From our overnight anchorage at Cotton Island to the Gugari Rip was only about 20 nautical miles, but the timing of the Rip is critical, as it must be passed at high tide slack water, the period when the incoming flood tide stops and the tide begins to ebb out again.

There are a number of reasons why this is so important here. These include the extremely narrow profile of the Gugari Rip itself, the high range of tide heights in East Arnhem, and the shape of the coast line which requires large volumes of water to move in and out with each change of tide. The chain of islands that we call the Wessels is a large dam like wall across the middle of that moving water.

Gugari Rip is also known as the “Hole in the Wall”, and tidal flows in here are reported as running at over 10 knots.

On our previous trip here, with permission of the Traditional Owner of this Aboriginal Land, we walked out the sandstone platform to observe the rip from above, and could see the slope on the water through the sandstone tilt one way and back the other with the change of tide.

Even with such a short passage across to the Rip, getting the timing right is not easy. After being initially delayed by a snagged anchor, and then finding the current in the gap between Raragala and Cotton Islands to be running against us at around 2 knots, we still arrived too early. We’d been told by various “authorities” that slack water would be an hour before Gove high water, the same as Gove, and an hour later than Gove.

We arrived about an hour before, and the current was clearly still running hard towards us, so we reduced sail to slow down, and in the end put away the headsail and used just the reefed mainsail for the passage through the rip. On first approach, we nosed into the current, and immediately went backwards despite moving through the water at over 5 knots, so circled around to waste some time, waiting for the tide to turn, before heading in again.

On the second attempt only 15 minutes later, the pressure waves stirred up by the extreme current were much reduced, and spotting a back eddy running along the SW bank of the rip against Raragala Island, continued on. The strength of the current reduced our speed through the passage, meaning that we had lots of time to look and observe, and it was more interesting than when we were rapidly ejected through the passage by the reverse current in 2019. Approaching the narrowest spot, we had to jump across the strongest of the current to enter the next back eddy on the opposite side, but once past that narrow point halfway, the current eased, partly on account of the change of tide, partly the wider channel. In the end, it took over 30 minutes to pass the one mile of the rip itself. While going through the water at 5 knots, at times we were going past the ground at only 1 knot!

Once through, we have anchored in the bay to the SW of the head of the Rip. From here, we might continue further out the chain of the Wessels, or we might jump straight from here to Indonesia. For that passage, we continue to study the weather forecasts and plan routes.