Across the Timor Sea: King George River to Kupang

We left our anchorage in King George River early so as to hit the river bar crossing half an hour before high tide. We calibrated the depth sounder with a lead line last night found we were over estimating depth below the keel by 300mm. As we only had 300mm showing under the keel at the shallowest point when we entered, we were (understandably) nervous about getting out. Imagine seeing -0.1m on the way out… We checked the lead line later in the day and found the 5 meter mark at 5.25m, so our original calibration was pretty close.

We put up the full main while still in Koolama Bay and found a light south-westerly as we sailed north-west for Kupang. This light beam wind and a favourable current carried us well into Sunday. We had a perfect day reaching at a slightly heeled angle making 6.5 knots, reading and relaxing.

Crossing the Timor Sea

The night sail was serene, gliding along at 5-6 knots on a glassy sea, trailing a phosphorescent wake in the light of the full moon.

After sailing for nearly 30 hours in light beam wind conditions, the wind finally died. The engine came on just after 11am and we resigned ourselves to motoring. We got into Kupang mid-afternoon on Monday 19 August 2019, anchoring a couple of cables off Teddis Beach.