December's cruising cost

We knew this was going to be an expensive month, so it was no real surprise that we spent almost $2000 during December. It's a good effort considering we spent half of it on passage, first five days from Kavieng to Hermit Island, then nine days from Hermit to Palau. The biggie is boat bits with a very expensive new toilet lit and seat at almost $400. Considering you can get a brand new (whole) toilet for about half that, it's even more expensive, but we do like our lavac toilet and have had no problems with it so far, besides the lid cracking, but then it was 26 years old. The lid hasn't actually arrived here yet, but we're really looking forward to it.

Another bigger than usual expense was internet. PNG wasn't cheap (until we discovered just using Phil's smart phone), where as here in Palau it is (but then it means we use it lots). Most of those costs should carry us through the rest of our time in Palau in January though. Miscellaneous was also big, but it wasn't one thing, just lots of little things adding up.

We can already reveal that next month is going to be expensive as Phil has just purchased a new autopilot ram and a dripless shaft seal, but more about that next month. Here's December:

Snorkelling with Manta Rays at Hermit Islands

WOW, Manta Rays are super duper cool animals. This was definitely an experience on par with whales in Tonga and the volcano in Vanuatu. They are very majestic and apparently very intelligent too.

These islands are the kings of pineapple growers! There are tons of them and they are deliciously sweet. We have eaten at least one a day and we still got 4-5 more that will need eating within the next few days. We also traded for eggs, kumera, pumpkin, beans, lemons, limes, oranges, mangoes, guava and of course bananas.

We had read another cruiser's account of the islands when they visited in 2007 and back then they did have some Taiwanese fishing boats here (it's not their mooring we're on, but one the village has put down for yachts). Apparently they cheated them and used cynoid (?, poison), so luckily they sent them away. They have also for years been making money on sea cucumbers, but the government has put a ban on that now (probably to let the population recover). The islands are too far away from anywhere else to make any other trade viable, fuel is simply too expensive. This all means that there's no way to make money and they are therefore very keen to trade with us. We got the impression that they they have been used to having money and being able to buy stuff, but haven't actually saved much up. Many people have solar panels, batteries and there are some generators in the village also. They also have 40 hp outboards that they use to go to Manus and the mainland, a 6-12 hour trip using 400 liters of fuel. Vanuatu is so poor that canoes are the only mode of transport and most people have no power at all, if lucky maybe a solar panel, but batteries are expensive, so often they weren't hooked up. Solomon was a little bit in between. Most amazing though is that almost everyone in all three countries has a cell phone, even when there's no reception where they live, they still have one for when they travel to where there is! We have also several times been asked to charge a cell phone for someone.

Trading-wise, sugar, like at Nissan Island, was the most sought after item! Lucky for them this is the last place where we can trade, as we don't anticipate much of that in Asia, and if there is some, it's easy to buy new things in the bigger towns. We has a fair bit of clothes, rice and various other items left, so we were quite generous with our trading.

Back to the Manta Rays. There's a passage between the two biggest islands where there's usually always Manta Rays, sometimes even hundreds! Bob, the village councilor who doubles at the tour guide took us there and we anchored Sophia nearby for the night so we were ready early next morning for the low tide. Unfortunately the visibility wasn't the best (May to August are the best Bob told us) but it was still maybe 10 meters or so. At first we didn't see any and had almost given up, although it has still been a pretty good snorkel where we had also seen several turtles and some huge giant clams. But suddenly we spotted one Manta, and then there were several They are really beautiful, most were black on top and white on the belly, but one was all black with only a small white spot on the belly. The biggest one would have been 3-4 meters wing span. I got some OK photos, but unfortunately the battery went flat quite early on, big time bummer, as I could have gotten some really cool ones because they didn't swim away from us, but mostly stayed in one spot and we could even swim down to them and be within touch distance! At one point there were three Mantas and one turtle and various fish and remoras (sucker fish) in one frame, would have been such a awesome photo!

We have only been here three days, but we have already made some really good friends. Hermit Islands despite its isolated location gets a surprising amount of yachts visiting each year, and actually throughout the year as it's on the passage both to and from Asia (both via Indonesia and Philippines). The visitor book was full of praise and many people declare it a favorite, but we actually hadn't read or heard much about it beforehand, so it seems a bit of a well kept secret, or otherwise we don't mingle enough in the cruising circles. All the people we met were super friendly and really keen to chat with us. Last night we were invited ashore for a farewell meal and lots of people came along to see and chat with us. The cookies I had made and the small photo prints I can make were a huge hit.

So, the islands are very paradisaical and visitors tell the locals how lucky they are to live here. However, if you're stuck in paradise it may not seem like it. People live off the land and the sea, but they still need clothes and some foods they can't grow themselves. Then there are all the other nice things you can buy like cell phone, boom-box (music player), TV and the list goes on and on. Plus school past primary cost money, as well as hospital and dentist. It's very hard to move on and there aren't many jobs around either and even less on this small island.

If the weather we are about to download looks OK, we are leaving for Palau now. It's a bit over 800 miles and xmas is in 10 days so we are in a bit of a hurry!
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Finally at Hermit Islands

Phew, we made it! It was a really tough passage where we were constantly beating into the wind and even tacking, making it extra slow, as we have to cover a lot more ground and it's frustrating to look at the chart and see our zig zag course. What we had expected to be a 3 1/2 day passage took us five full days. We haven't yet calculated how many miles we actually covered over the ground, but it sure was a lot more than a straight line. We did actually arrive here maybe midnight last night, but spent the rest of the night heaving-to. We went through the eastern entrance this morning and did have mostly sun, but typically a super vicious squall came through exactly at that time and brought winds 30+ knots, but thankfully no torrential rain and the reef and islands were sheltering for the sea and we just motored right through. There were also several markers, so it wasn't difficult.

After the last post where we were NE of Admiralty Islands, the wind didn't die down at night, on the contrary, we actually had quite strong winds for the remainder of the passage, most of the time 20-25 knots, a few times easing to 15 knots. When we were planning our trip through PNG and to Palau, we had hoped to make it to Hermit Islands, but we also agreed that if it was all headwinds and tough going, we would just go directly to Palau. It's a good question why we then just didn't do that. I guess we were quite keen to get here, as it's supposed to be really great. We also weren't very prepared for a long passage, as it we hadn't done any cooking beforehand, and it quickly gets old eating canned spaghetti and baked beans.

Anyway, we made it now and we are very happy to be here to get a rest, see these beautiful islands and get ready for the next leg to Palau. Check it our on Google Earth, it might recognise Hermit Islands, otherwise, 01°30'56.3"S and 145°05'6.40"E should get you there. It's actually an atoll and there is an almost circular reef around a couple of islands in the middle. We're anchored just south of the village where it's very protected from the weather. It's quite deep, but luckily a boat came out and told us which mooring we could use. Apparently they have sold fishing rights to some Taiwanese fishing boats, and we guess it's their moorings, but none are here now, so that's nice.

Beside having a non-moving and quiet boat, the best part was jumping in the water! Because our bodies haven't been near any water since Kavieng, but also because we're right on top of coral and lots of fish. When I was snorkeling on the mooring I even saw a turtle. Hopefully a sign that we'll have a few nice day here.

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October and November's cruising expenses

I missed October's months budget because of my parent's visit, first of all because they were here during the end of October and the beginning of November, and also because their visit kind of screwed up those two months' budgets. We were recording costs before and after their visit, but we totally stopped while they were with us as we were spending a lot more money than we would if we were alone, particularly on alcohol and eating out, but also somewhat on groceries. Another reason is they kindly paid for all those extra expenses.

Anyway, here is both October and November's cruising expenses. It's not 100% accurate, but I still think it's a pretty reasonable reality of what we spent, if we had just been the two of us alone. Overall the countries have been pretty cheap for cruising, although food (besides fruit, veggies and a few staples) is still more expensive than NZ, but then it's also quite limited what you can buy in the first place. Solomon Islands is quite expensive for clearing in and out of though. Interesting is also we haven't spent anything on mooring fees (haven't been any) or water (we have almost exclusively caught it all with our rain catchers). Drinks out has pretty much merged into eating out, I may delete it next month if we don't start going out drinking a lot. It's also mostly a night activity and we have spent pretty much all nights on Sophia for security reasons.

More interesting village visits

We left the extremely secure anchorage of Cigaregare and moved just around the corner to Teripax village. It wasn't as good an anchorage (a bit rolly), but visiting the friendly village more than made up for it. We spent a fair bit of both Saturday and Sunday hanging out with the locals, meaning mostly kids. They don't get many cruising boats visiting, as most stay in Cigaregare anchorage, which is only half an hour walk through the bush though. We did the walk while in Cigaregare with a couple of young men as our guides. The best part of that was submerging ourselves in the creek, only just deep enough for it. It was quite elevated, so no crocs up there.

Anyway, the kids in Teripax were great. Only kids under 8 or so were present, all the older ones stay most of the time in a neighbouring village (a canoe ride away) where they go to school. We brought in baloons the first day, always a big hit. They like getting their photo taken, but they love looking at the camera afterwards. This means they have quite serious faces for the pictures I take, and then I get all the smiles and laughts when they see the pictures! I brought in my old camera, so I was comfortable handing it over to the kids. This produced some quite interesting photos, they definitley relax more that way and also make some more daring poses, for example one guy though it was fun to stick his blood red (betel nut) toungue out in all the pictures! For some reason they also love making hand signs for the camera. Check out facebook for pictures.

Some of the very little kids were not used to white people and started crying if we got too close. The slightly older kids were very facinated by us though. I'd often find myself being stared at by half a dozen little ones. The women were also very curious and at one point started enquiring about my hair. When I released it from the bun they were uhm-ing and ahh-ing and carefully touched it and declared it was very beautiful. To that I could only say thanks, but I love curls :-)

Sunday we brought in our laptop to show a movie for the kids. We had been shown through the village and the men/boys only house was shown to us. We also saw these (from outside) in Nissan Atoll, no women or girls are allowed, only boys. However, for some reason, it was suddenly OK to use it for showing the movie, I was worried none of the girls would go in, but everyone seemed happy to go there. Strange. Anyway, watching a movie is definitely a rare treat, if not even a first for many kids, but it was a little hard to keep concentration naturally as they don't understand English that well or at all, plus it's a quite small screen in a big room.

Later on the women were practising their custom dance and singing, which was interesting to watch. They do the when they have special celebrations and feasts. Buka, Nissan Atoll and also the people we met on Tabar are all been catholic, so there are a ton of kids around and some very young mothers.

Chewing betel nut is done by everyone, including breastfeasting mums and I'm sure preagnant ones too, though we never see them, it's something about preagnant women being taboo or something like that. Even little kids are allowed to chew it. Mark, the resort owner on Lihir Island told us that one ingrediants in betel nut is used commercially as a sedative for horses! The gold mine has a strict no betel nut policy for all their workers during work time.

After an over-night passage, we're now in Kavieng, which is a provincial capital. We're anchored across from town by a small island where there's a resort for surfers mostly. It's a pretty long dinghy ride, but our good steady little dinghy did make it. The town is very typical with a bunch of small shops all selling pretty much the sime kind of Chinese cheap junk and a bit of food. It wasn't until the 7th shop we found ice cream, phew.

We are going to spend a few days here getting ourselves organised before leaving. There tropical low/typhoon we eluded to ealier on did indeed turn out to be a typhoon, for a while it was even a super typhoon. It hit Palau a day or two ago with some damage, but no loss of life and now it's on it's way to Philippines. It's the first typhoon to hit Palau in over 20 years, so we keep our fingers crossed it won't happen again while we're there. The 'scary' part is that it's out of season and the typhoon's path was irregular, I'm sure all signs of global warming!

Wild west gold mine visit

Lihir Island was a great stop. We stayed at Latakot Bay where there's a resort of the same name. It's basically a hotel that serves the big gold mine half an hour away. It's also an excellent and very secure anchorage, the best on the island. The expat Aussie owner, Mark, even has his own yacht parked up in the bay. As much as we like visiting remote islands and villages, sometimes it's nice to be able to just hang out on Sophia without a constant steam of visitors/audience. Not to forget the extravagance of rowing ashore and ordering a pizza as opposed to heating up Sophia even more with our cooking...

Every day a car from the resort drives to town and we caught a ride with it (of course at a price). The great thing about the drive is that it goes right through the open pit gold mine). Neither of us have ever seen a gold mine, or any mine for that matter, so it was quite interesting. It's a HUGE operation and it sure leaves a big open scar in the landscape. Apparently the whole island is very gold rich (mostly just dust though) and there are a lot of negotiations etc going on with various land owners and also some environmental considerations. The ground has a lot of thermal acticity too, and we did see steam venting up from many places around the mine, so they do used it to create geothermal energy to power the processing plant, but there was also a floating gen-set ship in the bay. Mark, the resort owner, did say it was pretty sad to see how so much wealth went out of the island (and the country). PNG is very resource rich, but it's going to take a lot of careful management to use it to the country's best interests.

The main town is a bit further past the mine and as this serves the many thousands of workers at the mine, including a good bunch of foreigners (aparently both Aussie and Asian workers), the supermarkets had an excellent selection and prices were even OK-ish too. There were a lot of local people hanging about the place, I'm sure many hoping to find a job, but the place did seem to have the feel that it has just pooped up very quickly, probably not unlike the wild west's mining towns back in the day.

We have now sailed to the neighbouring Tabar Islands and are anchored in Cigaregare Harbour, a very protected bay off the passage between the two biggest islands. There's no village here, just a few people that are looking after a Chinese owned plantation. But, unfortunately there are crocs around here, so no swimming, which is a real shame, as it's super hot! We are now also only 2 degrees south of equator, so it shouldn't be a surprise. It's very pretty though with lush green jungle around us and lots of bird singing.

Last night a banana boat came into the bay to get some fuel off the people that live here and they stopped by to say hi. They are from a village just around the corner on the west coast, Teripax, and invited us to come stay here. We had already considered that as Mary, the Swedish boat we briefly met in Stewart Islands back in February was here some months ago and wrote up a report to Noonsite on Tabar Islands and that particular village and proclaimed it one of their favourite places, so we'll probably go there this afternoon after we have done some laundry in the river while minding the crocs.

We were on the internet at Lakakot Bay, so there are new imagines from both Solomon and PNG on facebook now.

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Sailing up the island chain

The night before we were planning to leave Nissan Atoll another yacht arrived! Imagine our own, but also the locals' surprise. That will only be the 5th yacht visiting this year. Even better was that it was another young couple! Cruisers our age are a bit of a minority and have only briefly met one or two young people yachts since Tonga (we miss Sala!), so this was great. Shawn and Holly on Oh la la are from Moloulabar and only left Cains a few weeks ago but the even better thing is they are heading the same way as us, although we might not see them before again before Palau! We ended up staying another day, mainly so we could catch up with them.

We also finally went for a snorkel in the entrance to the atoll. The entrance itself wasn't very interesting, but right outside on the very edge, the reef drops from maybe 7 meters to really deep (deeper than our dept sounder) and on that edge we saw several sharks, some of fairly decent size and they were pretty curious. At this point we were back in the dinghy, because the out-going tide kept sweeping us out to sea, so we were doing the head-snorkeling thing from the dinghy. Suddenly we also realised we were surrounded by a big pod of dolphins. It was hard to pick whether look over the water and see them do full body jumps/spins out of the water, or look underwater where we could also spot them swim underneath the dinghy. Pretty amazing.

After a final goodbye visit to the village we left at dawn the next morning. We had hoped to only do a day sail to the next island in the row, Feni Island, but unfortunately the wind picked up and we had 25 knots SW, which meant big swells wrapping right around the island and it was also overcast so we couldn't see the reef and on approach it suddenly went from 30-40 knots to 12 and without any change in water colour, furthermore the chart was without any detail, so we bailed out and left the island and a good night's sleep. It was a real shame, as it looks like a really pretty spot, several beaches and a tall jungle covered island.

That meant the next island group, Tanga Islands, was also out of the questions. We have now sailed 27 hours since Nissan Atoll and we're almost by Lihir Island, where there's a gold mine and therefore more resources and people, so should be an interesting visit. Our weather seem to be affected by a typhoon forming up in Micronesia. On our grib file it looks like the winds is kind of being sucked towards it, but in real life we seem to have changing wind directions and wind speeds and a fair bit of swell.

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Our first atoll and mahi mahi

We left Buka later in the afternoon after our morning arrival. A ton of big dinghies with big outboards were zipping across the harbour constantly and most of them wanted to get as close to us as possible to check us out. Their wake combined with the current made the anchorage quite unsettled and with a big population like that, raskols (PNG name for criminals/bandits) would be a possibility, so that's why we left. We had three knots of current with us as we left, so we did get the times fairly right after all.

It was a little tough being on our forth night at sea, especially because we were close hauled all the time, at times with 20-25 knots of wind, but at least we were sailing, not motoring, and we could almost hold the course, so we didn't have to tack much. We arrived at Nissan Atoll (also called Green Island) at 8am in the morning and went through the pass without any problems, it was quite obvious where the passage was and the water was super clear and beautiful. It's our first atoll on this trip, so that was quite exciting. It's quite different from the Maldive atolls that are the only ones I know, as there isn't much beach and some of the island is quite raised. It's very densely wooded, we well as fairly densely populated. We read that 3000 people live here, but the local chief said 1700. We're anchored just inside the passage to the south in 3-4 meters of water, but with quite poor holding in coral and hard sand.

We had barely gotten our anchor down before the first dugouts arrived. One funny thing is the canoes now again have outriggers here in PNG, same as in Vanuatu, but different from the single hulls in Solomon Islands! The locals were very keen to trade with us, and we got yummy passionfruit, a local orange/mandarin fruit, paw paws, pineapple, eggs, bananas, starfruit, kumera, eggplant and lots more I can't remember. So despite the soil being fairly poor and sandy with lots of coral rock, it still is quite fertile! Sugar was especially popular to trade, but we also traded second hand clothes, fish hooks, line, pencils, lollies and salt. The only income possibility they have is copra and cocoa, but at the moment they aren't selling any, because the price is only 20% of normal prices. It's a 2-3 hour trip to Buka for them with their fast outboards, but it's very expensive in fuel, and hardly justify the cost of selling their produce at the market there.

Later when we visited the village and met the chief we learned we're only the 4th yacht this year. Some years they have had many more though, when the visitor book started in 2002 maybe 30 boats visited! There are a ton of kids and young people in the village and everyone are super friendly. It does get a bit tiring being constantly surrounded by canoes all day long (starting at 6.30 in the morning!), but on the other hand, it's also quite understandable, as we're the biggest and best entertainment they have had in a long time. Plus of course the trading possibility. After the first day we had to stop trading though, as we already had more fruit and veggies than we can eat!

Today we spent most of the day ashore being guided around by 16 year old boys. They took us to the school which is about 30 minutes walk away. It was Saturday, so no teaching, but it was still very interesting to see anyway and we spent a while looking at maps, books and stories written by the kids that hang on the wall. Some younger boys that were also following us climbed up really high in a tree to fetch us a local fruit that looks a bit like a green mango, but is more like an apple in texture and taste.

One big thing I forgot to mention in the last post was the Mahi mahi we caught on the passage to Buka! It's our first mahi mahi and it was so beautiful and golden that it was really sad to kill it and watch all the colour disappear. But it was really yummy!

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Arrived in Papua New Guinea

We're now in Buka in Papua New Guinea. It took us three nights and two days to get here, but all the time in sight of land. The Shortland Islands are only a few miles south of Bouganville (PNG), so in theory you could just day hop, but there's no customs in neither Shortland Islands nor in south Bourganville, so it's stiil a small passage to change country. I also got it mixed up in my last post, we stopped by Sagharaughombe and Liapari Islands before going to Noro to clear out of the country, as of course we wouldn't do illegal stops after clearing out of a country.

The passage was typical of the weather we have had in Solomon Islands, pretty light, but a bit of everything and lots and lots of lightening, thankfully all in the horizon, not near us. The wind was mostly on the forward quarter, which is great when it's very light, as we can actually move at a good speed, and it's not uncomfortable either. It's a fine balance though, and when the wind picks up, it's not so fun beating into it. We had 1/2 - 1 knot of current with us the first 24 hours, but halfway up the coast of Bounganville, it changed to being against us. The last night we were tacking into the wind and being pushed by the current away from Buka, very frustrating, but we managed to get there, even after some hours of heaving to.

Buka passage can easily have 5-6 knots of current, so trying to time our arrival was important, but difficult, because we couldn't find any time table. OpenCPN did have one, and Phil estimated that morning arrival was OK, which was also what we'd prefer, so that we didn't have to stay the night, but could leave again the same afternoon. We ended up having about 1 knot of current against us, which was totally fine, but not what we expected. We just passed the passage again coming back from town (in a local boat) and it sure looked like there was a lot more current then, so it will be interesting when we leave a little later on.

So far people here are just as friendly as in Solomon Islands and people are actually slightly better dressed and many have backpacks etc, but then it's quite a big place also, much bigger than Gizo for example. Bouganville has quite a tumultuous history with civil war and mining problems (the two being related), but there's peace now and in 2020 there's an election to decide if Bouganville should be independent. All the land is owned by private people, nothing by the government, so somebody owns the land where the gold and copper mines are, and there are now ongoing negotiations about the rights to the land. So much potential in this land, but who is going to benefit is the million dollar question.

Like in Vanuatu and Solomons Islands, men must pay the father of the bride a pride price. This is very old customs and today speaking with one of the friendly locals (John) from the boat we caught a ride on, I suddenly realised why that is. I already knew that usually the wife goes to where the husband comes from. The parents are therefore paid a sort of compensation for loosing their daughter. Yeah, I know I'm slow. These days it's mostly paid in cash, but there's also some traditional trading/goods involved. A typical bride price around here is 4-5000 kina (1 kina equals approximately 0.66 NZ$), so it's quite a lot of money a man has got to save up to buy a bride, but he'll often also get help from his parents. According to John it's much more expensive in Port Morseby though, there it's more like 50-60,000 kina, though that does sound super super dear!

We're now going to make our way north on the outside of New Ireland stopping at some of the small islands on our way to Kavieng, the next big port. Unfortunately we have a lot of miles to cover, almost 1000 miles, to get to Vanimo by the north coast of Guinea just before the border to Indonesia. From there we're going to hop north over equator to Palau, where we hope to spend Christmas, so we gotta get a move on and can't spend too much time exploring this big and interesting country. We're still in the transition period between the SE trades and NW monsoon, and hopefully we can make it (a lot of motoring is guaranteed) before we get too much headwind, but we'll have to wait and see.

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