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 a challenge…

Its definitely territory where you don’t take chances - these rocks bite! Having scoped it out, I was happy to proceed. On the high tide, we lifted anchor and motored the short distance to the entrance to the bay. We entered without problem as we could clearly see the big rock in the forerground above just under the surface. We had a look at the little pool at the far end of the bay, but decided it would be tight to try and anchor there afloat. Instead I decided we’d go and sit in the middle of the bay. That said, there wasn’t enough water for us to stay afloat for a whole tide cycle (even at neaps) - but the hulls needed a good scrub, so this seemed like the chance.

The bay at high tide is very pretty, and you can see how well protected we are from the 30knots easterlies blowing across from the channel. The wind is very bitterly cold, which is annoying as we’re supposed to be in the tropics!

At low tide, we’re almost fully dry. This allowed us to scrub the hulls clean as well as the waterline. The stern anchor was out to keep our swinging area limited to the area I’d checked we could dry out on safely.

Sunset turned the bay even more beautiful.

We spent 2 nights in Champagne Bay, drying out for the afternoons on the very low tide, but also touching down in the early hours for a couple of hours too. The early morning low tides are nearly 1m higher than the afternoon lows, so I barely noticed the touch down overnight.

Hulls and waterline all spick and span, we took this mornings high tide to head out of the bay and try another anchorage…