As noted in our previous post, we left Darwin at 1300 hours on Sunday and apart from 4 hours of sailing slowly under main and genoa on Sunday evening have motored all the way. It is now 1300 on Tuesday 29 July and we have well and truly caught up and passed the tail enders and are currently in sight of about 14 other yachts, behind, to the side, and in front of us. Darwin is 322 nm astern and the southern tip of West Timor 125 nm ahead.
We have put up our light air sail headsail, our Reacher and are doing 4-6 knots of boat speed in 5-8 knots of wind (the most wind we have had). It is nice to have some peace and quiet, although as the motoring was on dead flat seas it was actually surprisingly pleasant, just noisier.
We have not seen much wildlife, although we did have a big shark about 20 mteres behind us yesterday (nice to see at least one that has to date evaded chinese shark fin soup) and dolphins plus a lot of big mackerel in feeding frenzies at dawn this morning. It was good to hear on the radio sked this morning that one yacht rescued a turtle from a tangle of nets.
Last night we passed close to some large well lit oil rigs in the centre of the Timor Sea just on the Indonesian side of the sea border marking the end of Australian waters. Reminds us that this is why the East Timorese problems were so bitterly disputed.
We are hoping to close on the Timor coast tomorrow morning and make our way north to drop anchor off Kupang town tomorrow afternoon. Kupang has a population of 200,000+ which really makes it a city and among other things we are particularly looking forward to the food - according to The Lonely Planet guide the local specialty is ...dog meat - yeah right!!.
