SV Footprint (Begonia): Curlew Island

[Kyle]After almost a week of having a cellular signal that seemed to get worse with each passing day (that’s how they get ya!), we decided to risk trying to head further south in the hope that we may be able to pick up something along the way. With the wind still strong out of the north, our only real option within day sailing distance was Curlew Island.

Kyle loved the conditions
and the fact that he finally beat (trounced) me at Yatzy!

We had another lovely spinnaker sail on a broad reach. Most of the other boats that had been in the anchorage with us at Keswick also departed, but gradually diverged towards the Percy Isles. By the time we got to Curlew, we were the only one there. There was one AIS target that also seemed to be heading to the same place. It looked like they would get there about an hour after we did.

We actually managed to maintain a pretty good phone signal until we were tucked pretty far into the bay on the southeastern side of the island, then the high ground surrounding us blocked it out. Oh, well. We tried.

A couple of other boats had added community edits about the bay on our various cruising apps. They agreed the anchorage could only take a few boats and mentioned a bottom of patchy sand. The locations for these were plotted in the middle of what appeared to be a sandy patch on the satellite imagery.

We arrived right at the top of a four-and-a-half-meter tide and slowly eased toward the previous boat’s coordinates. Before we even got that far, it was looking bad. After our depth sounder started climbing from the teens, we could clearly see a thick barrier of coral between us and the enticing patch of sand beyond. The bottom shot upwards in the same manner as it had back at Keswick to depths that we knew would ground us at low tide, so we beat a hasty retreat back to deeper water.

The visibility through the water was not great. Since the place reminded us of both Tinsmith and that coral-strewn anchorage on the south end of St. Bees, we decided to send me down to look at the bottom before dropping the anchor. Even more so than at Tinsmith, I found mostly live coral with a few small patches of sand. That left us the choice to stay or to continue on overnight to somewhere much further south. We decided to try to make it work like we would sometimes have to do in French Polynesia. Since the visibility was not good enough to see the bottom from the surface, nor the boat from the bottom, Maryanne sent me down holding onto the anchor with the idea that I could maneuver it to a good landing spot at the end. Then we let out the rest of our scope, Pardey-style, in a big pile next to it with the hopes that the light winds forecast over the night would mean that we wouldn’t actually need to pull on it.

Once I was back aboard, the other boat arrived, saw us in the deep water way in the back and headed for the sand in front, apparently unaware that we had already tried that. They got almost to the sand, as we had, then gave up and started reversing like mad. They backed up about a boat length and then dropped their anchor on what just had to be coral.

They stayed in that spot for a bit, and then apparently decided they didn’t like it and moved a few meters to re-anchor. That one also didn’t work for them, so they did it again.

Another boat arrived from another direction that looked like it was the same make. They went halfway to the other boat and then came back to anchor almost on top of us. Before I had to say anything, they pulled their gear back up with difficulty, presumably because it was fouled on coral, and started milling around nearby for another spot.

Watching all of this was making me increasingly nervous about our chain. I decided to go back overboard to have a look at it again and to attach a trip line and float to our anchor. This was less to aid us in its retrieval than to help us see from the boat if its position was changing at all relative to Begonia. The float ended up about where the second other boat had anchored, which I think they may have taken as a hint to shove off. Not really, but I didn’t want them too close to either us or our ground tackle, so it worked out for us anyway. I was still a little distressed that neither of the other two boats were seeming to be worrying too much about the coral. The reasoning seems to be that if you can’t see it, it’s not coral.

There was some sort of plankton bloom going on just then, which I was worried might include Irukandji. I got stung mildly several times, but so far am still alive, so I guess it was just regular jellies. Still, I’m not going back in there again if I don’t have to.

Back aboard and dried off for a second time, I noticed the first other boat already had their dinghy in the water and were heading for the beach. They got about halfway, came back and then started milling around the front of their boat about where the anchor would have been. Then we saw swimmers, then the dinghy returned to the bow.

We heard chain coming over their windlass, but before they got far, there was a lot of banging and crunching and shaking coming from over there, alternating with what was clearly full power on both engines. The tide was now going down fast and we were pretty sure they were soon going to be calling for help on the radio when they realized they were stuck.

They didn’t, and somehow managed to free themselves. They moved to where they should stay afloat for the whole tide cycle and then dropped the anchor there. Again, I am certain they were over coral. We had been over the exact same spot at high tide and backed off for just that reason. Once they were settled, we thought they would be spending their time diving, looking at the damage. Instead, they headed over to their sister boat for sundowners.

Around then, we saw a big ketch sailing by. We forgot about it until almost an hour later, when a set of lights and a dim outline of a ketch arrived into the bay and started milling around. They anchored in three or four different places before settling on one just to leeward of Begonia. They were just enough further out to be caught in the currents streaming by, which had a few overfalls at maximum. By the behavior of their lights, it looked like they were having a pretty boisterous night. I got up at around 11pm to investigate a noise and saw that they were much more stable. Another check at 3am found them nowhere to be seen. By then, the rolling would have started again, no doubt accompanied by the sound of grinding coral telegraphing up the chain, so they clearly decided to just get up and leave.

We were holding pretty steady relative to our trip line float, so we decided to chance another night of calms before moving on. The boat that grounded left. The other stayed, but then more arrived to anchor in random places as if it were all sand down there.

That is one of the problems with crowd-sourced info. Once one boat goes there and leaves a comment, others follow, figuring it’s fine. Based on where the anchor icons were located over the sandy patch on the satellite photos, Maryanne conjectured that the comments were made by tinnies or possibly jet skis stopping for lunch at high tide. For the record, both spots were about a meter above the edge of the water at low tide. Just in case some search engine digs up this entry, the anchorage here is NOT suitable for anything bigger than a tinnie, unless you are prepared to send a diver first to find sand. Most of the coral here is alive, not dead, and there would be almost no way to anchor without killing more of it. If you’re not worried about the coral, be worried about damaging your boat and ground tackle. It is cheaper and safer to stay at sea for the night in deep water.

At the next high tide, we made a quick trip to the beach with the aim of climbing a hill to search for a phone signal. We got stymied by thick undergrowth before we could gain enough elevation to get any, so we beat a hasty retreat to Begonia to do some more fretting about our swing. At least this side of Curlew is very pretty with lots of high, multi-colored rock surrounding us.