A learning curb for us today. The early bird does not always get the worm. We lifted anchor and slowly navigated our way through The Great Sandy Straits. As we were making our way slowly due to an Ebb tide, we realised that reading the tides for here makes life a little easier. We were sailing with our head sail & wind 15+kn from behind, we should have been doing anything from 6-7kn, but we were only making 3-4kn against tide. Lesson 1 – try to always go with the tide. Lesson 2 – depth. We got to Boonlye Point where it is well known to be very shallow. Following the chart plotter we slowly came to a red mark and as we nearly turned we touched ground. We reversed back and decided we would anchor & wait for the tide to come in. This was about 4hrs away.

Our anchored depth, waiting for the tide to rise

 While we were patiently waiting, enjoying the sun, there were 3 boats coming. We kindly informed them we touched as they went by. All of them decided to continue on. I watched with curiosity the first boat, they seemed to be getting close to where we touched & all of a sudden their bum lifted into the air. They had hit the bottom, unfortunately as they had more speed than us they got stuck and had to drop anchor and wait for the tide.

The 2^nd boat still followed & tried to go around them, they to touched the bottom, but were able to reverse and anchor near us. The 3^rd boat miraculously cut the corner and went on the other side of the red marker and continued on only to get stuck another 100m down the channel. After about an hour or so they were bumped off the sand bank with the help of their sails and they continued on.

The tide had finally risen enough to lift anchor & continue on. We touched very slightly near the red marker but were able to bump off straight away. I find shallows very stressful, but I guess if you were to hit bottom sand would be much better than reef. We continued on to South White Cliffs and anchored for the night, having sundowners on Della-Rue.

13.13 nm, 2.5 hrs, avg speed 5 kn, total motor sailing 2.5 hrs