Things that go BUMP in the night

We have been waiting at Steep Point for 5 days now sitting out a strong wind warning for E/SE winds blowing 25-30knots and stirring up quite a fetch across the bay into the anchorage making it quite uncomfortable at times. We tend to sit with the tide rather than the wind causing us to roll and pitch about a bit. We also draggad anchor which is always fun! Hopefully we will be able to go over to Denham tomorrow, hooray! The fisherman say that this weather isn´t normally like this. How many times have I heard that? there is no ´normal´ weather now, anywhere

Needless to say because of the weather we have not been sleeping through the night, conscious that we might drag anchor again and also it´s a bit uncomfy in our bunk up forward.

Yesterday we decided to use the anchor watch on our AIS (Automatic Identification System) We have plenty of power from both the solar panels and wind generator so why not. At least we could relax a little knowing we would get a warning if we drag anchor. So last night we both went to bed a little more relaxed looking forward to a good nights sleep but it was not to be.

We were not long in bed when we both woke with a start as we heard a bump on the hull and an unusual ¨tug¨on the anchor chain. We both leapt out of bed and into the cockpit to see what was gong on and in the pitch black of night we could only here what we thought was the noise of a whale blowing and thrashing around - in 3m of water, surely not? A quick check of the water round us with the spot light and …´there she blows ´all 30 ft of her just 10 feet off the stern and dangerously close to little Tigger , our dinghy. I quickly pulled Tigger alongside out of harms way and we both watched in awe as this whale rolled and thrashed around so close to our stern. Fortunately for us but not so for the whale it was heading towards the beach.

We had heard earlier that day on VHF radio that a whale was in South Passage but we thought they said it was dead and being eaten by Tiger Sharks as it headed west out the passage to sea.. This was obviously the same one but badly injured or sick. We expected to see her beached when we checked this morning but there is no sign of her anywhere.

Now you may think that 5 days of sitting out a strong wind warning and a litte too much sea air has made us hallucínate so just to prove we did see a whale I took a few photos. They are not the best, it was very dark, but you can just see it.



The whale that Bumped us

No we were not hallucinating

This is our first and no doubt in won´t be our last bump in the night, lets hope they all turn out as well as this one did, for us anyway.
Posting this blog from Denham Monday 3 June.