WALLAROO/PT VINCENT/KANGAROO ISLAND

Saturday 8th August we departed Wallaroo for Wardang Island which is 40 nm heading south This location is about 10 NM from Port Victoria where the last of the great grain race schooners departed for their voyages back to the United Kingdom. We picked up one of the moorings put down by the authorities over various ship wrecks for charter/dive boats to use. There are about 8 shipwrecks around this Island. Here we caught fish and Ron’s first ever squid.

Monday 10th August we set sail for Galway Bay to a spot behind a light beacon marking a sandspit for protection against 13-18kt SW winds. This is between Point Turton and Corney Point. We found it to be a great spot and the holding was excellent.
We anchored there overnight and in the morning set off at 3am for our long journey around Corney Point down to Cape Spencer and then to our destination for that day Davenport Shoals (Stuart Bay) on the bottom of the Yorke Peninsula being 75 nm away.
The early start in the dark saw us punching into headwinds and seas of around 1-2 metres and picking our way around shallow shoals of 3-4 metres so as to stay in 10 metre depths. As we worked our way south the winds were less of a problem but the seas were now a definite southern ocean swell so it was not the most comfortable leg and it was cold. We had been advised to sail around the capes in daylight because of dangerous reefs and islands many being unlit around Cape Spencer. It was a smart move to sail this section in the daylight as the coast around here is awesome to see and you are quite close to towering cliffs. This trip took us 12 hours. We decided to stay another day in Stuart Bay as the anchorage was very protected and we could sleep easy. This allowed us to just relax and catch more squid. We even had a BBQ on the back deck our first outdoor meal for some time as the weather had been too cold.

Thursday 13th August we departed this delightful anchorage at 9.00am to head around Troubridge Point and up Sultana Passage headed for Edithburg. We found that Sultana Passage has moving sandspits and had to very careful as we navigated our way through these shallow waters. Unfortunately Finesse touched bottom between two starboard markers but we managed to reverse off and find our way out of these shallow waters. Upon reaching Edithburg we dropped anchor and went ashore to explore this small town.

Friday 14th August we set sail for Pt Vincent, we pounded into 15-20kt headwinds all the way with rather nasty wind waves. This trip took us 6 hours. We had arranged to use a pontoon within the Pt Vincent Marina complex owned by John Culshaw who we first met in Pt Lincoln.

Pt Vincent is a small country seaside holiday town with friendly locals many of whom we have met as they have come down to the marina to inspect Finesse. A very lovely couple Ted & Elizabeth lent us a 4WD vehicle for some of the time we have been here. We took advantage of this and headed out for two days to the Innes National Park down at Stenhouse Bay and Cape Spencer starting at Corney Point and worked our way down the coast which we had sailed past either in the dark or saw only from the sea. Although many of the bays we saw were listed by James Cowell in his cruising book as anchorages I would prefer to only consider them as summertime locations as the swell and winds were causing very difficult looking conditions in most of the bays .Some of these are Cable Hut Bay, West Cape Bay and Pondalowie Bay.

Our time in Pt Vincent has been spent doing some minor repairs and generally relaxing in this pleasant environment. One of the more difficult of the repairs was to clear the blocked toilet outlet pipe which would not respond to treatment with vinegar (to remove the calcium buildup) nor to the long stainless probing rod we used to try to breakdown the blockage. Whilst these methods had some small impact they did not reach the root of the problem. Finally in desperation we removed the whole length of pipe which meant disconnecting all the other pipes and pulling out the toilet. The offending length of pipe was beat on the jetty and finally the offending blockage was cleared. Thankyou author Nigel Calder for your recommendation we spotted in your Cruising Handbook written for sailors like us. We also arranged to refuel at the town wharf on a high tide at 7.30am. The local garage owner came down to the wharf with a tank on a trailer and we gravity fed the fuel into Finesse’s tanks.

On Monday 31st August we depart at 7am for our trip to Kangaroo Island via Wirrina Cove which is approx 70 kms south of Adelaide, this taking us 8 hours. Here we met up with our friends Rob & Lorraine from Songlines who were planning to cruise in company with us to Kangaroo Island. We also invited Ted & Elizabeth, who had previous sailing experience, to join us for the week at KI and whilst there we hired a vehicle for 3 days to explore this wonderful island.

At KI we anchored at American River, a delightful small settlement with its own small wharf and boating jetty. Here we manage again to catch the local fisherman coming in with the haul of oysters and were able to purchase large oversized “fresh from the sea” oysters at a very low price. We used a mooring here and probably just as well as the tidal race was 3-4 knots and with an opposing wind saw Finesse dancing around in circles on the mooring.

KI is approx 160 km long with a great deal of farmland and large quantities of native vegetation. We were delighted to find many of the road verges covered with carpets of freesias. We saw caves and koala’s (estimated population 30,000), seals and many kangaroo’s.

The south west coast was an outstanding highlight with gigantic cliffs and rock faces against which the southern ocean swell was crashing. There were many beautiful bays and quiet coves to explore.

We hope to get back and spend more time both in American River and the capital Kingscote where there is a good anchorage protected from SW/SE winds.

Saturday 5th Sept due to the poor weather outlook we decided to set sail to Wirrina Cove. When planning legs of voyages we calculate an average speed at 6 kts, we were delighted to have exceed this speed significantly on the return trip from KI to Pt Vincent.
We stayed Sunday at Wirrina Cove and were take out by John Culshaw to visit a winery and also to see his country residence at Mt Magnificent.

Monday 7th Sept with the weather outlook modified and good winds from the SW we were able to sail in our NW direction back to Pt Vincent again at good speeds.

We will be leaving Finesse here in Pt Vincent for the coming month as we are returning home to Perth to visit family including a new granddaughter “Lillian” and friends.