Oz Circumnavigation
Raft Point/Red Cone Creek, via Montgomery Reef
Next stop was Raft Point via the spectacular Montgomery Reef.
We had to time this to arrive close to the bottom of the ebbing tide to witness the open ocean quickly becoming a mass of exposed reef whilst anchored in a narrow gutter and observe at close hand the water rushing off the reef and dropping 10 metres into the gutter. An absolutely spectacular sight to experience.
Like much of the areas up here we were in locations without any soundings (depths) on our charts, serious eyeballing and reading our depth sounder became a matter of critical importance.
From Montgomery Reef after an hour we high tailed it across to Raft Point where we dropped our pick for the night just on dark.
To get to Rubys which is the bay at the mouth of the Red Cone Creek so we could go up to the waterfalls and have a swim, we had to negotiate a winding 10 nm journey through Whirlpool Point and Strong Tide Point. This was fun as we had the current behind us but still had whirlpools spinning us around like a cork.
Strong Tide Point was where the original charter boat True North hit a serious rock causing major damage some years ago. Apparently the skipper had the autopilot driving from chartplotter waypoints, whilst reading a book. The only book I would read is the good book during this passage.
Out trip up to the falls in the inflatable was filled with great scenery, and when we arrived there we found guests off two other charter boats enjoying a swim under the falls.
