A little slice of Hell
We got up nice and early this morning in preparation for our last passage in PNG waters. Vanja has had enough of the dirt that has accumulated on the back of the boat so we must wash. How do we wash our boat I hear you ask. Well, we have a pressure washer on board. How good is that. It actually came with the water maker would you believe. Even with the water maker we don’t have enough fresh water to warrant cleaning the boat, so we opted for salt water. It did a good job in the end, though now there is a fine film of salt all over everything. That’s not really a problem unless you're made of metal, so we just wiped down the metal parts with a cloth. Easy.
Vanja found one more package that she put away to give to someone on the island, so I dinghied over one more time to present it to Becky, sister of Marta, Lemke’s wife. She was so lovely, and has diabetes unfortunately. Vanja gave her some hygiene products plus some material and sowing kit stuff. I said my third goodbye to everyone which they all found quite funny.
When I got back to the boat, Gary, the young guy who lives on the point came over in his canoe to say goodbye. We have had a few nice moments with Gary who we found out today played volleyball for PNG. You could tell. He is young and fit and when we played volleyball with him you could see the skill that he was sort of trying to hide. Except for the occasional spike that he would smack down between everyone. Anyway, it was quite sad to say goodbye to Gary, not sure why. He seemed like he was generally happy but he would often say things like, ‘I am always looking for opportunities to go somewhere and do something new’. I suppose it’s just sad that opportunities are few and far between in these little islands. He gave us both a hug and called us family, which was lovely
We left for Vanimo at 2pm. It wasn’t the best start as I didn’t take the wind into consideration when I was planning the exit from the lagoon and ended up having to to motor for the first few hours. Oce outside though we had a great sail into the night with 12kts of wind just off the nose with a calm sea.
15/12/2019 En route to Vanimo, Papua New Guinea
Last night was pretty uneventful except for a vague memory of Vanja speaking with a tanker over the radio trying to get them to move out of our way so that they wouldn’t smash us to bits. Whatever she said, it must have worked as here we are.
The morning brought storms and squalls from everywhere making sailing very difficult. We were constantly having to adjust the sails making the day very tiring and uncomfortable. On top of that, both of our engine pumps are now leaking whenever the engine isn’t running. So now when we are sailing I have to empty the bilge of all the salt water every couple of hours so that it doesn’t flood the boat and sink us. Through the night as well. Woohoo!
16/12/2019 En route to Biak, Indonesia
Vanimo is a stinking port city on the mainland of PNG a few kilometres West of the border with Indonesia (West Papua). It is a must stop if travelling to Indonesia as there is an Indonesian consulate there to acquire visas, not to mention checking out of PNG. Unfortunately Vanimo has a reputation for bing a bit of a sh$th0le with a few piracy stories thrown in for good measure. Both of these facts ran true in our short stay here.
We arrived this morning at around 10am, motoring the last 20 miles in calm conditions. Family Circus and ZigZag had arrived the night before and were already getting ready to go to town to submit the visa applications. The consensus is that if we submit them early enough we’ll be able to get them done in the day and be able to leave Vanimo in the evening, not having to spend the night fighting off the pirates. That’s fine, but we also had to checkout of PNG, fill the boats with diesel, buy some fresh food, fix the leaking engines and maybe have a coffee. In light of this, Vanja was madly printing off everything we needed for our visas and also organising everything for checking out of PNG as we were coming into port.
By the time we got to shore and found the consulate, the other 2 families were already there filling out their paperwork. Phew, we made it! After that mad rush of paperwork we split up with the boys heading to customs and immigration and the girls hitting the markets for food.
Customs was easy enough, fill out a form, show your passports and we are clear. Immigration on the other hand had a few hoops for us to jump through. I came out of it unscathed thankfully as I brought every piece of documentation we have, thanks to Vanja. But the other 2 boats were missing a piece or 2. So while they were heading back to their respective boats to gather said documents, Philip and I went to see about fuel. The first place we went to made us feel like we were the first boats to ever come to Vanimo to purchase fuel. Keep in mind that there are no fuel docks in these cities, like there are at home. You have to organise fuel delivery yourself to your boat, or at least to a dock where you can bring your boat. Well this company, who specialises in fuel supply had no idea. They looked at us like we were crazy when we said we wanted to buy 5 drums of fuel, but didn’t want to buy the drum itself. What are we going to do with the drum?? In the end we managed to work it out, but when Philip went to pay with his credit card they couldn’t take payment as the network was down.
So, off we went looking for another solution. As we were walking back to the beach we decided to walk to the dock to see what the conditions were like, thinking that if it was ok we could tie up and refuel there. As we walked through a nice lady came up to us and asked if she could help. She worked for the port authority, so I guess that was her job. Anyway she talked us into buying fuel from the ports fuel supply subsidiary. They would deliver it to the dock or to the beach, whichever we prefer. It cost a little more than the other place, but given the incompetence I doubt the other place would’ve been able to help us today. So, after some more organising, preparations and general haggling we decided to have the fuel delivered to the boats via a longboat hired from shore. Chris found a guy who’d deliver all 5 drums to each of our boats for $K150. Bargain!
While we were awaiting the fuel delivery, the girls went back to town to see about the visas. When they arrived the security guards wouldn’t let them in saying that they would have to wait outside. Something was up. After much deliberation and anxiety they were eventually told that the visas could not be signed because the official that had to sign them was at the border and wouldn’t be back until 7pm tonight. But they assured them he would do it as soon as he returned. Yeah right.
After the fuel was delivered we all went to commiserate on Family Circus that we were so close, but so far from getting away. A few of the group still had hopes that the visas would be done in time, but come on. What are the chances. Why would a government official go out of his way to help us like that? It turns out that he would go out of his way to help us because, ‘I has a family too, and I wouldn’t want to have them subjected to the people of this town overnight if I didn’t have to’. Yikes. He blew us away by driving down to the beach and calling Irena to tell her that he had the passports for us. The time was 6:30pm. What a legend.
So, in light of all this we decided to sail back out into the night and leave PNG behind. But first I had to fix the engines. The reason this is a problem, other than the pumps leaking, is that the seacock for the salt water feed on both engines has seized so I can’t turn them off. I came up with a pretty simple solution to install a valve in the hose between the seacock and the pump. Easy. But I could only find one valve. After a quick chat on the VHF with FC and ZZ, George came to the rescue with another. Now all I have to do is shut the valve when the engines are off and voila, no more drips. I just have to remember to open the valves again when starting the engines, or bad things will happen.
We set sail, with our motors, at around 11pm which felt all wrong especially after how tired we were, but we really didn’t have any other option. Plus, only 30 minutes before, Irena radioed everyone saying she had a boat full of men paddle up to their boat in the pitch black and when she shined the torch on them they said they were just coming for a look before starting their engine and zooming off. Not pirates, but I can imagine that happening throughout the night.
18/12/2019 En route to Biak, Indonesia
We have been motoring for 45 hours straight, and we have only covered 160 miles. That’s less than half of the 330 miles of this passage making the predicted 3 days look more like 4 every minute. The 160 miles isn’t so bad overall, but given we covered 120 miles on the first day, today was abysmal.
For whatever reason, we woke this morning to a 2kt current against us with 20+kt winds coming directly from where we need to go. Those sorts of winds on the nose drop our boat speed down to 3.5 kts through the water, then you add the 2kt current against us and our overall speed is 1.5kt. Yes, you heard right, that’s a slow walking pace by anyones standards. We could see the 2 more powerful boats in Family Circus and ZigZag pulling away from us again so we came up with a new solution, sail. I mean we’re in a sailboat right, why not use the power of the wind? So we hoisted the main and genoa and started rocking along at 6-7 kts 60° North of where we needed to go. That’s alright, at this speed we won’t lose any ground and at least we don’t have to listen to the engines and burn all that fuel.
The problem with this solution is that the winds are fickle at these latitudes and as soon as you’ve set the sails, the wind changes and does something different, or it dies down for a couple of hours causing your speed to drop back down to 1-2kts with that ever present current. So, after working hard all day we are now 50 miles off course and in no way in a better position that we would’ve been if we just kept motoring. Oh well, I guess we are still learning how to use this boat. At least the wind has calmed down tonight so we aren’t slamming through the waves like we were this morning.
On top of all this we hit a huge log while sailing at over 7 kts. It hit our starboard bow then ricocheted back and forth between our hulls as we drove right over it. The diameter of the log must have been around 40-50cm and maybe 8 metres long. It was massive. I went forward to see what sort of damage we took and I could see a bunch of bottom paint missing with what looks like a pretty large crack in the fibreglass. I had a quick look in the locker to see if we were taking on water, but where the crack is there is a watertight compartment that should keep the water out of the rest of the boat. I can’t really check it out for certain in the current conditions as I’d have to empty the locker to crawl inside. What a shocker, and so unlucky. Let’s hope it’s just a flesh wound.
20/12/2019 En route to Biak, Indonesia
Well this passage is shaping up to be one for the archives of shit passages. The last 2 days have been absolute torture. We have been crawling along at the pace of a tortoise lying on it’s back in pile of it’s own vomit with no option other than to just suck it up and accept that it’s going to take almost 5 days to reach Biak. We just weren’t prepared for this length of time, especially since we had the 2 day passage from Ninigo, then the nightmare that was Vanimo. Really, we’ve been at it for 8 days straight now!
We hit another log today. I was asleep only to be woken by a thunderous clap. I looked out the window to see another gargantuan log floating by. At least this one didn’t go between the hulls to provide that little bit of extra terror. I would never have thought that floating logs would be the thing to sink us and end our trip, but it turns out I should have. Let’s hope it doesn’t happen tomorrow, or tonight for that matter.
Alright, the current has let up a little bit and the wind has dropped to 12kts, so it looks like we’ll get there in the morning. On top of that, there is a beautiful starry night on display and a wonderful lightning storm in the distance for our spectacle. I can also see the lights of Biak. We can do one more night.