After two days in the Batavia Marina in Geraldton we had a weather window and decided to head South for the 217 nautical mile or just over 400 kilometre sail to Fremantle. We departed at 7:30am on the 15th August 2018 and headed out through the marina entrance.With the marina breakwater being parallel to the beach, the swell tends to be right at the entrance to the marina. We weaved our way through the markers and cray pots out to the North West to avoid the huge breakers of the Point Moore Reefs. Then we headed due South. The 5 metre swell was quite smooth with a 13 second interval. The sailing went well with not too much wind until the last night when the wind blew up to 22 knots and the wind waves started knocking Caree around a bit.
Due to the number of floats from Crayfish pots we headed further out to sea to avoid them in the darkness. As we approached Rottnest we could see a ship approaching from the rear. A quick check on the AIS indicated it was on the same heading as us but doing twice our speed and was about 20 minutes from going over the top of Caree. Changing course to head straight to Rottnest we powered up and moved out of the ships course only to discover another ship heading towards Fremantle between us and Rottnest. With both ships now marked and tracked via the radar we could tell that the ship in front of us was going a lot faster and would pass in front, so we slowed Caree to 4 knots, we would wait for the ship now off the Port side to pass and we would head West and onto Fremantle. Unfortunately the ship to our Port had also slowed to 4 knots to let the other ship pass, so we had to slow to 2 knots in rough seas and wait for both ships to get clear.
We then had an uneventful passage into Fremantle and arrived at 6am and tied up to the mooring ball outside the entrance to Fremantle Sailing Club. After a few hours sleep we headed to our pen in the Sailing Club, to be greeted by Ness and Amanda with a bottle of champagne and strawberries. After more than 4300 nautical miles or 8080 kilometres Caree has made it to her new home in Fremantle Sailing Club.
Final Leg Satellite Tracker Statistics
Fremantle at Last
Fremantle Sunset
Fremantle Sunset