Kimberley Adventure Trailer Sailing Derby to Hidden Island 

Thanks for the comment. We have such a great country to explore, hopefully I can inspire others to get out there. Cheers Mark

Hi Christopher, Doesn't sound like I have missed much. We were lucky to get to the Kimberley. Just sneaked through SA in the few days it opened and got into WA with 14 days quarantine. We did have to cut out locations like the prince regent river with 2 weeks less but still had a great trip. When I heard about the state of Vic I was glad to have been off grid for 2 months and a bit hesitant to come home! Cheers Mark

Its a place that is hard to describe adequately in words or pictures. Will always remain as great memories for us too. Cheers Mark

Never doubted we would get back safely??? Well maybe sometimes there was a little bit of doubt!!

Hi Tony, yes it was a nice drop in an absolutely beautiful location. Just arrived home after 7000km of driving in the last 7 days so a bit tired. The next video is 2/3rds done so may be a few more days. After that it will probably be a couple of weeks for each one to get done, very slow process!! Cheers Mark

@@TRAILERYACHTADVENTURES welcome back..... by the look of things it might have been better to still be up North. Looking forward to the videos, they are required tonic at the moment. Stay safe cheers Tony

Most trailer sailers are in fact tough little boats capable of handling more than what most of the skippers can. You have to maintain them well for big trips and set them up well. Our boat has a small shower/toilet compartment but I would rarely use the shower unless in crowed places. For showers in the absence of fresh water creeks we have a deck wash hose. We hose down with salt water, soap up with liquid soap that lathers better in salt. Then use a 2 litre plastic bottle of fresh water to rinse off. When ever we find a fresh water creek or billabong we just have a great swim/wash without soap unless it is a waterfall spilling straight into salt water, then we will use soap. We installed an electric macerating toilet and holding tank which works a treat. Tank gets emptied when out from the coast a bit more. Works a treat but a bit more squeezy than your average house toilet. The big improvement for us was getting a trailer sailer with standing headroom without a pop top. It definitely ups the comfort and usability factor considerably. The only thing is there are not many TS with standing headroom. Space wise TS is small but its a great learning experience for a family in cooperation, consideration, compromise and sharing. We had 3 and a half months of food stored on our boat and we definitely had a months worth left arriving in Darwin 2 and a half months later. We did pack 4 large plastic boxes in the quarter berth and 4 smaller ones under the cockpit as well as filling all other lockers to capacity. Also carried 330 L of fuel so were heavily laden but the boat handled it well. Cheers Mark

Stressful at times but the best of times all at the same time. Cheers Mark

Hi Alan, glad to hear from you. I have just returned to Victoria after a long drive home. The Kimberley was breath-taking both in its beauty and its challenges. Will be completing and posting videos as time permits. Yes the covid thing is frustrating. Did you get to look at the RL you bought in Hervey Bay? I only ask as there was one up there for sale for a while that overall looked great but had a really worrying modification around the motor well with much cut away fibreglass. I had a couple of people ask about it over the last few months and said I would be cautious about taking it on. Maybe yours is not the same boat but it would be worth asking about it if it had not been mentioned if you are buying it sight unseen. Just thought you might want to know if it is the same boat. The southern cross 23 is a great boat and really easy to sail over a large range of conditions. RL28 is also a great boat but from my experience needs more active skippering in gusty variable conditions than the southern cross. Like all boats you get used to the quirks of a boat. In steady conditions RL28 is a dream to sail, just a little more sail trimming when it is gusty. Cheers Mark

Thanks for the reply. Many beautiful locations but the crocs can put a dampener on things. Had our dinghy seriously mauled by one but more on that in a later video. Cheers Mark

Glad you enjoyed it! The editing takes a lot of work and its great to know it is appreciated. Thanks Mark

Hi Tony, no internet on the trip so videos had to wait until we got back to civilization. Thanks for the comment, you are right the videos take a lot of work but mostly I enjoy putting them together. The rest of the legs of the trip will appear every couple of weeks as I get time to edit them. Currently just hauled the boat back onto the trailer in Darwin and will be setting off home to Victoria in a couple of days time. Challenging trip but well worth the effort. Cheers Mark

Hi Terry & Kim, Yes challenging but well worth the effort. The tides govern everything you do up here and mostly you learn to work with them, just occasionally you get it wrong and they remind you who is boss. The croc incident doesn't have much footage other than the damage to the dinghy and the repairs. We were a little preoccupied at the time!!! We had a few croc encounters but non where we were really at any risk but felt pretty vulnerable a times. All part of sailing the Kimberley. Cheers Mark

Thanks 👍

Hi Mike. Glad to hear you got the winch in. Hope it is working well. Cheers Mark

Hi Mark, yes the tides, navigation rips and whirlpools caused me a lot of stress but the locations made up for it. Strangely Helen was far more relaxed about it all than I was. That fish was the biggest we caught on the trip apart from the many sharks. Would not take an inflatable tender if I did it again..... was attacked by a croc and took 3 days and all our repair kits to get it floating again. More about that in a later video. Cheers Mark

@@TRAILERYACHTADVENTURES well that was such an amazing story about the inflatable, I was always wondering about how they would go and also makes it easier for the crocodile to come in over the round sides.

The inflatable we took we already owned from our scuba diving days and is very seaworthy and has a large carrying capacity. The lack of fuel along the Kimberley coast and the fickle winds meant we had to carry 330 litres of petrol. The dinghy had 100 litres of this plus outboard. A tinny would have had trouble with this much extra weight plus passengers. The trip required us to tow the tender the whole way to Darwin, sometimes in rough conditions and the inflatable was incredibly stable and resistant to flipping and swamping. The other reason we went with the inflatable over a tinny is that on the trip up from Vic we had a very full vehicle and roof rack and the inflatable was more packable in the space available. Having said all that, there were many times I wish we had a tinny with oyster covered rocks and of course the ever present crocs that almost destroyed our inflatable half way through the trip. Cheers Mark

Strangely it was the biggest fish of the trip. There were plenty of fish and many species but no Spanish Mackerel, we just didn't sail fast enough to catch them. We did keep catching sharks on the Mackerel lure but threw most of them back. Cheers Mark

No worries. Doing a trip through the Kimberley the hardest thing is to find enough information. I spent months collecting info from lots of places. Happy to talk through email or phone. You find my email on the home page just below the title is this line: "We all crave adventures and what better way than in a trailersailer." There is a side ways arrow at the end of this line. If you are signed in and click on this you will get to the email. If you email me first I can either talk on the email or I will send back my phone number. Have to do all this cause it is risky to put these details directly on a public forum. Happy to help if I can and it might take some time to find the sources I used in some cases. Cheers Mark

Hi Doug, Thanks for the comment, glad you enjoyed sharing the adventure. Sadly we are based in Victoria and it was a 11,000km round trip at first to Derby in WA, then Derby to Darwin to retrieve the car and trailer and then back to Victoria. There is a video about the trip up on the channel. Having said that it was good trip there and back with the boat towing well and no major problems apart from tyre wear and tear. In the end it was well worth the effort to sail the beautiful and remote Kimberley. Cheers Mark