to share around the other yachts that are at Dampier. It was a new experience coming in to port after dark, so many lights around making it hard to follow the right channel makers, but with Cmap, radar and Selena on the bow with a spotlight we arrived safely at the anchorage with a bit of help from Hanuman over the VHF.

Please leave use your comments