Whale shark swimming, The most incredible day ever!!! Sailing around Australia.

Walking up a gorge in Cape Range National Park was a double treat. Its so lovely to be able to do some serious walking when you’re on board a boat and it was a privilege to be able to walk in one of the oldest landscapes with ancient fossils. We trekked up there with Sharon and Jason from Slow Motion and with Donna and Andrew. It was interesting to see animal tracks in the red sand and to feel the sting of the iconic spinifex – true WA land experiences. We moved the boat north to Tantibiddi, still within Ningaloo Reef and spent a week snorkelling and exploring the reef and the coast. Keith from @SailingZatara invited us onto his boat along with a few other friends, to see if we could swim with some Whale Sharks and it was one of our absolute highlights. We managed to see loads of whale sharks and swim next to them, close enough to see their famous markings. What an incredible experience that was. They are so beautiful and gentle and focused on feeding on the plankton that they didn’t really seem to notice we were there. Speaking to some friends who went to the same spot about a week later, we were very fortunate to have seen so many. Our conclusion is that the amount of plankton in the water determines how long they continue to swim in the same area and how many whale sharks are there. We sailed around Cape Range to Exmouth where we checked into the Marina for a week or so. This was a great opportunity to do some shopping at the well stocked IGAs in Exmouth and to do 2 dive trips with Dive Ningaloo. Our first trip was to the Muiron Islands, just north of Cape Range and we met their wonderful dive guides. Our second dive trip with them was to dive the well known Navy Jetty. Some lists rate this dive in the top ten world dives. We absolutely loved it and were awed by the enormous groper, the sharks and the vast schools of fish swimming so close to the jetty supports. We really rated @DiveNingaloo too as a very well organised business who offer excellent dive services and friendly knowledgeable guides. We highly recommend them. From Exmouth we headed north to Serrurier Island and then Thevenard Island (aka The Mackerel Islands) where we enjoyed some more great snorkelling and diving and loved all the beautiful shells on the beach. We also caught a lobster here with Keith. From there we headed to The Montebello Islands, stopping en route at Barrow Island for a rather rolly night. We adored the Montebello Islands for the beautiful secure anchorage at Chartreuse Bay and for the diving and snorkelling on the reef. We caught some more lobsters which was a big highlight while snorkelling with Keith from @SailingZatara and saw more giant grooper. It was a bit of a shock to see numerous tiger and hammer head sharks circling @TheCruisingKiwis boat just minutes after we had been snorkelling to clean our hulls. As always, timing is everything!! @SailingZatara and @TheCruisingKiwis decided not to sail onwards to The Kimberley so we sailed off into the sunset towards Broome on our own. We already miss our wonderful friends and can’t wait to see them again. After a nice smooth 2 day passage we arrived in Broome and took a mooring buoy in Roebuck Bay. It was so wonderful to see our dear friends Lindy and Pete for some great times together on the boat, eating delicious food and watching spectacular sunsets. An absolute highlight. Broome is a great place to spend some time near civilisation too, with good supermarkets and fuel that’s easy to arrange with Zorba who brings fuel to your boat in bladders on his tinny. He’s friendly and helpful too about Broome and sailing The Kimberley. In the next episode we start exploring the remote Kimberley and Russ gets his drone up to record the spectacular landscapes.