Exmouth, and our temporary relapse from sustainable living 

Its now been a little over 6 weeks since we left the marina in Mandurah and embarked on our sailing adventure on board Mad Fish.     It is a very different lifestyle to our life working full time in Perth and living in a conventional house.    Not only is Mad Fish our tiny house, but also our means of transport and our own power and desalination plant. 

Living in a small space with no utilities, no nearby shops, no fuel stations and no rubbish service, has taken some adjusting!  We have become much more concious of how much water and power we use, making use of all our left-over and manky food, and generating as little rubbish as possible - essentially living much more sustainably than we have in the past.   

We carry a total of 400 litres of water in two tanks - which lasts us up to 6 days depending on how often we shower (personal hygeine has somewhat declined since we left!).  As one tank empties, I switch on the watermaker (our 25 litre per hour desalination plant) as we use water from the other tank.   As the watermaker is powered by 12 volt batteries, which in turn are powered by solar and wind, it takes a bit of power management to make our water. 

It was therefore with some guilty delight that we motored into Exmouth Marina, plugged the power cord into the dock power, and filled the water tanks with unlimited  Water Corp water supplies.   I confess to having had quite a few longer hot showers since arriving there to make up for the luke warm, 1 minute showers over the past 6 weeks. 

The huge pilings for the floating docks in the marina dwarfed our boat, built to withstand cyclones and 5 m swells after Cyclone Vance wiped out the previous marina infrastructure. 

We had a fat time in Exmouth - except for the sand flies.  I am not sure what was worse, the many sandfly bites or that the local pharmacy had run out of Polaramine!

I did two dives on the Exmouth Navy Pier, an iconic dive on the supply jetty for the naval communications base.  S2ee and I have dived it several times before, always enjoying the profusion of marine life, from sharks to tiny nudibranchs, that can be found there. 

This time the conditions were not great - the visibility was poor and the sea surface conditions made exiting the water a bit challenging.  Nevertheless, the sea life was as amazing as usual, and I did manage to get a bit of video of some of the bigger things I encountered and some photos of the smaller things. 


While in Exmouth, we hired a car to get around, one day driving around to Ningaloo and snorkelling at the Oyster Stacks, which was amazing.  I also had a much needed haircut after 2 months, at the maybe inappropriately named salon The Bird Cage, given my hair looked either like a bird's nest or cockatoo crest, depending on the time of the day.   After I looked respectable, we had a lovely dinner out to celebrate 17 years as a couple.

Just before our departure, it started to rain a little over two days, and then it got serious.  We were  woken up at about 3 am with rain thundering on the deck.  S2ee got up to ensure everything was fine, which it was not!   Someone who shall remain nameless left the galley window open, and there was significant water on the bench, floor, and even worse, the chocolate cake!   Dear S2ee cleaned it up while I stayed in bed. 

When we got up the next morning, the marina was a bright orange red colour and the locals reported some areas got over 200 mm.   There was significant flooding around town, including on the road out from the Marina.  I felt very sad for the many campers in the local caravan park who must have got very wet.  By lunchtime, the water had receded enough to get out from the marina to return the hire car.  Exmouth was a mess - while the water drained and dried up quickly, some of the roads were closed and the lowest points on many were covered in piles of rocks and sand. 



We departed Exmouth the following morning, noticing the continuing impacts of the rain as we headed to Dampier via Onslow.  But more on that in the next blog..... 

Love to all
Naomi and S2ee

Comments

  1. KGB AmethystJune 23, 2021 at 10:46 PM

    Our water in Emu Point marina is also that amazing tannin red after all the rain. I have never seen it quite so red. Ps
    What type was the shark in your video?
    Cheers KGB

    ReplyDelete

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