Satisfied that all the weather forecasts were aligned and pointing to several good days ahead, today was confirmed as the day we'd head for Kangaroo Island, Australia's third largest Island. It's 155Km from East to West to give you a sense of it's size. We'd already spoken to Carol from the American River VMR (VHF 21) to get advice about her patch. Armed with this, we set off just after 10:00. No point leaving too soon; we wanted to arrive with a rising tide. We were headed for an estuarine anchorage.
We were escorted past Rapid Head by a pod of large dolphins who set a happy mood for this short 25Nm hop down the coast.
Part of the wind farm at Cape Jervis at the foot of the Fleurieu Peninsula
The Cape Jervis Lighthouse with Kangaroo Island Ferry (R) that will take you 13.5Km across Backstairs Passage to Penneshaw.
Conditions were so pleasant along the way we didn't stick to the 5 knot speed target, allowing ourselves a more leisurely pace. In the end we had to get a tickle on to get there while we still had light. Low tide was around 13:00 so our arrival time around 16:00 was with the incoming tide but with fading light.
This was the target mooring
Our Dock-Sticks allowed us to lasso the mooring
before dropping the dinghy and attaching proper mooring leads.
Notice the current!
The jetty at American River
Moored boats lining up in the 4-5Kn incoming tide.
The local pelicans roosting down for the night atop the lamp poles
The day was a brilliant one and even concluded in much hilarity once the dinghy had been lowered to attach the mooring lines. The Bloke was concentrating so hard on not being whisked away with the 4Kn racing tide (the swim ladder was pushed out horizontally on the top of the water) that he forgot to put the bung in the dinghy! Good thing there is two of us to check up on one another.
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