Change of plans, pit stop at Broome is now required. Ah well, at least the weather looks light enough to use Roebuck Bay (which is closer to the town). The spring tides will still make things a bit challenging, but we’ll manage..We left Dampier and took the Flying Foam passage north, which saves us going around Legendre island. We saw a whale on our way into the passage, which surfaced right by the boat. I decided we’d anchor at the top of the passage as the light (to non-existent) winds

We’ve been provisioning pretty hard. The wholesalers in Exmouth had been a good find, and we’d got quite a bit of stuff there. Here the plan is to fill in a few things that we’d missed, as well as some boaty and personal bits we’d need for the next few months in the Kimberley.So we’ve done the supermarket, pharmacy, electronics shop, water sports shop for fishing kit and a replacement kettle for the stove, barbers, liquor store - all the essentials really. Next up is fuel (diesel, petr

We had champagne sailing conditions from the Montebello islands to the Dampier Archipelago. Wind was on the beam, about 11 knots - and with the current with us we were sailing at 7knots or more almost the whole way.As we approached, the wind died and we motored a bit to get in. Anchoring off Malus island for a couple of nights. It was a little bit rolly as swell seemed to creep around the eastern arm every morning but by mid-afternoon it had usually calmed down a bit. Not enough to get off the b

With calmer winds promised, we headed up to Trimouille whilst it was still quite lively. The anchorage was calm though, and it meant we had a chance to explore ashore that day we arrived. Two tests were carried out here. The first was on a frigate anchored not far from where we anchored, and the second was ashore. The usual ‘1 hour’ rule applied then.Its a very nice bay, looks very tropical even though the wind was still blowing a bit.Ashore there are remnants of the testing. Presumably this

We headed out from Champagne Bay towards the Stephenson Channel which winds its way towards the delightfully named Willy Nilly Lagoon. Thats a bit too shallow for us, but Brandy Bay looked a likely spot. As we approached, we saw that the superyacht Mineral Water was anchored there, so we chose another spot. After a couple of attempts to find enough water for the very low spring tides, we noticed Mineral Water was leaving - so Brandy Bay it was after all!I’m pretty sure that it was either a dry

Champagne Bay is a gorgeous enclosed bay formed by Campbell Island to the north and Delta Island to the south. There is an entrance on the NE side (called the Chippendale Channel) which is very narrow. On the SW corner, the wall that would join Campbell to Delta island has been broken with some jagged teeth remaining. There’s space between them to get Duplicat into the bay, but you need a reasonable rise of tide, and at that point the 2 closest fingers disappear under the water! Still, I like

Whilst the wind was howling, Bluebell was a lovely spot. Nice and secure, plenty of protection from the wind and swell.Nina made some ciabatta and we turned our first painted cray into a lovely sandwich, with the rest going in Vietnamese spring rolls the next day.She also made some crackers with the sourdough starter. These are fantastic and keep for over a week in a tub.We managed to get another lobster, a real beast of an animal. The tail alone weighed 1.1kg - a good few meals worth! He put up

We had fun in Turtle Lagoon - had a walk ashore on Hermite Island, did a few boat jobs, saw dolphins hunting at night right by the boat. We had a few swims but the water is suprisingly cold! Didn’t stop us getting a cray which was soon turned into a lobster soup.The crayfish/lobster here are the tropical painted ones - and they do look pretty. They’re also pretty tasty! I made sourdough crumpets for our Sunday morning treat.With neap tides approaching, we thought we’d move up to Bluebell I

We left Exmouth mid-morning for an overnight sail to the Montebello islands. I’ve been looking forward to these for a while so I was quite excited. We had better than expected conditions and were able to sail for a while, then motor sail later in the afternoon when the wind did its normal trick of dropping off. By 9pm we were sailing again and managed to sail the rest of the way making pretty good speeds. On the way we saw our first whale of the season! With no moon and cloud cover, it was a p

We’ve been in Exmouth a little while - mainly to try and sort a problem finger (a process which is still ongoing).Whilst here, we’ve managed to knock off a few jobs, refill diesel, LPG and petrol. Change the oil on the outboard, reprovision at wholesalers (which has been very useful).We dived the Navy Pier, which on a good day would be a top draw dive, but we had 4m visibility and some quite bit swells. It was still a lovely dive (though quite cold).So with all our jobs done, apart from the

We had a lovely run from Coral Bay to Norwegian Bay under spinnaker the whole way. As is the nomad Duplicat way, we opted to anchor in a place that looked good on the satellite photos - and indeed, we have lovely protection from the prevailing weather.Norwegian Bay was so called because the Norwegians setup a whaling station there in 1911 as the demand for the clean burning and odour free whale oil was high. The station went through various changes of ownership and reductions in the number of wh

We fell into a routine of snorkelling the reef during the morning, then relaxing or doing jobs in the afternoon. The weather had turned hot, though still a bit chilly by the end of the night. I’ve not given up the duvet just yet.The reef grew on us. We saw something each time we went out - small sharks, rays, crayfish, turtles. On our penultimate trip we saw 3 or 4 turtles (think it may have been the same one twice, thus the count confusion). The last one was very relaxed and didn’t zoom off

The sail from Turtle Bay towards Coral bay started out superbly. Within an hour of getting underway we hooked a solid southern bluefin tuna. We managed to land it - a 9kg one which yielded lots of meat!The day was champagne sailing conditions. We went up the west side of Dorre and Bernier, which gave us less wind but smoother water. Glorious sunshine had us drifting along under screecher and main quite nicely. As we ate lunch, Nina spotted the line going mad, and I went to pull it in, only to se

After a few nights in the Useless Loop, the threat of N weather had receded, so we decided we’d head to the top of Dirk Hartog Island to see Cape Inscription. We had an errand to run first, so we were up before dawn and made the 20nm to Denham easily before the post office opened. Errand run, we made it back onboard and in flat calm conditions motored around to the top of the island into Turtle Bay.Not only did this bay have the same name as the one we left the Abrolhos from, it also had the s

The forecast suggested more light winds, coming from the NE, then increasing from the N and NW, so we decided to leave Tetrodon Loop and look for a more secure anchorage. We took the SUPs down to The Gathering to say good bye, then lifted anchor and headed out. We had a whole 0.3m below us at the shallow part - too easy!We opted for Useless Loop - named because it was considered to be a useless harbour due to the shifting sands at the entrance. It was an easy approach though, and we were soon an

After a quick walk ashore, we lifted the anchor and headed to the start of the path into the loop that we’d spotted. We were probably a bit early as the tide at the loop is a way behind the tidal point we were using but we had just enough to squeak in with less then 0.2m beneath the keels. Once over the shallow part, there was plenty of depth all the way in. It was worth it…There’s plenty of room for a few boats, so we gave our neighbours space. The weather was stunning, total glass out. S

We had one of those days. Ones that you don’t get very often. The plan was to go and explore the Tetrodon loop. The charts show it as being very shallow (0.3m) but the satellite images suggest that there is a way in that would put us alongside the sand dunes of Dirk Hartog island. Its 20nm from Denham, so we made a prompt start and were rewarded with some nice, light wind spinnaker sailing.The lines were in and we caught a couple of mackerel. We pickled some, bbq-ed a bit more and froze the re

Time to continue north… After a last cray mission (we got 3), we packed away and dropped the mooring in Turtle Bay. The wind was behind, but seemed like a bit much for the spinnaker, so we stuck with the screecher. It was a pretty reasonable run overnight - initially making good speeds, need us to change down to the genoa. However, the wind speeds fell away and we slowed to a midday arrival into south passage. We heard from another cruising catamaran on the VHF - one that we’d seen in the Ab

Forgot to mention that we did dive the Goss Passage between Beacon Island and Long Island. It was an ok dive, with lots of fish and some big bait balls, but it was chilly especially if you dropped below 14m or so…So from Long Island, we headed to Turtle Bay at the top of East Wallabi. The airport is there, so we started to see more people on the beach (flown in for a day trip to the Abrolhos!). We had an explore ashore but there isn’t much to see. Our attention turned to the reef. We snorkel

We headed from the Anenome lump to Beacon Island in the Wallabi Group, and picked up the mooring there. Access to the island itself is now forbidden as its where most of the murders during the Batavia shipwreck took place. We hoped to snorkel the wreck and as things were pretty calm, decided to jump in the dinghy and head around to the south of the island to see. Not a chance. The wreck site was very close to the breakers. So we gave up and headed back to the boat having checked out the possibil