Tiny Bubbles
05 June 2016 | Refuge Bay
Tom
After a couple of nights in Stonehaven Bay helping friends celebrate another birthday, we parted company and headed a short distance to Refuge (not to be confused with refuse!) Bay. This is a very well protected bay and because of its location and entrance, it provides a comfortable anchorage in winds from any direction up to 25 knots (according to our cruising guide). As the winds were supposed to pick up, it seemed like a good choice. After an uneventful, although somewhat rough trip around the Southwestern point of Hook Island, we dropped our anchor in the middle of a flat calm bay. We shared it with only two other boats.
The next morning we went out for an 'excursion' around the bay in our dingy and spent a couple of hours lazily rowing in and out of mini bays that make up the shoreline. This was the kind of cruising we had hoped for. At one point while drifting along the dead silence, Kim commented 'Do you hear that humming?'. Indeed I did and initially thought it was the sound of an outboard somewhere in the inlet. However, on further investigation we determined it was coming from our dingy.
We knew we'd had a small leak in one of the pontoons for some time (due to the need to intermittently pump it up). But to this point we were unable to find its source. This provided a perfect opportunity to investigate and we found a few bubbles coming up at the stern of the dingy, suggesting the leak was on the bottom of the pontoon. Now it was just a matter of pinpointing it.
When we returned to Exit Strategy Kim 'kindly' got my diving mask (not hers) and I stuck my head under the water to look at the bottom of the pontoon. (Did I tell you this bay used to be called Shark Bay and the guide book advises against swimming?) Luckily I was quickly able to find the leak by a tiny trail of bubbles, and came up with my head intact! The trick was to find a way to mark the hole so I could patch it (as it had been impossible to locate when the dingy was out of the water).
Two years earlier our daughter had given me a "space pen" for Christmas. Luckily one of the features of this pen is that it writes underwater! So again Kim kindly got me the space pen as I sat in the dingy. As advertised the pen marked a circle around the leak while underwater with ease. Again my head broke the surface intact. No sharks in sight. The patch was applied a few days later and all is well.
We spent a couple more days in this tranquil setting but then being short of provisions and fuel, we headed tor Airlie Bay Marina to top up.