queensland Kimberly Trip Part 3

[Luvit]

While exploring these areas we did not see any boats, planes or people for 10 days. It was truly magic.

It was a beautiful spot and in the heat of the day we had a quick wash and had to pinch ourselves, not really believing we were finally here.

We had weather forecasts coming via a friend on a satellite phone each morning so we could plan our coming days. The next few days were looking good to duck out to Montgomery reef

The above photo was taken from the internet just to show where we were. The photos below that I have taken are from the smaller right arm channel

As the tide drops the water drains into the main channel and so do all the fish. We didn’t take that many photos but there were heaps of trevally of sharks and we had a massive 5ft long grouper have a crack at one of the trevally we had close to the boat. Thought it was a shark at first.

We had been fishing the channel wall and as the tide was dropping we decide to move out. As we drove up the anchor rope the anchor winch started to groan a bit. Not unusual, so we let the bow of the boat dip and use the buoyancy of the boat to lift the anchor from the reef. Then sound of the rope breaking echoed over the reef

We quickly marked the spot with the GPS and thought what do we do now. Without an anchor in the Kimberly it can be very dangerous and can end your trip prematurely. Luckily Brett had bought a spare anchor and chain just in case of this situation. However, we were not keen on leaving $700 worth of anchor/chain on the reef. We were only in 5 meters of water but dropping off into 20 meters. We waited a couple of hours for the tide to drop and the water to slow down. I towed Brett behind the boat on a rope with a mask and snorkel till we located the anchor. We set the sand anchor up and attached an empty water container to a 100 meter rope out the back of the boat as a safety so Brett wouldn’t get swept away. Brett using the tide pressure to plane himself down to the anchor and attach a rope. Success we were able to retrieve the anchor. Brett is an experience spear fishermen and was not too worried that we had seen sharks, barracouta and grouper before we attempted the recovery. Hell he dives in Western Australia!

Part 4 coming

 

 

[curranboy99]

Gets better and better!

I would sell my finger and take 3 years off my life to spend a month there it looks fantastic!!

 

[Luvit]

Mate, cannot describe how good it was.

woukd do it again in a heart beat

[kmcrosby78]

Awesome read Wayne - hearing about the adventure is even more fun then the fish caught. Great trip!!

[tugger]

So cool even some offshore as well

[Luvit]

I would have liked to do more offshore. My mate is not into it as much, so we mainly hit the eustary's. Not complaining were awesome in different ways.