This was published in, I think, the Western Australian volunteer marine rescue journal about 1996.
On the Western Australian coast, most yachties head out on the leads, make a thousand percent certain they are beyond the reef line then turn north or south with satisfaction: "Got that behind me - no dirty rocks out here to reach up and bite my bottom."
Tristan Jones would have approved; he reckoned small boat sailors are divided into novices, corpses and pessimists. But there is a downside to standing off; the water is usually rough so it's uncomfortable and slow if you're heading into it; the distance is greater, especially if day-sailing, amounting to perhaps ten miles on leads every day; and it's not very interesting because the only thing to see is the sea.
There wasn't any real question of my sailing out there. My boat, Nulla Nulla, was a Seawind 24 catamaran and not really an offshore vessel. One Seawind 24 did sail 7000 nautical miles from Sydney across the Coral Sea to Vanuatu and back and I once met a bloke who'd sailed from Brisbane to Newcastle in one. But these are heroic voyages. I wanted to go for a cruise. I reckoned that if I was clever, sailing such a small boat might be an interesting challenge rather than an intrepid adventure.
I decided I would sail close to shore, inside the reefs. Navigation would need to be good but these days that shouldn't be difficult. The large scale charts produced by the WA Department of Marine and Harbours show practically every rock so safe routes could be planned. And though visibility heading towards the winter sun would be limited, a GPS should provide agony-free piloting. After all, an obstruction has to be pretty close to the surface to be dangerous, since Nulla Nulla draws only 30 cm with the dagger boards up. The rudders draw about 75 cm but swing back if they strike anything.
My game plan was to anchor every night. Every day would be a separate day-sail, undertaken on the same basis that one undertakes a Sunday excursion to Rotto: Is it a nice day with a fair wind? Great, let's go. Is it a bit gloomy? Okay, let's read a book.
With this plan in mind, I rigged up some shelves and netting for extra storage space, renewed the aft trampolines, replaced the three wires which hold up the rotating mast, dabbed on some antifouling and cast off from the jetty at the Mangles Bay Fishing Club. It's the 18th of May, 1995 and I'm away.
Over three days I motor to Freo, tack to Hillarys, and beat to Two Rocks. For four days I hole up in Two Rocks while the rain lashes down and makes heroes out of the Carnarvon Race fleet.
If you have to stop, Two Rocks is congenial. The marina's somewhat run-down and they want $9 a night on the jetty but there are hot showers and the supermarkets and pub are handy. A bit too handy perhaps.
I explain my game plan in the bar. One experienced owner of a ferro monohull wants to know what I'll do if I am in the middle of reefs and something goes wrong.
"Uh - like what?"
"Say - the steering."
I can read his mind: horrors like broken quadrants, cables and hydraulic rams, or the propellor shaft spearing the rudder; he's probably been there. But these can't happen to my steering which is by tiller to two stern hung rudders. Even if something did happen, either rudder will suffice - and anyway, I could steer with the sails. We talk around the subject and it's hard to dream up a realistic emergency scenario. To the extent he does have a general point there is a quite specific answer: keep the anchors ready.
The inside route does have a positive safety feature, especially for a single hander: if necessary, I could probably swim to shore.
With a hopeful forecast and the motor on strike I tack out of the harbour and bob north against flukey winds. All day getting hardly anywhere. I consider returning to Two Rocks since it's quite choppy and there's no shelter. But I've seen enough of the Two Rocks boozer and since the forecast is for stable conditions for a couple of days I carry on. As darkness falls, I simply anchor in open water a mile or two off Cape Leschenault. It's pretty bouncy and in a mono it would be murder but it is not unsafe. Although my kitchen alarm wakes me every hour to check for dragging, I get plenty of sleep.
Next day there's a perfect SE to E breeze with sunshine. With dagger boards raised we eat up the miles. I race through Lancelin around 11 o'clock. I was told I can shelter at Wedge Island but at 12.30 it is too early to stop. On open sea and with NNW course, the apparent wind moves forward and spray flies from the port bow, as Nulla Nulla lifts to lazy SW swells. There are long, smooth surges with the GPS showing 12 knots. South of Green Island I go behind the reef again and, paying close attention to the DMH chart and the GPS, pilot carefully to anchor by the shack settlement of Grey about 3 pm.
The reef is now closing in. To this point I have navigated simply by reading the lat/long off the GPS and running my finger roughly over the chart. That is not too hard, especially on a DMH chart where a mile is about five centimetres, but in my situation - one hand on the tiller and the other hand clutching the chart to prevent it blowing away - I ought to be more systematic. (I think of those "authorities" we read in the cruising literature who pontificate on the importance of a chart table. On my boat there literally isn't room to turn around, let alone have a table.) That evening I spend a couple of hours planning a route through the maze, marking turning points and ruling lines connecting them. Using a soft pencil I write the lat and long of the points on the chart and then enter them into the GPS as waypoints. By designating the series of waypoints as a route in the GPS I compare, for each leg, the bearing and distance which the GPS tells me against the bearing and distance on the chart. I find a couple of mistakes, too.
It's another brisk easterly on a cold, clear, winter morning. I clip the GPS to the starboard hull, sit down in the sun under the transparent dodger, and we're off, eyes on the perspective diagram on the GPS screen. Against the sun I can see nothing in the water though there is enough swell coming through the outer reef to break on shallow bits. Usually I'm skimming along half a mile or more from the nearest white water but sometimes much nearer. Occasionally I am puzzled how the white water fits with the reefs on the chart but as I draw closer it always works out. The GPS goes beep when I come to a waypoint and the screen flicks, showing me the `runway' for the next course.
I dodge back and forth, always free on the wind except through Cervantes where I make an ad hoc short cut over some shallows to save tacking. Then catamaran heaven: a stiff beam wind directly off a clear beach. I skim along in dead flat water, metres from the water's edge, mile after mile.
I take advantage of my draft and sneak over the sand spit at the bottom of Jurien Bay, popping the rudders a couple of times. Generally, though, I've got at least a couple of metres under the hulls. With the exception of one or two spots - readily avoided - I realise my trip could just as easily be done in a deep draft mono.
I buy some fresh supplies then head off across Jurien Bay and around North Head. There's no shortage of anchorages. Half an hour before sundown I choose a pretty spot called Sandy Point and steer accurately into it with the help of the GPS. As I switch it off I feel like giving it a kiss.
That night I plan the route as far as Port Denison. Such route planning is very much a job for the night before as it is not practical to design a route and enter waypoints while trying to steer and keep a look out. It's two hours of careful work, plotting, measuring, entering, checking and correcting. That done, actually sailing along the route is child's play - as long as the GPS works and the wind is free.
For me the wind starts free for a fast ride past Green Head then backs, making me lower the dagger boards and tack along the windward (east) side of Freezer Boat Reef. I keep an eye on the chart and the cross-track error and the long line of white that marks the reef - and when I tack, I don't fluff it.
There's a gap coming up of only a tenth of mile to get through. Got to get it dead right for this is pushing the GPS to the limit of its accuracy. Just then the wind goes erratic. I stare about anxiously but can see nothing in the water. Despite my polaroid glasses, the surface is just a glare of smashed sunlight. Massive lifts and knocks. I get hit by a bullet and lift and lift; I watch the compass: 40 degrees, 50 degrees, still lifting - and suddenly the sails are aback and light little Nulla Nulla stops. I reverse briefly, swing off, catch some breeze and accelerate away. Tack, tack, tack; I watch the GPS, position the boat exactly through the gap and then it's behind me. A few minutes later the wind backs then dies; no matter, the careful reef work is over.
After an hour, a mild south westerly comes in, I set the spinnaker and with the boards up, coast along at three to six knots. I pass Illawong, Knobby head and Freshwater Point during a warm, lazy afternoon. I consult the chart - now a small scale one - and at 5pm close the coast, douse the spinnaker and in deepening dusk, anchor in 2 m of sand off the beach.
I'm unlikely to reach Geraldton next day but just in case I do, I set up a straightforward route inside African Reef, outside the foaming reef-filled cauldron south of Moore Point and then two alternative routes through the reefs north of the Point and into the harbour.
Weigh anchor at 5 am. Cold! There's a useful south east breeze till 10 am when it goes calm off Dongera. It's a lovely day for fiddling with the outboard. It eventually cooperates and drives the boat for a couple of hours till I get sick of the racket and hoist the sails, just in time for a nice NE breeze.
The GPS tells me the time of sundown and gives me an ETA at present speed which is long after dark. I ruminate on the routes past the reefs north of Pt Moore. There are three possibilities: a short, direct track which is the most reef-strewn route, my alternative which is a dog-leg a couple of miles longer, and the official shipping channel which is ultra safe but many extra miles which will definitely involve windward work. Well, so what if it's dark? As long as the GPS shows me where I am, what does it matter that I cannot see where I am going? Hmm... I'll decide when I get there.
Past African Reef I head out to sea as a squall darkens the sky to the west. I wonder if it contains wind. It does, briefly violent, and I feather up into it. As it abates, I drop the bow and blast along northward with the main sheet slack at 10 to 11 knots.
The wind steadies from the south west and I set the traveller and tension the mainsheet to maintain speed. At this rate the ETA at my decision point is just after sundown. The short route begins with a pass between two breaking reefs. The reefs will be breaking; it might also be breaking in the pass but in the relatively quiet swell, I don't think so. Though the sun will be gone, the western sky will be behind me. While still holding my options open, I am inclined to favour this fast track. After all, any other route will be darker because longer and later.
I re-check that the harbour chart is on the Australian Geodetic Datum to which my GPS is set. With the chart clipped to the boat in its plastic envelope, a torch handy, and the GPS display light on, I gybe as the waypoint comes up and Nulla Nulla runs east down the perspective diagram toward the pass. The glow of the western sky shows white water left and white water right. No sweat: that's just as the chart promised. A swell comes through and we accelerate down it, the boat gliding as on rails. Half a minute later the swell fades. Obediently, I follow my star wars gizmo for the remaining short legs and anchor half an hour later by the light of the street lamps in front of the Geraldton yacht Club.
Now it seemed to me that to do this "inside route" the significant requirement was for accurate navigation. With a GPS, the requirement is easily met. A month later in Carnarvon I came across Colin on Sea Cat, a heavy displacement 24 foot catamaran which had left Mangles Bay Fishing Club a few weeks before me. It turned out he'd also come up the inside route, however he didn't have any of the DMH's large scale charts. And though he had a GPS he had never used its waypoint and other fancy features. How had he managed? Why, he said, since he only drew a couple of feet he just avoided any white water.
The following day when I brought a couple of the DMH charts to his boat, Colin was able to indicate his route fairly precisely. I pointed to a typical group of nasties, "How would you have avoided these?" I asked. He reckoned that if it wasn't breaking it wasn't going to touch him. He admitted to a pang of uneasiness in a couple of places where he had sailed through swells but joked that he was glad he hadn't had such horrible charts to get nervous over. On further discussion it turned out he'd even gone in behind the mess of reefs south of Point Moore.
Was he reckless or was my conscientious navigation unnecessary fuss? Neither, I think. The main reef is not a continuous line but has plenty of breaks in it with the result that there is generally some residual swell which, even if hardly noticeable, may be expected to break on any rocks within a couple of feet of the surface. Everyday I had seen dozens of cray boats motoring among the reefs. These vessels would have four to six feet of draft and though they have all the fancy electronics, they would be eyeballing much of the time as they weave in and out, setting and retrieving their pots. With experience and local knowledge one would get a feel for it. Colin then confessed that he had been a crayfisherman in those waters. He admitted that on Sea Cat he had missed the good view from the elevated wheelhouse but the much shallower draft of the little cat perhaps compensated for that.
Still, I think I prefer the procedure using the GPS and large scale DMH charts. And I commend it to monohulls. At only a couple of spots was the charted depth (the depth at low water springs and thus pretty much the worst case) less than 1.8 metres and such points could be avoided by minor route changes. Since my trip I have been told of Joe and Christina Gooden and their four daughters who sailed from Geraldton to Perth in Bonnie which draws six feet. Indeed, it is when sailing south that being inside is the most advantageous as it gets you out of the SW swell.
Of course this recommendation only applies to that southern part of my "inside" trip. Since then, I have sailed the eighty miles or so inside Ningaloo reef from Coral Bay to North West Cape. It is different story there, with coral heads all over the place. Except for the run from Pt Maud to Pt Cloates, monohulls can forget it. The reef is generally continuous and the lagoon is without swell. Good visibility is essential and I was glad to have crew for this section to help in keeping a constant lookout. We decided it was best to confine travel to a couple of hours either side of high tide and to get past the squeeze at Mandu Mandu we made sure we were there at high water. Ningaloo was lovely sailing, by the way.
Night sailing? I wouldn't - not behind the reefs. If you want to sail at night you had better go offshore. Apart from the spookiness of depending on the GPS to nip around invisible dangers, the wind tends to die in the evening. Motoring inshore at night is almost out of the question for there are cray pots in their thousands. Each pot has thirty metres or so of line floating on the surface with two or three buoys attached and even in daylight you have to pay attention to avoid them.
The beauty of the inside route is the smooth sailing. The bonus is the scenery. If it's attractive enough you can nose into a convenient lee and drop the pick for lunch. I did this one day even though I was impatient to get north to a warmer climate. Sailing offshore non-stop is quicker but if you have the time, day-sailing the inside route is the civilised way to cruise.
Of course, for the next leg, along the Zuytdorp Cliffs from Geraldton to Shark Bay, I would have no choice. That must be one of the most uncivilised places on Earth.