Yet another pleasant row within Port Lincoln’s harbour is to encircle Grantham Island. Grantham lies in the throat of Proper Bay and to row around it from the Marina is a distance of about seven and a half nautical miles which will take the best part of two hours to accomplish. It’s a good one to do with the wind in the west as one can take advantage of a wind assisted homeward run.
From the marina it’s a fifteen minute row, due east to Billy Light’s Point and then on rounding the point a further mile, south now, to the old sand loading wharf. This wharf is a relic from my childhood – delapidated now but built in the mid sixties by BHP to load lime sand that had been mined at Coffin Bay and railed to Lincoln on a purpose build tramway. The sand was used in BHP’s blast furnaces but the operation was scaled back in the mid seventies and finally terminated in the late eighties as sand was being backloaded from Japan!
As I row past the old loader my thoughts recall memories of youthful adventures fishing, squiding, snorkling and generally mucking about in these environs. On one memorable occasion with a couple of mates we had rowed and sailed to Grantham and camped overnight, set a little piece of gill net to catch our tea and gotten a bit over ebullient with our campfire – with almost serious consequences for the islands vegetation!
For some unfathomable reason I am always drawn to circumnavigate Grantham in an anticlockwise fashion – I suspect its got to do with correolis forces and plug hole vortices! Whatever way you tackle it, you may have tide to contend with particularly in the narrow channel between Grantham and Murrays Point. Proper bay is a significant body of water and with the tide running it does generate a significant current in the shallow water of this channel.
Running back with a sou’westerly can be fun. There are mussel leases on the eastern side of Grantham to negotiate and then its unobstructed to Billy lights and you can do some surfing with the slop if the wind is fresh! Rounding Billy Light’s, you can follow the coast around and stay in its lee if the wind is fresh or head directly for the marina entrance if conditions are lighter. It’s a nice two hour jaunt but I can’t vouch for your safety if you tackle it the other way around!