We had had a bit of a faster than expected sail from Hall Point and arrived at the southeast corner of Montgomery Reef just after high tide. There wasn’t much to see then except for a few low islands in the middle distance and the cliffs of the mainland near the horizon. We anchored in an uncomfortable swell and waited.
About an hour later, two small cruise ships that we had seen before, Odyssey and Kimberley Pearl, showed up on our AIS approaching from the southeast. Their ETAs appeared to be about when we planned to start to get moving again.
By the time they both arrived, the wind was gone, the tide was dropping rapidly and the sea was calming down nicely. Odyssey arrived first, and then they anchored to load up their guests in Homer, their big tender. Kimberley Pearl continued on into The Gutter, a gap in the reef where the water cascading off of the top can be from both sides. That was nice for us because we could follow their AIS target along the chart, which inaccurately displays the edge of the reef and has the rest as a big blank area marked ‘unsurveyed’. Their track approximated the chart, but definitely crossed areas depicted as dry. It was good to know where the water really was.
The tides flow so fast and so much water is trying to move, that the levels are not the same everywhere and small waterfalls emerge to help with the flow between high and low tide
We followed them in by about half an hour, so they were just exiting the channel as we entered. With the day’s tide range only at about five meters, it wasn’t too dramatic. The reef is generally billed as a spectacle. Maryanne observed that it would probably be more accurate to call it a curiosity. The top of the reef was at just about eye level while sitting at our helm. Along the brown walls of the reef, there are regular low spots where the water on top collects and forms babbling brooks that pour into the channel. Along the banks, there were lots of shore birds picking their way along and in the gutter itself, we passed by too many turtles to count.
It's a remote but popular spot on the Kimberley circuit
By sunset, the reef had covered again and all of the tour boats were heading for the horizon. We got lucky because the forecast called for unusually light winds out of the west for the night. Typically, the anchorage here is untenable at high tide, but in light winds, the swell is tolerable. Because of that, we stayed as the only boat so that we could see the next day’s bigger seven-meter drop before moving on.
The evening high tide had just a gentle swell and the early morning low was flat as we had reef on one side and a protective sandbar on the other. Best of all, way out here there were no bugs. For the first time in a while, we slept with all of the doors and hatches open.
The morning wind arrived about the same time the sandbar in the same direction submerged. Then the motion shook us awake. Time for another day! Get up! Apart from being a little bouncy, it was nice to have enough time to take the rest of the morning slowly.
About an hour after the sandbar reappeared again, we lifted anchor for another trip inside The Gutter. This time, the wind was going to be too strong to stay anchored after we were done, so after visiting the Gutter, we started the overnight sail to Talbot Bay. This was a bit annoying because Talbot Bay isn’t that far away and could have easily been done as a day sail, but the timing of the winds and tides were all wrong for that. Instead, we were going to have to go really slowly so as not to arrive at Talbot Bay’s big unsurveyed zone before daylight.
[Maryanne]Thinking of visiting the Kimberley with your own boat? – Check out our Cruising the Kimberley Tips
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