After a week "off line " we are almost home 👏🏻👏🏻 Currently west of Moore River (6 miles from the shore) and about 6 hours from Fremantle. After leaving Exmouth we spent a night in Norwegian Bay then on to Bernier island (at the northern tip of Shark Bay) a two day/one night trip. We spent two nights there waiting for some weather to pass and then went on to the Abrolhos, also a two day/one night trip. Two nights at West Wallabi, once again waiting for bad weather to pass and left the Abrolhos on Monday morning. We have had a fantastic trip but are looking forward to getting home 🏡

After a couple of lovely days in Exmouth  we have set off for our trip back to Fremantle (at 5:30 this morning 😱). If we make good time we might stop at Norwegian Bay for a swim and overnight stay or if the day turns out to be a glass off we might just go to Tantabiddy for the afternoon and an overnight?? Depending on where we go this might be our last post until we get home, which should be by Wednesday 28 June 👏🏻👏🏻

Craig and I have spent the day doing some very mundane things, like provisioning (with the help of Linda), cooking meals for the trip from Exmouth to Fremantle and changing oil/water filters. We did get to have a lovely lunch with Linda, Bruce, Sam, Melissa and their two beautiful boys, Jarvis and Lockie 👏🏻👏🏻
Mark and Reg left on a day trip to swim with the whale sharks at 7am this morning and are not back yet, hopefully they have had a wonderful day

The Montes

The Montes

Working Hard

Arrived in Exmouth

After leaving Dampier on Sunday morning we spent most of the day looking for a sheltered anchorage having decided that Rosemary Island was not going to work with the wind direction we had. The forecast also changed to a strong wind warning for the next two days 😱 So we found a spot off West Lewis Island and stayed there until Tuesday morning. We headed off fairly early that day for the Montebello's, and arrived around 4pm later that day. The anchorage off from Trimouille was lovely and we spent two nights  there, using our one full day to explore the island and see the memorial for a nuclear weapons test that the UK held in 1956. We left the Montebello's yesterday after lunch and had a lovely 24 hour sail to Exmouth.
Having arrived safely in Exmouth we are now tied up at the Marina and have already caught up with Linda and Bruce- yippee  😍 and will get to spend some time with them over the next couple of days.

We have decided to leave Dampier today, the wind is still strong (20-25 knots) but we will do a short hop to Rosemary Island where we will stay overnight. Craig might even get to catch up with our friend Roland who is on the island for a fishing trip 🎣 In the morning we will head off to the Montebello's. The wind is meant to be moderating, so hopefully we will have a couple of nice days to do some fishing and snorkelling before heading to Exmouth later in the week.

Photo below of sunset from the Yacht Club last night
The weather is terrible (apparently 😀)
It is windy during the day and then seems to calm down overnight

We arrived yesterday around lunch time with Border Force waiting for us on the yetty. It was a howling gale and the guys very kindly helped us get the boat tied up securely, which was a bit of a task as the bow thruster stopped working half way through 😱The guys from Border Force were great and we even had a sniffer dog 🐶 (a beautiful black Labrador wearing booties) come aboard to check for drugs, then the bio security (quarantine) did their check. After we were all cleared we headed off and anchored in Hampton Harbour, drinks that evening at the Yacht Club and dinner at the Mermaid hotel.

Our trip from Bali took a bit longer than expected but was generally uneventful, very tiring  though as we were on a tight port reach for pretty much the entire trip - I thought I was going to end up on a permanent lean 😂 and sleep was difficult to get. We spent today doing some cleaning and washing, and Nikki flew back to Perth 😢, we are now down to four.

We will spend some time tomorrow looking at the weather for the next week and make a decision on where to go from here, maybe the Montebello Islands?

After a lovely couple of days in Lembongan we headed to Benoa for our clearance out of Indonesia.
All went well and we are now on our way back to Australia 👏🏻👏🏻 Our expected arrival day into Dampier  is Tuesday next week 😀

Still at the Batu Karang - this time for dinner!