Last day on the Buccaneer

Friday 3rd July 2009
The night on board was very nice with a good breeze to keep things cool and wave rocking us to sleep. The day always starts early on a yacht and today was no exception - 5:30 out of bed, a cuppa and we set of at 6am in an easterly direction. Breakfast was served while underway and while we sailed we also trolled a Lure. It wasn't to far into the trip and a 1mt Spanish Mackerel took the Lure. He was nearly dead by the time I got him in but we stayed well clear of his sharp teeth until we were sure of his demise. After more breathtaking Kimberley Scenery we arrived at Olive Jay Bay where we tied up at a mooring and took the launch for an exploratory trip through a mangrove forrest and then onto a little creek where we did some fishing. We didn't have a great amount of luck but finally something decided to take my bait and run away with it. I could not hold the [hand] line back and just had to let him run. Whenever he stopped I tried to wind a little bit of line back in but my success was very limited. When most of my hand line was in the water the skipper came to give me a hand and we slowly got him to surface. To our surprise I had hooked a Tawny Shark (Sleepy Shark, Lemon Shark) which was around 10 foot long. I never thought it possible to catch such a big animal on a hand line but to my surprise the hand line held. Once we had seen the shark I put a lot of tension on the line until it broke and the shark was free.
As luck would have it one of the other passengers also caught a shark of the same size about 5 minutes later so we moved on to a spot called Turtle Reef. First there wasn't much to see, just a very large area of flat water with a very distinct edge. As we waited and watched the line became clearer and then a little cascade of water appeared. The tide was going out and Turtle Reef appears like magic from the water. We went back to the catamaran and had morning tea before arriving back to the reef about an hour later. The reef was now very visible with the water from the other side of the reef cascading down a meter into the lower part where the tide was running out. The skipper offloaded us to explore the now exposed reef on foot. It was quite an amazing experience to walk on this reef which stretches 10km from one end to the other. The water was super warm and marine life plentiful. From little tropical clown fish to large clams and brain coral this walk gave us the opportunity to get a very close look at a reef.
By the time we headed back from the reef the catamaran had left the mooring and we met up with him along the way back into Talbot Bay sailing on the southern side of Slug Island.
Shortly after mooring we were picked up by a rib boat (semi solid rubber ducky) with 300HP on the back. This boat took us through the famous Horizontal Waterfalls where the water rushes though with extreme speed when the tides are changing. There are two falls, the first being 22mt wide, the second only 12mt wide and both are 30-40mt deepth. At full tidal flow the water pushes through at a rate of 1 million liters a second - that's roughly one Olympic swimming pool every second. As we are now on neap (smallest difference between high and low tide) tides the flow was very gentle but still generating eddies and various other interesting effects.
After the falls we went 10km upstream on Cyclone creek at the easterly end of Talbot Bay. This was real croc country where we could see the crock claw prints in the mud where the croc has worked it's way up the bank. We returned back to the catamaran just on sunset everyone was happy to have a little rest and enjoy a Kimberley sunset on the foredeck of the catamaran. Later in the evening we moved onto the "Houseboat" where we sat on the top deck and enjoyed our dinner - the Mackerel we caught earlier in the day.
The wind picked up again and we moved back onto the catamaran for a bit of a chat, a few more drinks and a group photo before retiring to bed for our last night on board Kimberley Cat.