Trade-A-Boat – August 2019

94 | TRADEABOAT.COM.AU

CLOCKWISE FROM ABOVE Greg, the skipper,

is rarely without a smile on his face; Two tenders on a

glassy sea; There's a lot of poorly charted or unsurveyed

waters in the Kimberley; The boat ready for action.

G

reg was eying the depth sounder and

electronic plotter. “We'll give it another

half hour. Let's have breakfast and then

we'll have enough water under our keel to slip

through that gap.”

I looked at that chart on the sounder and

noticed the words that are so common when

sailing the Kimberley: 'Inadequately charted'.

While we might have been in uncharted, or at

least poorly charted waters, our skipper was not.

With 30 years’ experience sailing small boats

into every inlet, cove, bay, creek and passage in the

Kimberley, Greg was one of the most experienced

skippers in the entire region.

His boat, the Kimberley Xplorer, was the

third in a series of charter boats he owned and

skippered, while before that he had run around

the coast in nothing more than a six metre tinnie,

seeking adventure and exploring every inlet and

island he could come across.

Back then, not every voyage had ended drama-

free or even without damage.

But as he told us, in those days he was young

and indestructible and he was willing to give

anything, well ... most things, a go.

And he has the pictures to prove it, too (mostly

showing a much younger Greg with one of his

tinnies perched on a rock somewhere along the

Kimberley coast).

"Man," he reminisced, "we really got eaten by

sandflies that night, waiting for the tide to come

back in." Luckily they kept the crocs away, he

laughed when recounting yet another story.

IDEAL VESSEL

We had anchored the previous night in a small,

sort-of-protected inlet formed by two reefs that

make up the vast Montgomery Reef, some 130

nautical miles north of Derby.

The Spring tides were on the wane and the

tidal variation was a mere six or seven metres

but the amount of water running off the reef was

incredible – more of that wonder later.

Following breakfast, we headed through the

gap in the reef, the boat edging carefully along at

just a few knots before shifting up to its normal

cruise speed of nine to 10 knots.

The 15-metre Kimberley Xplorer was built

about 10 years back by Marine Applications

in SE Queensland, specially for its role as a

Kimberley explorer.

It draws less than a metre of water, its twin

full-length hulls are 12 millimetres thick –

designed and built to protect the props as much