Timor Sea Passage
Rhiann Marie - Round the World
Stewart Graham
Sat 27 Nov 2010 13:57
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Saturday 27th November 1944 Local Time 1014
UTC
11:14.84S 126:37.43E
After all the last minute arrangements in Darwin
going to plan to clear customs and immigration and get our Indonesian Visa , it
was refuelling which caused us a delay.
Our passage is therefor expected to take three
nights instead of two.
The fuel could not be dispensed from the unmanned
machine and the other supplier of fuel was a few miles round into the harbour
but did not have enough depth for our draft to come alongside in the lower tide.
Finally we got our fuel after help from several, true to form, very helpful
Australians and particularly Rik and Sue from Tek Services who got the fuel
supplier to come out and do a cash transaction (after taking us to the
bank!) with us at the normally automatic fuel dispenser.
We sadly left "can-do" Australia at just after 1300
and cleared the channel at approx 1400. It was not too long before the enormous
land mass that is Autralia disappeared behind us in our vision and slipped into
into our memories.
As darkness fell we were treated again to the
nightly wet season display of lightning storms over the invisible land to the
south. In the morning, out in the Timor Sea and looking out our forward port
window there was the open water of the Indian Ocean all the way to
Africa just over 5,000 miles away. Still there was no significant swell and
there was certainly no wind.
This evening again we have been treated to an over
sea display of lightning. With the nearby oil rigs and a solitary gas flare,
standing in isolation and burning like some mystical sea bourne candle and the
lightning to the south and north it is a bit like a pyrotechnic
show.
The lightning to the south and beyond the reach of
my radar, is bizarre covering as it is a huge area running east-west and
behind thunder cloud, in that it appears to be red and orange - including
the forked lightning. I am assuming it is not the North Koreans getting totally
over ambitious and having a go at Australia!
We are currently 250 miles south of Indonesia and
we have already met our first Indonesian fishing boats. This trip from Australia
to Indonesia will be the single biggest relative cultural differential we have
encountered between two places to date. Indonesia is the fourth largest country
by population in the world, after, China, India and America. It is also the
largest Muslim country in the world with 86% of the quarter of a billion people
following Islam.
Our intended landfall is Kupang in West
Timor. After the mutiny on the Bounty Captain Bligh washed up here in 1789
after his monumental 3600 mile open boat voyage from Tonga, where we have
it on good information he ran away from impending fatherhood. Well if you are
dumped by your crew on a tropical desert island in the 1700's there's not a lot
to do ....
After invading Timor in the second world war which
led to the deaths of 70,000 people on Timor, it was in Kupang that the
Japanese surrendered in 1945. You see there is an untold story in the west
of the fact that part of the Japanese evil and brutal actions was motivated
by a desire to rid the Pacific of colonial Europeans who had themselves invaded
a few hundred years before. In fact in this objective the war was mostly
effective as the apple cart was well and truly upset. Although there is two
sides to every story (of course history is always written by the victors),
nothing can excuse the Japanese from their brutal actions during the war when
they dropped an atomic bomb on a city largely full of civilians ........... or
was that the Americans?
Most readers will also be aware of the horrendous
conflict that recently took place in East Timor leading to enormous and tragic
loss of life. Timor and its Sandalwood were
"shared" by the Dutch and the Portugese (from there the Portugese "discovered"
Australia in the 1500's long before Captain Cook in the 1700's). The
Dutch colonised the West of Timor and the Portugese the East. When Indonesia
declared independence after the second world war the Dutch "handed back"
West Timor to the Indonesians, however the Portugese hung onto East Timor. When
the Portugese dictatorship in Lisbon collapsed in 1974 East Timor
errupted into bloody civil war which became even more bloody when the
Indonesians moved in to annexe it.
This is where we are visiting on our jolly
trip, but we have it on good authority it is now a settled and friendly
place. Let's hope so. We also know that we will face some very different
administration and authority officials here who make rules on the hoof and are
renowned for demanding bribes to let any westerner though their maze of
beurocracy. We will see. It will certainly be interesting and another chapter of
the adventure begins in a completely new land and culture to
us.
We are also aware of the news that the Chandlers
have been released by the Somalians. This is wonderful news for them. If a
ransom was paid then of course it makes it more dangerous for other yachts
transiting the area. As most of my planning for Indonesia is now in place I must
turn my thoughts to the Gulf of Aden passage past the Horn of Africa and the
sesspit of Somalia.
So if any other yachts are reading this or if any
reader knows of any other yacht wishing to transit the Gulf of Aden I would ask
that they get in touch with me via my office as i intend to make a plan for
a secure passage of a convoy through the area next summer. I will
also write to Noonsite soon and perhaps the yachting press to recruit boats for
a convoy. I will also be getting Trish to go home before then and will
recruit other crew, as it is too much of a risk to have both of us on the
passage. The planning will start in earnest in the New
Year.
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