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Exody - Days 234-237: Tranquil Timor Sea



After a third amazing (yes we are still amazed!) sunset at sea,including green flash, the loom of the gas production platforms and a red flare off burning distantly illuminate the dark starlit sky before the waning moon rises orange astern and soon shines bright as a white torch beam into the cockpit. I am on the 22.00 to 02.00 watch Thursday night and we have just enough wind for most of my watch to sail close-hauled across the flat Timor Sea.

Our course from Darwin to Lombok steers around unseen underwater mountain ranges as if they were islands - prompted by 'Caution No. 1' on our chart: "The banks lying between Timor and NW Australia are largely unsurveyed and caution is necessary when navigating in their vicinity"

Today, Friday 4th, we are clocking up serious engine hours heading west to where the wind is forecast to be from later on today. The fleet left Darwin Tuesday morning with more wind than forecast enabling us to tack out of Darwin and then to lay a course rather further north than planned to follow the light southwesterly winds. We managed the first 24 hours without engine, 3 hours the next, and then reported 15 today. Leg 9, the first of the second half of the rally is 'billed' as a light wind leg so we feel lucky to have sailed so much in the first three days. The diversity of engine use in the fleet in these conditions is interesting with a few boats clocking up 'full houses' of 24 hours and one with a grand total, after three days, of under one hour!

Sailing within VHF contact of Makena and Aretha for a spell we have enjoyed radio quizzes (Exody 2, Makena 4 for the music identification quiz set by quizmaster and disc jockey on Aretha). We have passed several boats, assumed to be fishing, and all with a distinctive hull shape of the orient! The most striking being akin to a motorised chinese junk apparently built for cargo and with what looked like passenger accommodation stacked on the stern. We give all such local vessels a wide berth.

Peter (Skipper)


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