October Part 1

7/10/2019 En Route to PNG - Day 1

D-Day (departure day). Yes, it appears we are actually going to do this - leave the country, sail across an open ocean and drop the anchor in a foreign land surrounded by myth and legend. I am currently sitting at the helm seat in the middle of the night enjoying the last of the moon before it leaves us in darkness. The wind has been perfect so far, 12kts right across our beam giving us an average speed of 6.5kts so far. If we keep this up we'll be there by Thursday lunchtime. The sea is a little rough, but we expected that since it is the remains of the previous week's heavy winds. They must have whipped up some pretty big swells as it feels like we are on a rollercoaster at times. You can feel the boat going up the swell, pause at the top before shooting down the backside. It's pretty cool.

Anyway, the last few days have been as hectic as ever; provisioning, last minute vaccinations, last minute boat jobs, up the mast again, organising, tidying, cleaning, administration, insurance, planning, downloading, re-fuelling, re-watering, among other things like wrapping individual pieces of fruit and vegetable with foil or cling wrap. After all that we went to bed last night exhausted, but almost happy at everything we got done. All that was left was to take the boat to the marina and get cleared out by Border Force.

I woke up this morning at about 6:30am unable to clear my head of all the what-ifs. So I got up and dealt with them. The main one being the Outhaul and Reef lines in the boom. I noticed a little bit of chafe late last night as I was walking back to the cockpit. So first thing I did this morning was replace them. Fat lot of good it did because 2 hours ago one of them chafed through and is now lost inside the boom somewhere. Typical.

We moved the boat to the marina without incident and just when I went to do a garbage run I ran into Border Force. They were really nice and very easy to deal with. They came onboard, checked the passports, checked our paperwork and then left. No dramas at all. This was a nice surprise given the disorganisation we were up against when researching what we had to do to clear out. Everyone Vanja spoke to had a different opinion, and the internet was not much help either.

Well, with that done we were now able to leave. Of course that didn't happen without 2 more trips to the shops and another hour or so of cleaning and organising. We untied the dock lines at 1:15pm and headed out of the marina.

8/10/2019 En Route to PNG - Day 2

Well, we are still on that roller coaster. Everyone on the boat was seasick to some degree today. But we are making good time. We have had a steady 12-14knts of wind 70 degrees off our bow. This is causing the waves to come almost directly at us which is making the ride extremely uncomfortable. The plus side though is that we sail at about 9kts with this wind, so it's hard to complain too much. I'm sure if it was directly behind us I'd be bitching and moaning a lot more about the lack of speed.

I put the fishing lines out today. It'd be so nice to catch some fresh fish and make sushi, since we are experts at that now. We troll one line off each stern rail doubling our chances of catching something, but still no luck. I say luck because I have no idea what I'm doing. I really should've asked someone before we left, but I didn't. I do have a book though, but it clearly hasn't helped.

A funny thing happened today with an albatross. Lara and I were sitting in the cockpit having a chat when a lone albatross came up to us and just hung out for half an hour slowly circling the boat and getting really close to the sails. It was so cool. And just as I sit here typing this at 8:30pm I see 2 more doing the same thing. I wonder what they're up to.

We had a couple of issues today that are still unresolved. Firstly, when I tried cranking the engines this morning the starboard roared to life nice and easily, but the port side wouldn't start. It just cranked and cranked failing to fire. I pulled out the trusty manual which suggested a problem with the air, fuel or internal pistons. Just before we left I took a sample of fuel from the secondary fuel filter to check for water and sludge. It came back negative for both, but maybe that could be causing this issue. I tried bleeding the fuel line (removing the air bubbles) and voila, the engine burst to life. However now the oil light isn't going off. It just blares at me with the most obnoxious noise. Out comes the manual again. Now it suggests either a broken alarm, low oil or blocked oil filter. This will be a job for tomorrow if the waves calm down.

The second issue is the composting toilet. Don't get me started on it, generally I love it, but there are a few key components which if they break make the thing unbearable. The ventilation system is one such component. It keeps the smell out of the boat when it's in good working order. Needless to say it's on the top of the list of things to fix tomorrow.

9/10/2019 En Route to PNG - Day 3

Just another day on the open ocean. Last night's sail was almost perfect. We had 15kts of wind directly on our beam pushing us along at 9kts with 1 reef in the main sail. The moon was out for most of the night too which was really nice. The sun came up around 5:30 showing off some amazing colours scattered between perfect fluffy white clouds. Not a bad way to start the day.

Later in the morning I woke up to find the wind had dropped to 10kts and coming from the North East (the direction we're trying to go). This was a bit of a pain as we then had to head further North away from our route line for several hours before tacking back across it later in the day. So much for the perfect trade wind sail we were hoping for. We only covered about 100 miles today because of this and have now revised our ETA for Friday morning. Oh well, whats another night at sea among friends. It was nice to have a break from the hectic pace we have been setting. Even though 9kts is only about as fast as someone can run when being chased by a dog, it still feels fast and stressful with all the waves smashing against the boat and the wind blowing through the rigging. To not have that for a couple of hours was a real treat.

Everyone was feeling better today, though we are all ready to get there. I know it's only day 3, but life on the boat is so bloody hard! Vanja and I walk around like zombies for most of the day just because we are so tired from the night before. Even when it's your turn to sleep you never actually get that good sleep you get on a normal night. You're constantly on edge waking up on every wave slam or nose dive over a wave. Hopefully this will get better with practice.

I managed to fix the composting toilet issue we came across yesterday. There was water in the vent hose blocking it up so the nasty smells could not escape. When I installed it 6 months ago, there was one more task to do that I thought I could do somewhere down the track. Well, that 6 month task was done today - hang a high point in the hose way above the drain hole. Problem solved. As for the port engine issue, I checked a few things from the diesel engine book that I have with no luck. I also did an oil and filter change hoping it was something to do with the old oil that was in there, but the problem persists. I sent an email to Dad to see if he can get some answers from a mechanic. Fingers crossed it's something simple.

10/10/2019 En Route to PNG - Day 4

They say that after 3 or 4 days at sea your body starts to get used to it all. Well it's day 4 and let me say that no one is enjoying the trip much so far. I enjoy the daytime where I can just sit in the cockpit and look out at the waves, but the nights are so difficult. Trying to stay awake during watch is absolute torture. But I guess we signed up for this torture willingly. No one to blame but ourselves.

I did have a little win today which caused a few involuntary fist pumps and hoots. The port engine low pressure alarm is now fixed. Well actually not fixed, but diagnosed. For all those alarms there are these little things screwed into the engine which send the alarm state to the engine display. They are called senders by the way, nice and imaginative. Anyway, thanks to Dad and the mechanic he spoke to he suggested switching the starboard engine sender to the port side to see if the alarm still blared. If it doesn't, then it's a problem with the sender, if it does then something else. Well I switched the senders and there you have it, no alarm, no light, no noise. Just high fives and fist pumps. So now I just have to figure out how to order a new one. I'm not sure the PNG-ians will have one to trade.

What else happened today? I put my fishing lines out again with no luck. I've tried every lure I have now and none seem to be working. I even tried adding a "teaser" to the line which is just something that sits a couple of metres in front of the lure making a splash. Still to no avail. It's getting really annoying.

We stopped the boat today mid ocean to do some chores. We wouldn't normally do that, but it looked like we'd be arriving in the middle of night which is not ideal in a coral reef infested area. So we hove-to while I worked on the engines and Vanja made some lunch. I also convinced the kids to go for a swim in 4.5km deep water, though once we went to get in, the current was far too strong for comfort, so instead we stood on the back steps and got nice and wet in the beautiful crystal clear water. When it was Lara's turn she unfortunately went in at the same time as a blue bottle was floating by and was stung on her leg. How unlucky is that!

So that's it for day 4 I suppose. The most exciting part is that this should be the last day of the passage. We are due to arrive at Jomard Entrance, to the Louisiades tomorrow morning at 10am. Once we get through there we will anchor up at Punawan Island and try to catch up on some sleep.

11/10/2019 Punawan Island, Louisiades, Papua New Guinea

So after almost exactly 4 days of sailing we have officially arrived in paradise. I'm not joking either, you should see this place. It is absolutely gorgeous. Straight out of a dream. The water is 27°, clear turquoise with a visibility of about 30 metres. The island is picture perfect with white sand, plenty of coconut palms and little thatched huts in the shadows. The coral here is the best we've seen since arriving in the "tropics", but I guess that is to be expected since this place sees little to no tourism. I guess the only downside to this place is the heat, and the flies. We arrived at about 2pm and the temperature must have been around 38° and within 20 minutes the boat was full of flies. We had to keep our mouths closed for fear of them flying down our throat! One got up my nose which was strangely ticklish.

Anyway, the sail in from yesterday was pretty straight forward. According to our computer we were looking to arrive in the middle of the night so we decided to slow down to make an arrival at around 11am. This is the best time to arrive anywhere new as the sun is overhead making it easy to spot coral heads when coming into an anchorage. So, we slowed down by taking down the main sail to just ride nice and easily on the head sail. I don't know why, but we both feel so much more comfortable with this configuration in any kind of wind, of which we had plenty. We spotted the islands early in the morning and then the wind died. We put the main sail back up to catch as much of the wind as we could. We then noticed on the computer the line of cargo ships coming from and heading to the same place as we were. It was so strange to see since we only saw one ship on the AIS the whole of the 4 days, now there must have been a dozen on the screen at any one time. We now know that this channel we're aiming for is the main thoroughfare for all cargo ships travelling between Aus and East Asia. Very busy.

No worries though I thought, there is plenty of room on the west side of the channel between the island and the shipping lane. With one little caveat that is - very large weird tidal waves. It does show little waves on the chart, but we've seen those elsewhere and they didn't mean a thing. Here was different. The boat was rocking and rolling around like a monohull! We decided to check out the other side of the channel, but that meant crossing the shipping lanes. We got lucky on our way over as there was a nice gap between the ships so we sailed straight across with no dramas. We then sailed along the channel very comfortably albeit with 300m long cargo ships passing us ever few minutes at full speed. We then crossed back across the channel having to gybe half way across with a ship bearing down on us. We threw on the engine to give us a little kick just to make sure we made it in time. Spoiler, we did. It was then just a nice one hour long sail to our destination.

After we anchored we all immediately jumped in the water for a swim to cool down. It was magic. So much marine life so close to the boat, all for us. After the swim Vanja and the kids found some shade on the trampolines and I made a bit of water to replenish the tanks after our sail. Just as we were sitting and talking about how secluded the place was, Jake spotted a local sailing outrigger canoe coming in our direction. We were all giddy with excitement at meeting some locals and wondering what to do if they came over. Well, they came over alright. They tied up right at our transom and the skipper jumped on board after introductions. They were a group of fishermen that come around to these islands to fish for a few days before heading home to Brooker Island. We gave them all a glass of water as they don't actually drink any water it turns out. They only drink the milk from the young coconuts. Amazing! After chatting for about 10 mins he very politely asked if we had any fishing hooks? I was thinking yes, we sure do. I stocked up big time for this very thing. All the books, blogs, videos said bring lots of small fishing hooks and that is exactly what I did. Well, unfortunately these guys wanted one large hook, to keep as a spare as they only had one left. So after kicking myself, I decided to give them one of my nice lures. It's done bugger all for me on the crossing so at least these guys will probably make good use of it. They didn't have anything to trade, but they said they would bring us some coconuts and crayfish or lobster tomorrow. Not sure that's a fair trade, but maybe it is for them. I don't know.

Anyway, we are all super excited about being here now and can't wait for tomorrow.

12/10/2019 Punawan Island, Louisiades, Papua New Guinea

It's amazing how quickly jobs get done with a bit of motivation to spur you along. The mozzie screen material we bought back in Mooloolaba that has been sitting in a bag in the cupboard all this time finally made an appearance yesterday. Vanja was desperately trying to keep the flies at bay by jury rigging one of the screens over the door. It turned into a hodgepodge of rope, clothes pegs and netting, but it seems to be working nicely. It's doing a great job of keeping flies out and unfortunately keeping them in the boat as well. Oh well, can't have it all! Also, the two fans we had lying around yet to be installed, were promptly installed today giving us a little more air flow in the main cabin.

Other than that today was has been nice and lazy. Just fantastic really. We woke up, made delicious waffles and got ready for a swim. Jake really wanted to check out "the village" as he calls it, on the island. So we put all the swim gear in the dinghy and rowed over. The huts were really cool, all made from local materials, except for a bit of nylon rope here and there. I chopped open a coconut with my new machete which Vanja and I enjoyed thoroughly. We then hit the water to cool down. I just can't rave on about it enough. It's just so nice and warm, and clear, and alive!

After our swim we just hung out on the boat. Kids played a bit of minecraft while Vanja and I caught up on a bit more sleep. In the afternoon I got the foam mat out for the kids and they spent the better part of the evening playing in the water. A different fishing boat popped over today for a chat. They promised us some crayfish tomorrow in exchange for some rice or sugar. Hopefully they come through. The boat from yesterday also sailed over to give us some coconuts they husked for us. There are about 10 all wrapped up nicely with some vines. Not sure what we'll do with them all but it was nice of them to sail all the way over to give them to us. The skipper then said he would've got us some lobster but their snorkel broke so now they can't spearfish. Jake happily pointed out that we have lots of snorkels and that they could have one. Thanks Jake. So anyway, we gave them one of our old snorkels and he said he'd be back tomorrow with lobster. I'm not holding my breath, but I'll cross my fingers.

13/10/2019 Punawan Island, Louisiades, Papua New Guinea

Today was just another day in the Islands. Pretty standard really. We woke up nice and early and had a little breakfast and coffee. We followed this up with a swim and snorkel around the boat. This never gets old. After which Justin, one of our new fishermen friends snorkels over to our boat and casually tells us they have a bunch of lobsters and that we could have them in exchange for some fishing hooks, rice, clothes, soccer boots, etc. I showed him the hooks we had and he agreed to those and some rice. Lara and I rowed the goods over to the beach where he presented his lobsters. There were 2 huge ones, one of which was still alive and blowing death bubbles, along with 2 small ones. The small ones could've lived a few more years I'd say, but since they already killed them we took them. As we left, Justin yelled out to bring the heads back if we weren't going to eat them. I suppose they would eat them. Ok I yelled back.

When we got back to the boat I quickly dispatched the tortured lobster. This was not the most pleasant thing I've done in a while. I can't remember the last time I killed an animal other than a mosquito. Let me tell you, it's not for the faint of heart. I cut the tails off all of them and Lara rowed the heads back into to shore to give to our friends. Once back at the boat I quickly got the BBQ going to take my mind off the killing and Vanja mixed up some butter and garlic, as well as some flat bread dough. A feast of Kings and Queens ensued. Who would've thought that our first ever lobster would be eaten off an uninhabited tropical island in Papua New Guinea after trading a bag of rice for it? Not me.

The rest of the day was pretty mundane. A nap on the couch, more snorkelling, sundowner on deck and some games before bed. Tough life.