The Hole in the Wall - Gugari Rip

The Hole In The Wall or Gugari Rip, as it is also known, is a dead straight channel between Guluwuru Island and Raragala Island of the Wessel Islands Group. Located in the remote waters of the Arafura Sea between the Northern Territory and Papua New Guinia. It looks like a meteorite glanced through here many thousands of years ago and calved a dead straight channel.

The chart warns of 12 knots of current ripping through. That’s a lot faster than Caree can move, so it had to be timed right. The Gove Boat Club produces a good leaflet on working the time from the Gove tide time. I wanted to check so did a quick Google and found there was a lot of confusion, with people saying that the Gove Boat Club advice was wrong and various other advice was wrong. I decided to hit it at Slack Water on High Tide as measured by the Guluwru Island tide marker. We anchored at Wigram Island and aimed to make the 6 hour sail to the Rip to coincide with the 1:09pm high tide. We missed it by only a minute and entered just after. The decision was reinforced with two other boats converging at the same time.

The ride started nicely with a little current and a few whirlpools, there was soon a lot of current and 10.9 knots on the speed over ground gauge with a few small standing waves. A quick ride through some spectacular scenery.