Perth and Fremantle

Shades of Mexico

Fremantle Sailing Club has about 500 pens or wet berths and plenty of hard standing. The Clubhouse has a bar, restaurant and upstairs function room. There is a Junior Clubhouse and lots of competitive dinghy and keel boat sailing as well as a cruising section. There are also many power boats and sports fishing boats. It’s a friendly place and in 2020, they were celebrating 100 years. We were made very welcome. There are toilets, showers and a laundry. Each pen has water and electricity nearby. We recommend that cruising sailors should stopover here.

New cradle for liferaft

New liferaft

Most of Sal Darago’s safety equipment had reached its use by date and needed to be replaced. It was always our intention to do this in Fremantle, where there are three chandleries: Wilson’s (on site), Yacht Grot (in town) and Whitworths (a short train ride away towards Perth). Jeremy sent an email to them all with a list of items asking for prices and availability. We bought a new Rocna anchor from Wilsons and just about everything else from Yacht Grot. This included liferaft, flares, EPIRB and Vetus mushroom ventilator.

New Rocna anchor

New EPIRB

New ventilator

We had a day out in Perth. It was strange to go on buses and trains again. We kept social distance and used plenty of hand sanitiser. We spent the morning in the vast King’s Park, walking through the botanical gardens, visiting the Peace Monument and traversing the glass bridge over the treetops. We had lunch in Zamia’s, which had only recently started serving food indoors with the tables placed two square metres apart.

Kings Park, Perth

Swan River, Perth

We caught two buses into town and found the Museum of Western Australia. Unfortunately, it was closed while undergoing extensive renovations. Next door the art gallery was open so we had a long browse in there. We were particularly impressed by a display of final year art students’ work.

Peace Monument

Perth CBD

Back in Freo, Jeremy went to the Bosuns on the Fremantle Sailing Club site. He needed a small piece of stainless steel to fix to SD’s bow to prevent the new anchor from damaging the fibre glass. This was curved and cut for no charge by Arthur (AJ). Jeremy gave the Bosuns some beers. Another day, he needed some wood to make a new cradle for the new liferaft. Andrew, from Bosuns, took him to Bunnings (like B&Q in the UK) in his vehicle. Then Andrew took Jeremy to his own house. In the garage, Andrew cut and drilled the wood before returning Jeremy to FSC. Once again there was no charge, so Jeremy took a bottle of wine up to his house. The generosity we found in Albany obviously extends to Freo. Long may it continue.

Glass bridge

Name this flower?

We couldn’t leave without a proper look around Freo. We went to the amazing Maritime Museum, walked along the harbour and admired the Victorian buildings, which the people had fought to save from demolition in the 1970’s.

Queensland Bottle Tree

Walking in Kings Park

On another day, Jason and Pauline from Albany came to see us on their way to Perth. It was great to catch up with their news and take note of Jason’s tips for sailing up the west coast.

Bronzed off immigrants

Fremantle Fishing Boat Harbour

The next day we visited the Shipwreck Museum in Freo. Four Dutch ships were wrecked on the west coast, the most well-known being the Batavia, which was on its way to the Dutch East Indies or Spice Islands (now Indonesia). We were going to follow its route northwards and hopefully arrive safely in Geraldton. It was just a pity that we were not carrying 12 wooden chests each containing approximately 8,000 silver coins. That would’ve paid for lunch!

The Roundhouse, the oldest stone building in WA

Fremantle Customs House

We left FSC on Friday 19^th June. A cold front had blown through and the swell was still big, although the wind had died away. The two nights at sea passed without incident giving us a mix of beam reach motorsailing and calm motoring under a canopy of stars. At dawn we saw a number of humpback whales blowing and diving. We anchored off Geraldton Yacht Club on Sunday 21^st June at 0930.

Scary Fremantle Shipwreck Museum