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YELLOW PATCH – EXPLORING THE DUNES...continued |
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But the most remarkable feature of the area was the mountain of rubbish washed in by the sea and left strewn all over the sand, in places feet deep. A sad indictment of our treatment of the ocean, or simple carelessness on a remarkable scale. |
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Apart from the ubiquitous thong, the rubbish included an esky, a wooden letterbox, wooden crates, plastic bottles too many to count, a bottle of brandy partly drunk, tennis balls, long timber beams, you name it. If it floats, it was there. Probably even a kitchen sink if we’d looked harder. |
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SUNDAY 11 OCTOBER. By now we had been at sea for four weeks. Fresh food and a rest beckoned. A forecast of strong northerly winds tipped the scales and winkled us out of Yellow Patch. Masala was like a thoroughbred headed back to the stables – there was no stopping her as she creamed along at 6 to 7 knots, peaking at 8.2. We pulled into a berth in the delightful Keppel Bay Marina, heading immediately for the showers and the café, in that order. |
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The marina allocates berths to incoming yachts over the VHF radio. They tell you the berth number and whether it is a port or starboard tie up, so that you know on which side to set up your mooring lines and fenders. Unfortunately there was a mix up with one of the yachts we tried to help. They had one chance only to get into their berth because of the conditions, but through no fault of their own they found themselves entering the berth with fenders and mooring lines on the wrong side. |
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Next afternoon the expected strong winds blew in. Yachts were arriving one after the other, to avoid the coming storms. The sea was breaking right across the entrance to the marina, making for some exciting moments. Inside the harbour the wind was causing havoc as yachties tried to manoeuvre their boats into their allocated berths. Those already tied up were on hand to grab mooring lines and secure them as quickly as possible, before the yachts went out of control. |
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The outcome was ugly. They couldn’t throw lines to the people on the jetty so the boat careered sideways and hit the yacht alongside, damaging its wind steering gear and taking off quite a bit of paint. There was a mad panic to try and get the mooring lines off and swap them to the other side. We hauled frantically to pull them off the other yacht, but the wind made it next to impossible. Afterwards it was sad to see the miserable faces of both sets of owners. |
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Above: the ocean beach south of Cape Capricorn is littered with rubbish. It must all have been washed in by the ocean since there is no vehicle access. |
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THE GORGEOUS GOZZARD—A YACHT, NOT A CARRION EATER |
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Above: Keppel Bay Marina. You’ll need $1,000,000 plus to buy one of the townhouses with attached floating jetty. |
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We spent the rest of the afternoon glued to the VHF radio, listening to the attempts to rescue a yacht whose rudder had snapped off in the heavy conditions. The rescue boat couldn’t tow the yacht into the marina because of the breaking seas across the entrance. |