We shared Shelter Bay with Exhale, another catamaran, last night. I’ve seen Exhale around quite a bit on the east coast last season, and we’ve also shared Deception Bay with them in the Kimberley. Not managed to meet them yet though!

They left shelter bay before us and it looked quite tough sailing against the wind (judging by their AIS) which was staying determinedly east plus a strong counter-current! We left a bit earlier than planned because of that, but the wind was beautiful for us. We were sailing before we left the bay, out through the gap with a well reefed main (because it was blowing quite hard in the bay itself) and genoa. The wind was NE by the time we cleared the islands, and kept backing around to N as we sailed. It also wasn’t that strong - 8-12knots, so we unrolled the screecher but stuck with the reefed main. We were going fast enough, though with the tide against us we weren’t breaking any records!

Within 5nm of the point we turned more down wind, the tide changed to flow with us. At which point we gybed the main and continued wing-on-wing until level with the anchorage. Then we gybed the screecher and sailed right into the bay. Screecher furled as the wind eased behind the island, then main dropped and anchor in. Nicely done and just sips of diesel used to cover the 18nm. Exhale are here too.

The reason to come to the Palm and Winyalken islands are the rock art that is supposed to be very good. We’ve had lots of recommendations, so we’ll hang out here for a few days to explore and see before we move on again.