Kupang

Hi everyone,
We arrived in Kupang at about 2200 last night and are now anchored amongst the large fleet of Sail Indonesia yachts.

Passing western Timor

Ready for arrival in Indonesia

We had a great sail over the last 40nm or so.  A nice SW sea breeze came in at lunchtime at about 8 knots giving us a close reach down the west coast of Timor towards Kupang harbour.  It died at around sunset but then a nice SE wind came in and built up to around 25 knots.  That took us all the way into Kupang harbour, almost laying the fleet at anchor.  We motored the last half mile as we dropped and stowed the mainsail.

It was fun picking a spot to anchor amongst the 70+ boats late at night.  We found a spot, and were immediately hailed by the boat upwind of us which was our friends on The Doctor welcoming us to Kupang.  After half an hour tidying up and relaxing we turned in for some rest.

This morning we shifted position to be closer to the landing beach, anchoring in 4m about 200m offshore.  We were called by Sail Indonesia and given instructions for clearing in.  We went ashore as instructed and were met by a group of Indonesian officials.  Eight of them wanted to inspect the boat and they arranged a power boat to take us all out to Zen Again.  The trip was exciting, especially when the outboard control cable broke and we took off in full reverse power for a short while.  Happily control was maintained when we came alongside.

Kupang adjacent to the anchorage

The anchorage

The anchorage

The inspection took about 30 minutes, including a quite thorough inspection and various form filling.  Additionally everyone was taking lots of happy snaps of the process, and especially when we lowered our Q flag and then rehoisted the Indonesian courtesy flag.

From there we returned ashore and were asked to wait.  We joined many of the other yachties and some expat locals at the beachside cafe and had some much needed coffee.  After an hour or so we were invited to proceed to the office, where the "one stop shop" clearing in office had been kept open for us.  We're the last yacht to arrive due to our delay in Dili.  In the office we proceeded around the desks manned by officials from various departments and were fully cleared in within 15 minutes.  Everyone was very friendly and efficient, and most had better English than we have Bahasa.  I think we handed over about 8 copies of our crew list, 6 of our CAIT, 3 of Zen Again's registry and 1 of our passport photo page.

Later in the morning we walked 500m east of the Sail Indonesia area to Cellular Central where we managed to buy, install, activate and test SIM cards for our iPhones for 100,000Rp (AU$10) each, and add 50,000Rp (AU$5) initial credit.

Getting both cleared in and phones working by lunchtime was unexpectedly rapid.  We had lunch back at the cafe, chatting with a group of Aussie expats who live here.  Then it was back to the boat to scan and copy the various documents received while clearing in.  This evening we hope to join some of the Dili Rally boats ashore for dinner.

Hope all's well where you are.

Enroute to Kupang

Hi everyone,
We've had a pretty good sail so far from Dili. We've had to motor several times when the wind died entirely, but we've had some great sailing. The engine is performing well.

Yesterday evening we sailed past a set of fish traps as mentioned in the preceding blog. It turns out they were moored where the current splits. To the east of them the current flows east and to the west it flows west. So we ended up in a strong favourable current of 2.5 to 3.0 knots - very nice!

For several hours overnight we had a 20-25 knot breeze in a very lumpy sea. We put one reef in and unfurled the staysail which gave us good progress and a drier ride. We were doing 6 knots boat speed but 9 knots over the ground. Excellent.

This morning we passed Pulau Balek which is an isolated small island off the coast. The strong current set up a huge "wake" to the SW of the island, complete with upwellings, whirlpools and small overfalls. All this in water too deep to register on our depth sounder. Spectacular to sail through.

Approaching Pulau Balek

We hope to arrive in Kupang this evening but I suspect we may have to motor quite a lot. There's only a 3-4 knot breeze blowing at the moment, and right on the nose.

Departed Dili

Hi everyone,
We departed Dili at 1530 this afternoon, bound towards Kupang. Now sailing along at about 3 knots in a 4-6 knot NE breeze - very quiet and peaceful. We just sailed through our first set of fish traps (at least the first we've noticed). These ones were wooden structures attached to a set of barrel floats, from which presumably a very long line runs to an anchor of some kind. We'll have a nearly full moon tonight so hopefully should be able to pick out any others in our path.

Departing Dili

After fitting the new freshwater pump yesterday afternoon we ran the engine this morning to test it. The engine seems to have far fewer knocking and rattling noises which is encouraging. I suspect the pump has been on its way out for some time. With the engine working we arranged with Kym Miller for our clearing out, which was completed at 2pm. While waiting in the morning we went ashore to get bread and run a few final errands around Dili.

Last night a large Thai junk came into Dili harbour. It has been re-anchoring constantly in amongst all the nice new yacht moorings. I suspect several are now entirely destroyed and some others probably weakened considerably. Apparently the junk is going to offer diving holidays from Dili for the next few months. I expect it will entirely destroy the moorings in that time.

It's great to be out on the water again. A bit more wind would be nice, but we're on our way to join Sail Indonesia at last! We decided to sail to Kupang since the rally folks will still be there when we arrive, but probably wouldn't be there in Saumlaki. Also the western route seems our best bet while we (hopefully) bed in the engine with its many new components.