July 23-26, 2011 -- On Passage to Kupang

Saturday, July 23: Official departure time for rally participants from the Darwin Sailing Club in Fannie Bay was 11:00 am, but we had determined none of us needed to be part of the spectacle of 108 boats trying to squeeze across a start line, so we raised the anchor and set sail about an hour early. Avoiding the official start defuses somewhat the racing mentality AND, incidentally gives you a head start on the pack.

We were not the first ones off the mark. A handful of boats left immediately after checkout with customs on Friday; others had been quietly departing throughout the morning. Our anchor up at 10:15ish set us on the way at the beginning of the outgoing tide and at least a few miles in front of the wall of white sails.

Unfortunately the wind in Fannie Bay did not carry far out to sea, and pretty soon we were all motoring, the sails up largely for show. The light air continued pretty much all day, the trades more or less blocked by Bathurst Island, a big mass of land north of Darwin. Although it would have been grand to be whizzing along under sail alone, it was pretty impressive to these two monohullers how fast (7.5 kts) this big catamaran moves through the water on only one of its two engines at relatively low RPM!

The highlight of the afternoon was catching two fish at the same time: a small wahoo and a good-sized Spanish mackerel. Both good eating fish! The downside was that the two fish hit at the same time and wound up the two lines into a massive snarl! While Don filleted out the two fish on the starboard swim platform, the rest of us worked at separating the interwoven lines.

Bette Lee, of course, had earlier been busy in the galley concocting a roo stew. (Yes, I said, "roo." Roo is sold in all sorts of cuts in all the major supermarkets. No, it does not taste like chicken. It tastes like a really yummy, lean beef. We had already had roo burgers, roo fillets, and pasta with roo bolognese sauce!) Personally I think this is a necessary element to catching fish...having a tasty meal prepared or in the works. At least, it has always worked that way for me! Bette Lee's stew, with potatoes, onions, carrots, turnips, tomato and other secret seasonings smelled sooo good, it was hard to think about saving it for another day. In the end, we had cajun fish with rice and a little of the veggie part of the stew over it like a sauce. YUM!

By evening we were traveling in a pack of about six or eight boats, reasonably spaced out, most of whom we know. Interesting to me is that the majority of the boats around us not only have AIS, but have broadcasting AIS. (AIS is an automatic radio identification system that is interfaced with your GPS. Intended primarily for big ship traffic control, until recently cruising boats just had receivers that would plot the position of commercial vessels relative to your own course. These newer fancier units broadcast your own boat name, position, course and speed, which means that you don't just locate AIS-equipped boats around you, but you (and they) know who is who! Of course, there is still the odd old-fashioned boat without AIS that you have to keep track of with binoculars and radar.