By the time I left Broome, bruised and battle-scarred, the open sea seemed a safe place to head. Most of the stress with offshore sailing, happens in port or in the getting ready to depart on a long passage. It wasn’t Broome’s fault, but our experience there was a bit of an anti-climax all round for the crew, but more time ashore would have probably fixed that.

We left Broome to head west, for what turned out to be more motoring than sailing once again, with 400nm to sail to the Montebello Islands. The Montebello Islands are an archipelago of around 174 small islands (about 92 of which are named) lying 12nm north of Barrow Island and 75nm off the Pilbara coast of north-western Australia.

En-route, the crew caught up on their sleep deprivation and settled back into their watches, galley work, reading, sleeping, fishing and relaxing. The temperatures have finally started to ease, with our crew using a top sheet in bed, for the first time since leaving Darwin.

When the sleep levels increase and the temperature drops, everyone is happier, especially me. We had any easy 66 hour passage out to the Montebello Islands and looked forward to stopping for 24 hours. Salt Lines burned more fuel than Silver Fern with her extra 14 tons, so had to slow a little towards the end to conserve fuel. We agreed to get into the anchorage with the sun overhead and record our course with the Navionics App, so we could use it to help Salt Lines enter the channel though the reefs, if it was after dark.

Along the passage Ken caught more fish and the ZZZZZZZ of his reel going off, when he had a strike, had everyone heading for the cockpit in excitement each time. Ken catches, fillets, cleans and cooks and has been superb in this department. The fresh fish has been such a highlight on this leg.

We are in oil and gas rig territory now and they are everywhere. Michael started marking them on his Navionics App but gave up once he realised there were so many. Jo and Freya did a great job of finding an anchorage opposite Campbell Island for us and working out a route through the shallow channels, reefs, sand bars and islands.

The location includes a couple of nuclear testing sites where the British detonated nuclear bombs in 1951 in secret, that blasted a hole 6m deep and 300m wide. Not sure why those filthy Brits didn’t do this in their own back yard. For Queen and Country - yeh right! The guide books said to only spend one hour ashore on these 2 islands due to radiation levels. When did that kind of advice ever turn out badly? With 174 islands to choose from, we figured we would stay well clear of those two.

We entered the lagoon on the 22nd of September around 1330 hours and weaved our way through the various channels, to our anchorage 5nm inside the entrance and in just 4m of water. Jo suggested getting the boom tent up before we did anything else, but once this was done, Ken, Ken, Ian and Chris wasted no time diving off the stern, into the stunning clear water.

We put some music on, got out some nibbles and cold drinks, then hatched a plan to go ashore. I took the crew ashore in 2 trips and we all got a bit wet, so we came back in 3 groups so we could plane across the top. We spent 2 hours ashore and swam, walked the beach and hiked to the lagoon on the opposite side. The water was just cool enough to be refreshing and a nice change from the last 2,000nm of tropical temperatures.

This group of islands has a unique style about them with millions of years of erosion, chiselling out their rugged profiles. As the sun dropped in the sky, we made the 3 return trips, 1.2km across the bay to Silver Fern. We decided we could move a lot closer to the shoreline than originally planned, so we pulled up the anchor and moved 0.7nm closer, so we were ready for Salt Lines to raft up when they arrived in 2 hours time.

Dinner was home made burgers and these were cooked and ready just as the Salt Lines crew rafted up beside us. Jess bought Salt Lines alongside perfectly and our crew are old hands now at looping their dock lines through our scuppers, around the mooring cleats and back to the Salt Lines crew to tie off. We munched down our burgers and then had a bit of 2 boat chit chat, before heading to bed.

After nights of broken sleep and strange waking habits, its so easy to head to bed at a sensible time when you know your head does not have to get off the pillow for at least 8 hours. The next morning the crew arose from 6am onwards and the bacon and eggs was being served by Jo at 8am. With a couple of rounds of coffee, the batteries were recharged and we were ready to tackle the day.

We had a group meeting on Salt Lines at 9:15am to debrief some of the challenges we had faced in Broome and to update everyone on the weather and itinerary for the remainder of the passage to Perth. The next step was to get everyone into RIB’s and get them ashore to start the days activities.

I stayed onboard Silver Fern to write 6 days of overdue blog updates and to do some generator problem diagnosis (it still hates me!) and Ken Thomas led the shore charge, driving the RIB back and forth all day and getting the crew to and from Silver Fern. The crew had a great time ashore; swimming, snorkelling, hiking and relaxing. It was a great day in this unique part of Australia and 2 hours before sunset, it was time to head for Exmouth for another refuelling stop before continuing onto hit Ningaloo Reef.

David