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June 25, 2005

Kalabahi

DAY: 10
LOCATION: Kalabahi - Alor
NAUTICAL MILES TODAY: 20
NAUTICAL MILES TOTAL TRIP: 104
LATITUDE :
LONGITUDE:

Tonight we find ourselves in the relative luxury of Chez Kalabahi - the main hub for the surrounding islands of Alor and Pantar. We've just returned from a meal dropped from heaven - eight dishes of absolutely yummy skran between the four of us for just 147,000 rupiah ($15). We'll sleep the sleep of the dead tonight after paddling the hardest day yet.

It was only 20 nautical miles but for periods we found ourselves paddling north against counter-currents and quite confused seas in Selat Pantar. Our route depended upon getting the tide just right. We're in spring tides at the moment - having just had a full moon - so the water can run at 3 knots running north and 9 knots south. There's a complicated calculation to determine what direction one can expect the water to be flowing at what time of the day, but this depends upon knowing the moon rise and set (which we know) and a Nautical Almanac (which we don't have). So I made a rough calculation based on the moon's behaviour and the information available in the cruising guide for this area. Having spoken to some local fishermen at camp yesterday evening I concluded the calculations were about right - to start our northward track up through the selat around 7am - a little after low tide. But rounding a headland just 2 miles into the passage it was clear that all was not quite right - a strong southbound current was colliding with a northbound inshore tide creating a nasty looking whirlpool directly in our path. We beached the boats to scope out the selat from the high ground. Such confluences of water can be quite disastrous for small boats like our kayaks - spinning them around, dislodging the occupant/s and dragging both under. So for the price of a short wait, or longer if necessary, we decided to play it safe.

An hour later the tide did indeed seem to slacken, or whatever collision of events that was creating the whirlpool effect. So we continued our track northwards, getting into Kalabahi without further incident at around 4pm.

Kayaks are an amazing piece of equipment that can yield enormous freedom of travel. They can also be a millstone around one's neck when trying to book into a hotel for the night. The two main hotels here in town couldn't provide security for the boats so we decided to paddle past the town and see if we could hunt down the folks from Medicine Sans Frontier (MSF) that we met a few days ago on the south side of the island and who offered for us to drop by on arrival here.

Luckily Jeremy was at the office when we arrived and kindly offered to keep our kayaks and equipment safe while we found ourselves a hotel. This was a massive result, as we were all exhausted from the paddle and in desparate need of getting somewhere to recover.

Tomorrow Ina leaves us to fly back to Kupang. I think I can say on behalf of both Chris and Lourdes that she has been one of the highlights of our trip so far; not only for helping to smooth the necessary paperwork and bureaucracy in Dili and at the border, but for her ever-constant good humour, willingness to take the challenge in the first place (paddling kayaks with three complete strangers through some quite dangerous waters is no mean feat) and her good company in general. We shall miss her. Good luck Ina in all your future endeavours both in East Timor and elsewhere!

On that note we're currently looking for another paddler to take Ina's place at least until Maumere when April hopefully catches up with us. This plus resupplying with food and a few other essential pieces of equipment (a machete being one) might take us 48 hours to turn around.

Posted on June 25, 2005 1:03 AM

Comments

Posted by: nancy sanford at June 25, 2005 6:18 AM