It was getting cold in Perth; we wanted a sailing expedition and we really wanted it to be somewhere warm. Shark Bay—a remote place with World Heritage status—was the answer.
For those unfamiliar with the place, Shark Bay is about 500 miles north of Perth and forms the westernmost point of Australia. It is also the site of the second known European landing in Australia, made by Dutchman Dirk Hartog in 1616 on an island that now bears his name.
The coastline of Shark Bay is long and intricate, dotted with some spectacular cliffs. The waters are rich in sea life, and the surrounding land parched and arid.
After a few weeks of preparation, the day of our big adventure finally arrived. It’s a long, long drive, and we eventually crawled into the small Shark Bay town of Denham, a bit after dark.
On Sunday morning we crawled out of our sleeping bags and set to work getting gear out of the cars and squeezing it into our boats. We wanted to get away early as we had grand plans of making the long passage across Denham Sound to Dirk Hartog Island. We also had a forecast warning of a strong northwesterly storm due to arrive on Tuesday night and into Wednesday. If we were to get over to the island we had to do it today or tomorrow.
The challenge: It was taking a surprising amount of time to get our gear organized and, in addition, our preparations were constantly interrupted by lengthy chats with curious locals. We worked through our tasks and finished by logging our sailing plans with the friendly local Australian Coast Radio Monitoring group.
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