Leaving Australia

11th October 2010

We had both flown out of Austtralia many times before, I had left Australia for Singapore on a ship previously, but neither of us had ever made the conscious decision to sail away from Australia….. This was a whole new experience!

Customs came onboard at 0730 and cleared us out of Australia, we had the lock booked for 0830 and then the fuel jetty at 0900. Ruth, my sister called in the midst of all this to wish us a safe voyage. Sorry I could not chat Sis. Helen and Mike off “Proteus II” gave us a lovely send off, making sure we cleared neighboring yachts and the jetty. Tipperary Marina was full to bursting with a large number of yachts that were circumnavigating the globe in the Blue Water Rally 2010 – 2011. Keith and Lea made a big effort and both came out to the lock to see us off safely, I am sure we could hear Lea still yelling advice as we motored away down river. Refueling was the next challenge, every port and dock has their own peculiarities that need to be abided by. With Darwin there are the huge tides/ currents and quite often a string of local fishing and work boats that hog the fueling jetty.

The complete passage took us 95hrs, of that we sailed 20 without any motor and motor sailed seventy.    

Twenty four hours into our voyage we were buzzed by Australian Coast Watch, this was the first time since leaving Fremantle that we had been called up by our Guardian Angel’s in the sky. We had a nice chat, asking about any yachts close behind us. He assured us there was no one within half a day of us and wished us a safe passage. The first Blue Water Rally yacht arrived in Kupang five hours after we did, we were very happy about that.

On the third day we watched big thunder-head clouds and electric storms surround us, but there was nothing close. The seas became quite steep, once again we had problems with the davits.In the small hours of day three Cathy woke me with the news that one of the dinghy davits had let go. This is not a lot of fun when you are surfing down waves at well over 8kts and the dinghy is almost being torn off the back of the yacht. It was blowing about 20kts, raining, with a messy/ sloppy swell. An hour later we had replaced the offending D-Shackle and were sipping on a glass of port & lemonade.

On the Thursday morning, not long after we had crossed into Indonesian waters we were greeted by a large pod of very lively dolphins, they seemed to hang around and play for ages. 

We then began to see the Gas platforms that are Australian owned and operated. They light up distinctively at night and can be seen long before Timor. Before we could see any sign of Timor we could smell sandalwood and the Fishermen’s cigarettes burning. The distinctive aroma of cigarettes with cloves was predominant in the air and remained so for days. 

Rounding the south of Timor at night and entering the anchorage at Kupang at dawn was interesting. Our AIS was a Godsend and our Garmin Chartplotter very accurate. Fishing platforms with strange lights were something we still cannot completely get used too.