Sailing Donetes

After dragging our anchor at 1am in Wini we departed on our 67 nautical mile journey under sail and a nice moon.  The depth of the waters in the straight between Timor and Alor exceeded three kilometres.  We sailed until 9am when the wind deserted us so we motored the rest of the way. We saw a brief video about Alor in the consulate in Perth and so were keen to see it and it was a good kick-off point for our sail along the more peaceful north coast of Flores.  The entrance to the straight between Alor and Pantar (Selat Pantar) had a very turbulent entrance but once inside the straight the scenery was breathtaking. We arrived at Kalabahi the capital of Alor and chose to anchor in a quiet but stunningly beautiful bay just a 15 minute walk north of the town. The buildings in Alor were as interesting as the very friendly mostly christian people. We walked much of the town and enjoyed a refreshing drink at a waterside restaurant. ...

Our voyage from Broome to Timor was our longest single voyage on a yacht to date: 497 Nautical Miles over 77.25 hours trumping the 365 NM over 53 hours from Dampier to Broome. The differences were that we pretty much paralleled the coast to Broome whereas to Timor we were over 200 miles from shore and in water up to 3 km deep.  We had a good routine to Broome taking 6 hour shifts at night with Linda taking the 6-12 pm shift and I the midnight to dawn. The nature of this trip was such that we took shorter shifts and mostly we slept in the cockpit.  Linda was unwell and needed sleep. The weather as we departed Broome at 10:45 am, Clearance in hand,  was ideal with a 14-15 knot easterly wind on the starboard beam.  We were flying, averaging 6 knots plus.  Unfortunately our glee was short-lived as at 13:27 the wind died completely and did not return for two days :-(  With the exception of a few short bursts we pretty much motored all the way to Kupa...