10′ 9S by 123′ 34E – Yesterday the wind was erratic, and so was the ride. It would get calm, then rough, then OK, then calm”¦ you get the idea. This morning seas have been reasonably good. We rolled up 2,000 hours on the main engine, which is a lot of time at sea. Eric saw something in the water that he thinks may have been a whale. He saw a spray of water and a flipper, so he is not positive. We made incredibly good speed on this passage, running at 1500 RPM most of the time and averaging over 6 knots. This has been by far our best passage overall, but it also had by far the scariest moments at sea we have ever had. Kind of seems like an oxymoron if you hadn’t read the full story.
Land was already visible when the sun came up. We were passed through some of the smaller islands to the south of Timor. There were islands on both sides of us. They are pretty low. Some have some small hills, but nothing too big. They are green and we could see some big stretches of beach on many of them. The taller mountains of the mainland er, the much bigger island, at least, is visible behind the islands on our right. At 09:00, we rounded the corner of one of the islands and headed into Kupang, located on the southwest corner of Timor Island. The smell of land dirt and vegetation — was strong. It is a good smell.
