Year 5 Day 175 Passage to Kupang, West Timor, Indonesia: Day 0.5
28 July 2012 | 72 nm wnw of Darwin, AU
Dave/Weather: Mostly Sunny
We weighed anchor this morning a bit after 0900 after raising the mainsail. Since it is 2100 now, we have been sailing for about 12 hours, hence Day 0.5
I got up early this morning and rewired the new AIS in place so we could at least see ships and other boats with transceivers. Fortunately, the receiver works fine so we are back to where we were before we discovered the transmitter doesn't work.
We had great winds for the first 4 hours. Winds were from the ESE and blowing between 15 and 22 knots. Since our heading to Kupang is WNW, the winds were once again behind us. However, we can sail to the winds now that we just have to big Indian Ocean in front of us. Thus, we put the wind a bit off our starboard stern quarter and unfurled the head sail into a wing and wing configuration. With 10 to 17 knots of apparent wind, we were making between 6 and 8.5 knots. The seas were directly behind us and were about a meter. It was a great sail.
Unfortunately, at 1300 the winds completely died and we had to fire up the motor. We kept the RPMs to only 2000 and made 5 knots SOG with a 1 knot current assist. When we started out, we were well ahead of most of the other boats but we watched on our radar and AIS a number of bigger monohulls slowly start catch up to us. It looked to us that they too had left early but with their bigger, more powerful engines, they were all making 7 to 8 knots. I took a picture of our chartplotter showing the AIS boats and the radar blips of those without AIS. The chartplotter reminded me of the TV Sci-Fi show Battlestar Galactica. The big Battlestars (AIS boats) and smaller space fighters (radar blips) were all chasing poor ol' Leu Cat.
Around 1900 Sea Mist and Miss Behaving caught up to us. However, by then the winds had returned so we were once more sailing. We were now making 7 to 7.5 knots with 10 knots of true wind. The apparent wind is about 14 knots 45 degrees off our port bow. Thus, we are now close hauled. Funny wind but I am not complaining!!!
There is a lot of chatter on the VHF since there are so many boats so close together. We are not used to this and it well take a bit of time getting used to it. I am sure as the hours sail by, the fleet will spread out and the chatter will die to a dull roar
At 2115, our position is 12 04.29'S/129 38.68'E , we have made 72 nm averaging 6.0 knots. We are current making 7.0 knots SOG and we are fighting a current of about 1 knot. The winds are about 15 knots from the SE. The seas are still mellow with the swells about 1.5 meters from the SE. We are about 380 nm from Kupang. It is just to0 early in the passage to estimate our arrival given these changing winds