Waking up in Chance Bay to a fine, crisp morning soon had us rearing to go. Brekky was toasted sandwiches, which filled us all up nicely.
The walk from Chance Bay to Whitehaven Beach was about 3.6km each way, but didn’t feel that long. We had it done in under an hour.
Whitehaven Beach has some lovely sand and it is super soft under foot. They say it is soft enough to polish your glasses with.
Seeing how calm it was around at Whitehaven, I made the trek back around to collect Phoenix and bring her around to this side. Bad idea! By the time I arrived back at Whitehaven the weather had set in and it was no longer possible to moor near the shore. Not that it stopped me trying! Everybody else had departed by the time I got back …
I managed to get the anchor to hold about 200m offshore and snuck in on the dinghy to pick up everybody else. It was a bit like a scene out of bondi rescue, but without any of the professionalism and including all of the mishaps. Nobody died.
Once we were all back onboard, I gave it full throttle and got the hell outta there. Way too rough. We had to negotiate the Solway passage, Fitzalan passage and back up through a couple of hours of open ocean before we again saw calm waters inside Macona Inlet. 2M seas nearly the whole way, but we were headed straight into it so it wasn’t too bad. Kel was a bit poorly during this leg, but the kids were oblivious inside, playing DS and reading. They missed out on seeing a 3M shark swimming along beside the boat. This did make them think twice about having an afternoon swim around her though.
Macona is just next door to Nara Inlet so it was a good spot to park for the night. We made it to our anchorage right on 4pm. Well protected from the winds. The charterer also informed us that we didn’t need to have the boat back until midday tomorrow. That would give us a chance at seeing a bit more scenery in the morning, but we wouldn’t be able to get as far as expected with the van. The itinerary is getting a bit tight now.
With the sun fading we decided to head out to a nearby beach in Wallis (the wunabout) to watch the sunset.
We had the beach to ourselves. There were a few turtles and tropical fish swimming around in the shallows, but that was all the company we had. An idylic end to a hectic day.
Little were we to know what tomorrow would hold …
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