Day 81, Year 3: Passage to Indonesia, Day Empat (Four)
Date: Hari Selasa (Tuesday), Bulan Juli 29, Pada Tahan 2008
Weather: Finally a Few Clouds and a Little Wind, 12 Knots ENE
Location: Passage from Darwin, Australia to Kupang, W Timor, Indonesia
Latitude: 10 degrees 40.056 minutes S
Longitude: 124 degrees 29.858 minutes E
Miles to Go: 80.6

After 68 hours of motoring, the wind gave us an opportunity to turn off the engine and sail this afternoon. The wind is only averaging about 12 knots, but that seems like a wind storm after having absolutely no wind for more than two days. We will have to turn the engine back on sometime during the night so that we can make our waypoint at the southwest corner of West Timor when the tide turns in our favor, but at least we have had a delightfully peaceful afternoon. In Indonesia the passes between
islands are called seluts and you can have three or four knots of current against you if you don’t hit it just right. So by 8:30 am Darwin time tomorrow we should be headed up Selat Semau and be in Kupang about three hours later. We will have to set our clocks back 1.5 hours when we get there, so it will still be early morning there when we arrive. Of course, that is supposing that everything goes according to plan. And we all know how that goes.

There has been none of the excitement today that we had yesterday and into the night last night with fishing boats and fishing nets. Only one boat hit a net and they were able to quickly free themselves. Our next challenge will be in the Selut Semau which is said to be littered with fishing boats and nets of all sorts. But at least it will be daylight and we can keep a careful watch. I have worked non-stop on researching all possible anchorages in Indonesia. I spent my two 3-hour watches last
night reading and editing a document we got from Sail Indonesia. It is a compilation of comments on anchorages from previous Sail Indonesia cruisers. It is full of information but very poorly organized. Since we were too cheap to purchase the book called “101 Anchorages in Indonesia”, I am writing my own book. If nothing else, the exercise has familiarized me with all of the islands and all the possible anchorages we will be visiting. It is truly overwhelming to read about all we are going to
see and experience in the next three months.

The big news of the day is that fuel in Kupang is not going to be any cheaper than it was in Australia. And since we will be close to empty when we arrive, that is a real bummer. But it seemed unreal to me that we were going to be able to get fuel anywhere in the world as cheaply as had been reported in Indonesia. I think the days of cheap fuel anywhere are long gone. And if you are going to use precious resources, I think you need to be prepared to pay the price without complaints.