10:42.4S 124:34.5E

Position at 1200, 31/7/13

An uneventful night, just one large ship overtook me, well clear. From now on in, with 71nm to run to the bottom of the island of Timor I’d better keep a more frequent lookout for fishing boats, particularly tonight!

Still motoring, although about half an hour ago the wind came up a bit so I’ve throttled back a little. I’ve averaged just over 4 kts since midnight so a provisional eta for the bottom of Timor is 0500 tomorrow morning. Moonrise is at 0248 and sunrise at 0731 so I don’t think I need to slow down any more. After the next waypoint I turn Northerly and go up the North coast of Timor for 25nm to Kupang. The route is between the mainland and an offshore island and the chart indicates a 3kt northerly current with the ebb tide. High tide at Kupang is 0635 so this could work out about right, maybe…. I believe that in this part of Indonesia the ebb tide flows north, we’ll see tomorrow morning.

I’ve dipped the fuel tank and appear so far to have used about 74 litres. The dip stick is a bit Heath Robinson but when I filled up in Darwin I took 74L and the level is the same. Let’s say I’ll use 100L getting to Kupang if nothing changes. Much, much more than I wanted to burn. I have 50L in jerry cans so the situation won’t (I hope) be too dire in financial terms.

So then, my guesstimate is that I’ll arrive about midday in the anchorage which just might allow me to check in tomorrow but no real problem if I have to wait until Friday. One thing I suppose, all batteries are up at around 13.4V. I won’t be able to equalize them but they’ve had a damn good charging. I’ve put the Indonesian SIM card into the phone and am charging it up. It’ll be interesting to see what happens when I get within range!

Oh yes, the leak is back. I hadn’t mentioned it but by using the manual pump twice in 24 hours I’d been keeping the starboard bilge bone dry. This morning my ‘friendly trickle’ had turned into its usual self so every couple of hours the electric pump goes on. One of these days…….

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