We moved from Thomson bay to Stark Bay, which has quite the entrance. Twists around rocks almost 270degs, and then through a very narrow channel (in which some numpty has dropped crab pots). The bay is full of moorings, leaving very little space to anchor and we resorted to a stern anchor to limit our swinging room.

As you can see, the reef is rather close! From here, we walked to the lighthouse in the centre of the island, and to the gun battery where we did a tour of the tunnels. Turns out the engines powering the guns were from Ruston & Hornsby and probably came from Lincoln.

The guns themselves were from Birmingham, and after all the effort to install them on the island (which required roads and a railway to be built), they were fired twice to test.

We also walked out to the west end of the island, to see the seals. We managed two good walks - 10km yesterday, 12km this morning. This afternoon we did a few boat jobs and then worked out how to lift the anchors. We decided to pivot onto the stern anchor from the bow, recover the main anchor, then recover the stern anchor. With limited room to swing, it was a bit complicated but we took it slow and managed it. We dropped the bow anchor again, to give us time to secure everything, then lifted it and headed back out the tight channel before dark.

We’re now underway to the Abrohlos. Looks like it’ll be slow going with some current against us, so we’re taking it easy and doing it over 2 nights rather than try and squeeze it into 36hrs or so. The wind also eases during the day before the sea breeze kicks in and we’re going to sail more to save the diesel. We expect to be at the southern Pelsaert group of the Abrohlos islands by Saturday (possibly around dawn). We also don’t expect much signal out there, so may be resorting to occasional satellite time ($$$) to keep the blog and position reports updated....