We finally left Kavieng yesterday around 3:00 PM after filling both diesel tanks to the brim plus the additional 2 20 liter tanks Leo and I bought at the Hardware Haus. We motored on both engines for 20 miles to get past the local reefs and underwater mine fields before dark, then switched to running on one motor at 2100 RPM, which is our new long distance cruising mode when there is no wind.

We’ve been driving this way for the last 21 hours, heading due west.

We have a little bit of excitement to report as we do our noontime position, which 02.43.407 South, 148.47.045 East.

To port there is a huge squall that’s been traveling parallel with us for a while. We can see its black wall of rain 2 miles away, but it is being polite and keeping its distance. To starboard on the horizon are two oil wells, each producing a large amount of black smoke. Directly ahead of us is a 10 foot long metal can anchored to the water, surrounded by swarming birds and small schools of tuna. At first I thought it was a F.A.D (Fish Attraction Device), but that makes no sense since we are 50 miles from the nearest land. I assume it has something to do with the oil rigs. We made a few passes through the fish schools with a line in the water. We could see them jumping on the surface. They were foot-long tuna. No hits though, including our not hitting the can. Glad we spotted it during daytime.

We’ve covered about 135 miles in the last 21 hours. Jayapura is only 483 miles away. We may make a pit stop at the Hermit Islands, which is a part of PNG and is only 233 miles to the Northwest. Our friends on Per Ardua are heading there, and it might be fun for the kiddies to swim with their kiwi friends. We can also supply Per Ardua with fuel and water.

That’s it. Dinner tonight will be pancetta-wrapped chicken breasts. If the kids finish school, we also might watch Transformers with them.

Until tomorrow …

It’s been a hectic day, but I think we will pull the anchor, head over to the shipping pier, load up on diesel, and leave Kavieng within the next hour. We’ll stop a night or two in the Hermit Islands, and then head to Jayapura, Indonesia.

The day started early. Jenna, Lauren and I were all up at 6:30 this morning. It looked like a sunny day, so I spent 20 minutes re-hanging damp laundry, blankets, sheets, and mattresses outside. Leo had left his hatch open the other day, and by the time we discovered it there was an inch of water on his cabin floor. With all the rain over the last 48 hours, it was impossible to dry out. Today started sunny, so we had a shot.

At 7:30, Jenna, Leo, and I went into town for errands. Jenna headed to the market for fresh produce. Leo and I went to the DHL office for our package. It wasn’t there, but the DHL dude was heading to the airport in their pickup and would hopefully grab it.

Leo and I then went to Customs so we could clear out of the country. When we got there, the door was locked. Eventually the local manager showed up, unlocked the door, and apologized, saying he couldn’t do anything because the power was out all over town. Perhaps we could come back later? We hung out for a bit more, and then the 2 women who worked there whom we had dealt with earlier in the week arrived. One gave me my form for getting duty free fuel. She said we would have to come back when power was on before we could get our clearance.

We took a photo of them with Leo (above.) The one in the red shirt is very nice. She is an intern there, and her middle name is Seattle. She doesn’t know why her dad named her that.

Leo and I then went to Joe Tong’s Market Town and bought 3 dozen eggs and 4 bags of bread. We then got a call from the DHL lady: our watermaker parts had arrived! We walked 3 blocks to the DHL office and found this beauty waiting for us:

It took just one week to ship this box from New Zealand to remote Papua New Guinea. I was very happy.

Next Leo and I went to Hardware Haus (this part of NewGuinea used to be owned by Germany) and bought two 5 gallon gasoline cans. We can only buy fuel in 200 liter drums, and we decided to buy 4 drums. We liked the idea of having a little reserve just in case we don’t have room for 800 liters in our main tanks. Besides, our friends on Per Ardua left 2 days ago and are low on fuel. We might bring them some. It’s what motherships do.

Next, Leo and I called Jenna on the VHF and requested a pickup on the beach. While we were waiting, a longboat pulled up and offloaded a large crate containing 30 chickens. Stuff happens.

Jenna picked us up and we returned to Sophie. I then dinghied into the commercial wharf to see if we could change our “fuel bunkering appointment” from 10:00 AM to 1:00 PM. Daniel, the local manager, sat me down in his office and spent 15 minutes calculating our fuel bunkering charge. He finally came up with an answer: $93.80 kina (~$US30). He also requested that we come at 1:30 so that we don’t cut into their lunch break.

I then paid him and crossed the street to Island Petroleum to pay for our 4 drums of fuel, which they would then deliver to the commercial pier. They had said earlier in the week that they accepted credit cards, but it turned out that they only accept debit cards from the Bank of the South Pacific or Westpac. We have neither. So Jenna and I made multiple trips to the ATM to get cash for our diesel yesterday.

When I got to Island Petroleum, the girl at the counter told me that I had the incorrect form to waive the GST from my diesel purchase. I needed a form from Inland Revenue, not Customs. At this point, I said “the heck with it” and bought the fuel with tax in cash.

I then went back across the street to the commercial wharf, grabbed the dinghy, and raced into town in order to get to Customs before they went on their lunch break. I made it there by 11:30. The woman above in the blue shirt was there, and she very quickly stamped our passports and gave me our yacht clearance papers for PNG.

At this point I was pretty hungry, so I swung into the Kavieng Hotel bar for a very quick cheeseburger and beer. I then went back by Joe Tong’s for a bag of onions, and in our shared desire to spend all of our kina while we were in PNG, bought a case and a half of beer at Joe Tong’s Discount Liquor Window. I then got back to Sophie. It was 12:15.

While I was in town, everyone else put away all of the hanging laundry, reassembled Leo’s room, started Sophie school, and got the boat ready for passage. It then started to rain.

Believe it or not, this is a typical clearance day. Off we go, bathed in luck. And our watermaker is working beautifully…

… we updated the “About the Crew” (us) and the “Guest Crew” (people who did passages with us) pages on the blog. First time in 18 months.

We also created a new “Visitors” page to celebrate everyone who has flown out to spend time with us. Enjoy!

We’re still in Kavieng, just 120 miles south of the equator, and we’ve had a lot of rain recently. I mean a LOT of rain. In Fiji it didn’t rain once from the beginning of August through the middle of September. We’ve had 4 multi-inch dumps in the last 3 days here in Papua New Guinea. These showers last less than an hour, giving us time to swim and explore. But when it rains here, it rains.

The hose on our water maker remains broken, and we believe that its replacement is on the plane from Lae that lands in Kavieng within an hour. If that does happen, we will leave for Indonesia tomorrow.

But in the meantime, all of this rain everywhere in Kavieng has made us rethink how we go about getting water on Sophie. As an experiment, we tried our hand at building dams on deck to capture rainwater into our water tanks.

We didn’t get vey sophisticated here. Our deck fittings for the water tanks are located in gutters along the side of our foredeck. We simply rolled up some towels and placed them right behind the tank openings. We also laid out some sheets and hoses on the deck and coach roof to direct water towards the general direction of the tank openings.

The result? This water tank was empty 3 days ago, and it now has over 100 gallons of rain water in it. The other tank caught a similar amount. The decks were clean before the experiment, and the water goes through a carbon filter before we use it. So we feel better about drinking this water than water we would load from sources on shore.

The water maker will continue to be our primary source of fresh water moving forward, but its good to know we have a working alternative, at least when we are in rain country.

It also means that when we are in rain country, we can turn on the air conditioners instead of the water maker when we are charging our batteries with our generator.

No one on Sophie is complaining about that right now.

We’ve been out cruising for 2 years now, and we have seen many interesting boats, but we haven’t seen many that are cooler than the Brazilian cat Guruca. Guruca is Portuguese for “little crab”, and she was hand-built out of wood in a little over 2 years by Fausto and Guta, a couple that has sailed her from Brazil. Fausto also designed her. She’s 54 feet long, weighs 12 tons, and has some design features that I could see on our next cat if we ever decide to upgrade Sophie.

As you can see from the photo above, she has a roof that extends from the dinghy davits forward to the mast, creating a living space that is over 25 feet long.

Since the boat is made from wood, it results in a warm interior that Fausto and Guta have left relatively uncluttered. Here is a shot of Jenna and Guta in the galley. We have always liked the idea of aft-facing galleys on cats, because it can create a connection between the inside and outside living areas. The island behind Jenna contains a deep fridge and freezer.

There is a table and benches in the forward part of the salon, including a duplicate set of instruments for when you are doing watches inside. There is a lot of room under the benches for food storage. And yes, Leo got a haircut.

The main part of the salon is open, creating a space that is large enough to host 20 people for an indoor dance party. All that is missing here is a disco ball. For Fausto, that is not a problem, because in his view when you build in wood, you can change anything whenever you want to. And yes, my outfit matches my Brazilian coffee cup.

A big challenge for the designers of large cats is the decision about where to put the wheel. Lagoon chose the approach of building a flybridge and putting the wheel up top. This creates a great and social sailing area but separates the helm from the salon and the aft cockpit. Chris White and the Gunboat designers put it in a small cockpit directly behind the mast. Catana puts a wheel out on each transom, which I assume gives you a great view but can also get you wet. Other designers put a bench on the front of the salon where the hemsman sits and drives.

Fausto solves this problem by putting the wheel on a platform in the center of the aft cockpit, with a sliding hatch that gives the helmsman access to all of the sail controls. When I first saw this, I didn’t think it would work. But the more I think about it, the more I like it, especially for distance cruising.

You have an excellent view of the sails.

And easy access to the sail controls. 

Once you’ve made your sail adjustment, you just close the hatch and continue with your day. The roof must be close to 600 square feet, and Fasuto built rain gutters around its edge to fill his 2,200 liters of water storage. He doesn’t need a watermker or a genset. The helm platform also contains the clothes washing machine, which is a setup that would be perfect for me.

Here is a photo of me and Fausto enjoying his aft cockpit. They spend most of their time here.

Fausto and Guta invited the crews of Sophie and Per Ardua over for coffee and cake yesterday afternoon, and the kids spent all of their time playing in the aft cockpit as well.

It was clear that they were both very proud of their beautiful boat. Fausto spent an hour showing us his rigging, hulls, mast, engine rooms, and various pieces of joinery. At one point he even broke out his line drawings of the boat and walked us through his equations for various stress loads and righting angles. It was a wonderful experience.

One final observation. We have written a bit about the potential crime issues in the Solomons and PNG, and we are feeling very safe in Kavieng right now. But Guruca has just about the best crime deterrent we’ve seen on any cruising boat: a Size 1, 2 kilo alpha male Miniature Pinscher named Faisca. No one is going to mess with this guy.

I guess we are not the only lucky ones out here right now. Fausto and Guta plan to sell Guruca when they return to Brazil next year so they can build a new boat. She would make an excellent day charter boat for an exotic location somewhere, like, say, Montenegro.

http://www.gurucacat.com.br

You asked for it, you got it! Here is a shot of me and my little 65 pound friend.

We arrived safely in Kavieng at 8:30 this morning. Yesterday was a spectacularly boring day. A high settled in, and we motored under the stars. I had to slow the boat down at 4:00 AM so we wouldn’t enter the passage in the reef in the dark. I turned the motors off and unfurled the jib, but then the wind kicked up and I actually had to reef the jib to keep us under 2 knots SOG.

We never unzipped the mainsail cover during the entire trip.

Kavieng was a major Japanese naval base during World War II. Our chart had the following warning for boats entering Kavieng from the south, which we did on Sophie at sunrise this morning:

FORMER MINED AREA
THE APPROACHES TO KAVIENG HAVE BEEN SWEPT AND ARE OPEN TO SURFACE NAVIGATION ONLY. THEY ARE NOT SAFE FOR ANCHORING, BOTTOMING BY SUBMARINES.

Word.

Jenna will be posting photos to the blog soon. Please stay tuned.

Well, it’s kind of hard for us to top yesterday’s adventure. Right now we are cruising through the flat Bismarck Sea along the sunny New Ireland coast, enjoying a quiet 24 hours since our last blog update.

Sophie’s current position is 03.40.452 South, 151.48.232 East. We’ve covered 137 nautical miles in the last 24 hours, almost all of it motoring under one engine. Kavieng is 90 miles away, and we are now just 220 miles south of the equator. We are officially north of the South Pacific tropical cyclone belt.

People on the boat are tired. I just completed my longest morning nap of the trip after doing a 5 1/2 hour night shift. The kids and Jenna are working hard at school, and Lauren is up top, seeking a combination of shade and breeze under the bimini. Leo is taking a regular afternoon shift now, which means regular afternoon naps for the grownups. It helps a lot. On my shifts I am watching movies (King Kong, Fight Club, Planet of the Apes, Braveheart, Talladega Nights) and listening to music (Matthew Sweet, Roxy Music, Beyonce, Macklemore and Ryan Lewis.) And playing Tetris. Lots of Tetris.

Last night we motored through Saint Georges Channel, which separates New Britain from New Ireland. The volcano that erupted in Rabaul in September is located here, but it was dormant. We could see the glow from two separate magma fields on the horizon as we ghosted through the strait in the dark. Combined with the vivid starlight and flashes of lightning in the distance, it made for quite a view.

In the afternoon we were briefly joined by either a VERY LARGE dolphin or a small, curious whale. It had dark skin, a blunt nose, and was 12-15 feet long. It swam under the boat the way dolphins do. But it was big. Really big. Jenna has a couple of good photos.

For dinner, Jenna made penne in a red sauce with tuna, olives, and parmesan. It was delicious. Tuna is definitely on Sophie’s menu for the next couple of months.

Given our current weather, it appears that a high pressure system has settled in. I personally can do without another rain squall until we are anchored in the lagoon at Kavieng. Then it can rain intensely once a day. Preferably in the afternoon, during my nap.

We still have half of our diesel left even though we have motored 400 miles. Good thing we don’t have a fuel nozzle that we can accidentally leave in the water. We have other things we can do to accidentally spill diesel. 🙂 We did a load of laundry and ran the dish washers a few times, and I am currently operating the water maker/bilge waterfall to top off the tanks given the calmness of our passage.

Hopefully we’ll be writing to you tomorrow from Kavieng.

I was in a grumpy mood yesterday afternoon, failing in my attempt to fix a broken high pressure hose for the water maker, when Lauren suggested I come up and check out a bait ball she was steering Sophie towards. “I will in a minute,” I snapped. “I’m still focused on trying to fix this right now.”

The day hadn’t been totally bad so far. We had seen some dolphins earlier, the first we had seen in months. But the water maker had me down. Again.

I should have listened to Lauren right away. Soon all five of us were up on the flybridge, confronting a spectacle unlike anything any of us had ever seen before.

There were three large whales, a school of tuna, and a towering column of a hundred birds, all attacking a boiling frenzy of white bait fish on the surface of the water, just 300 meters away from Sophie. We quickly joined in on the attack. I took the wheel, Lauren went to the lines, Jenna grabbed her camera, and the kids grinned while watching it all. The tuna were bunching the bait fish into a tight circle, and the whales were swimming straight through it, sometimes rolling on their sides with their jaws open, sucking fish into their mouths. The whales were big and could have been over 40 feet long. We initially mistook the black backs of the tunas for dolphin, but once we saw them in profile we knew they were yellowfin or big eye.

As we steered towards the frenzy, the frenzy turned and steered towards us. Jenna was a little scared we were going to hit a whale, but I trusted they were smart enough to avoid Sophie. There was simply too much food present to be messing around with boats. It all was happening very quickly. As we entered the boil, one of our meat lines just snapped right off. 400 pound test line? Gone. A moment later the fishing pole went horizontal with a big hit. The fish fought hard for 15 minutes. I reeled, Jenna drove, and Lauren gaffed. Soon we had a 30 pound yellowfin – the biggest tuna we’ve ever caught on Sophie – secure on our back steps. We trussed it up with the Melissa rope so it would bleed out.

But we weren’t done.

The frenzy was still taking place only 400 meters away from Sophie. I asked Jenna if we could go get another fish. “Absolutely!” I love my wife.

So Leo took the wheel and pointed Sophie back towards the boil. Jenna was on camera. Lauren was taking care of the first fish, and Hazel was splayed out on the trampoline, looking straight down into the water. It was a little hectic as we re-entered the scene of food chain carnage. As we hit the boil, it spread out around us with the big whales swimming on either side of Sophie. I ran up to help Leo with the wheel and assumed Lauren would grab the pole for the next fish. We could see 40 yellowfins hurtling across our stern, about 20 meters away, when the pole exploded with its second hit of the day. This time time it was pointing down into the water. I could barely get the pole out of the rod holder as 300 meters of line ripped off the reel in 5 seconds. This fish was clearly much bigger than the first one.

The fight took 30 minutes. I had to use low gear on the reel, and my arms kept cramping up. There was a beautiful orange glow in the air as the sun began to set. The frenzy was still taking place just 200 meters away from us, and I was scared it would drift into the area of our fight. The big whales were not quite as welcome any more. The tower of birds occasionally left the boil and flew over to check us out. We were scared they were looking for a place to poop, but they left our decks clean.

In the end, it all worked out. Jenna took photos, Lauren once again did the gaffing, the kids handed over tools, and we collectively landed a 65 pound yellowfin tuna on Sophie’s starboard transom steps.

Please let me say that again. A 65 pound yellowfin tuna. I am complete.

The rest of the details of the day don’t really matter too much compared to yesterday’s transcendent ecstasy of glorious fishing awesomeness.

Our noon position is 05.23.367 South, 153.18.291 East. We covered another 137 miles in the last 24 hours, motoring through light air using just one engine at a time. Kavieng is 226 miles away, and we should get there Tuesday morning local time. The water maker was out of action because the high pressure hose between the pump and the membrane sprung a leak. It’s a relatively standard part that we’ll either find in Kavieng or have shipped up via DHL from New Zealand. When we went to bed we had over 100 gallons of water on the boat, which should have been enough for to get us to our destination.

We had to clear out our fridges and freezer to make space for the tuna, so among other things we had beer and chocolate ice cream for dinner last night. I know, I know, we don’t drink on passages, but yesterday was a special day, we could see Bougainville 35 miles away, and we were motoring across a glassy sea in the warm summer night.

What a day. What a spectacular, wonderful day.

Today? It’s still all good, despite a bit of a hiccup. Early this morning during my shift I realized we actually had no water at all on the boat. During our evening double takedown we had inadvertently left the starboard swim step shower loose on the deck, and overnight it had fallen into the water and drained out 100 gallons of fresh water into the sat water of Planet Deep. The port water tank, which we normally keep full in anticipation for exactly this type of situation during passages, had very little water in it because we used it to clean bird poop off the deck before we realized our water maker was not functional.

So what did we do? Panic? Nah. We had enough bottled water, juice, milk, and beer to keep us from getting thirsty over the next 2 days. We also have an emergency hand held watermaker in our ditch bag. But I pulled off one of my best boat hacks, ever. I took the broken high pressure hose for our water maker, covered the leaking area with rescue tape and hose clamps, and swapped it out with its partner hose which runs from the desalinator membrane back into the pump, putting the good hose from the pump going into the membrane. When I turned everything on, the leaking hose still leaked a tremendous amount of water into the engine room’s bilge, but the watermaker could produce 30 gallons per hour. Our starboard bilge pump could keep up with the leaking water flow. For most of the morning we closely monitored the leaking hose in our engine room, the draining water from our starboard bilge, and the slowly moving needle on our water tank gauge. Within a few hours we had replaced the 100 gallons of water in the tank.

Meanwhile, multiple squalls passed over Sophie, dumping water on the boat. Lauren was out on the back deck, getting soaked as she carved up the 65 pounder. We made a little dam on the foredeck and diverted another 25 gallons of rain water to the port tank. Jenna and Hazel each took rain showers up top as the rain dumped and the thunder boomed all around us.

Spectacular fishing days and then subsequently figuring out how to solve problems any way you can seem to go together hand in hand on this little family adventure of ours. It’s what we do. We also have a freezer full of sashimi grade yellowfin tuna today, and we can see the southern tip of the island of New Ireland off in the distance. Kavieng is located at its northern tip. We will be in sight of land for the remainder of this passage.

Have I told you lately how lucky we are?

It’s noon Saturday local time, and Sophie left Gizo 21 hours ago. We have covered 132 nautical miles during that time. Current position is 07.00.816 South, 154.54.437 East. All of this distance has been covered while running on just one of the engines at a time @ 2200 RPM. We seem to have a bit of a current pushing us and are averaging above 6 knots. Our fuel consumption is low, and the ride is quite comfortable. There is no wind to speak of.

Our planned highlight for yesterday was trolling directly over an underwater volcano. The water around here is quite deep, but we were told of an underwater volcano that is on the charts 26 miles north of Liapari. It’s summit is just 100 feet below the surface, and it spews warm water that makes the local fish go crazy. Our goal was to troll directly over it and land a nice yellowfin. Unfortunately, since we cleared out of Gizo at 3:00 PM, it was 8:30 and after dark by the time we reached the volcano, so we trolled over its alleged location in the dark. Leo and Hazel stayed up for the event, there was lightning flashing in the distance, and we had no idea what to expect. Would we see a red glow beneath us? Plumes of steam? What if there had been a recent magma buildup and the summit was just 5 feet beneath the surface instead of 100? What if we caught a mako shark in the dark?

So what happened? Nothing. Charts here are a little off, and we never saw the volcano on the depth sounder. We must have just missed it it. No disturbance on the surface. No magma. No fish.

But it was nice to hang out after dark up top with Leo and Hazel, listening to them read to each other in the early moonlight. And Lauren had just made a curry with coconut crab and mahi mahi that was spectacular. So we are not complaining.

This morning was dark and squally, and the wind was too variable to keep a sail up for any length of time. Jenna directed the kiddies in Sophie school, I installed a new bilge pump and float switch, and also did some water maker maintenance. Lauren drove the boat while scrubbing bird poop off the deck in the rain. (She’s a rock star.) In other words, another normal passage day.

Our last few days in Liapari were quite relaxing. We got to know Noel and Rose, the couple who run the little shipyard there. The two cats from Africa were there as well. We even all hung out for an impromptu Halloween party on Thursday night.
Our highlight for today will be when we pass over an area on the chart labeled “Planet Deep”, which apparently has 25,859 feet between Sophie’s keel and the ocean floor. Unfortunately we won’t get there until after dark and I will be a little reluctant at that time to hop into the water for a quick dip once the sun is down. Sharks, you know. But I will definitely toss something (organic) into the water.

The adventures continue.

It’s Tuesday here, and Sophie finally left Gizo this morning and motored the 14 miles north to the boatyard island of Liapari, where we are currently stern-tied to a dock.

It took me until 1:30 yesterday afternoon to finish up all of the government paperwork required to check into this country, and by the time I was done we think the outside temperature was touching 100 degrees F with very high humidity. Much of that time was spent waiting in line at banks to get cash to pay the government and to buy diesel. By the time I finished up all of the government work and shoreside errands on Monday, it was too late to head up to Liapari. So the rest of the crew joined me on shore for lunch, and then Jenna and Lauren hit the market while the kids and I hit returned to the boat and hit the air conditioner button on Sophie’s electrical panel. We ran the AC for over 4 hours and then slept soundly through the night.

There were 5 other catamarans anchored in Gizo when we arrived on Saturday morning, and all of them are eventually heading up to Kavieng, Papua New Guinea. That is where we are planning to go on Friday so we seem to be on a popular route right now. We’ve been told that only 50 cruising boats visit the Solomon Islands every year, so over 10% of them are here right now. We definitely feel like we have left the popular “coconut milk run” cruising route between the Americas and Australia/New Zealand.

And that case of beer I bought Saturday morning? It seemed to go away very quickly and I had to go into town to buy 2 more cases to last us through this week. We were tired and thirsty and hot.

A Hans Christian cutter arrived in Gizo Saturday evening, and they had just sailed south from Kavieng. They said the town was lovely but that their passage was awful. All of those strong southeast breezes that gently pushed Sophie up from Vanuatu smashed into the nose of this poor boat as it headed 480 miles into the wind to get to Gizo. Timing is everything when it comes to cruising.

We met the couples sailing three of our neighborhood cats over the weekend. Roland and Micky are South Africans on a Fontaine Pajot that they have been cruising since they took delivery of the boat from the factory in France in 2008. They rounded South America to reach the Pacific. We spent a couple of meals with them talking about how to cruise to South Africa. Their recommended route, which was one we were considering, was to head across the Indian Ocean from Thailand to Sri Lanka to India to the Maldives to the Seychelles, then turn south to the northwest coast of Madagascar and then Mozambique and then hop the coast of South Africa around to the Atlantic. They were especially keen on Madagascar and Mozambique, which they described as lovely, safe, and full of friendly people. And what about the dreaded Argulas current, which cruising websites describe as a place that produces steep 20 meter waves that smash your boat into waiting schools of great white sharks? “South Africans love the Argulas current … it pushes your boat south at 4 knots!” said Micky as Hazel lay her head on her lap. “You just need to make sure you don’t get too deep into it so you can get out when you need to.” They also described how we can go about going on safaris while visiting their country.

We’ve made new friends, and they could very well be crossing the Indian Ocean when we are doing so.

Another highlight of the weekend was buying stone carvings from dugout canoes that paddled up to the boat. Most were carved from river stone similar to the stone used for carvings in New Zealand. Jenna and Lauren bought about 10 pieces between them, including carvings of the local fishing god (body of a man, head of a bird, tuna in his hand) and carved wall hangings of “Gasere”, the local worship octopus that grabs your enemies to prevent them from harming you.

Our Gaseres must have worked, because we went into shore on Saturday and Sunday nights for dinner at waterfront restaurants and we were not bothered by the local gangsta boys on either night. Plates of local lobster ranged between $8-$10 at each restaurant, and they were delicious. We did, however, lock the boat up tight each night and slept soundly in the heat.

There was no rain on Sunday, and we were able to get 8 loads of laundry done, dried, folded, and put away. The local heat seems to dry wet clothing very quickly.

Yesterday while I was dealing with the government, Jenna was back on Sophie supervising the loading of 600 liters of diesel onto the boat. It was delivered in 200 liter drums on a long boat and then hand pumped into our tanks. During this procedure, Jenna’s sunscreen must have sweated off, because yesterday was the first day in our entire 2 year trip where she got a sunburn. I thought she was impervious to that sort of thing, but she simply takes really good care of her skin and the Solomons climate got the better of her.

Liapari is very hot and humid. Spirit of Africa is docked next to us, and they will be leaving their boat here for the cyclone season while they go back to Africa. Our friends on Per Ardua were here 8 days ago before they left for Kavieng, and we hope to catch up with them there. It would be nice for the kids to once again have some playmates their own age.

Finally, the manager of the shipyard here, a man from the Solomons, asked me where we were from. I told him. He then said “when someone from a yacht says they are from Australia, we say ‘Welcome to the Solomons.’ When someone from a yacht says they are from England, we say ‘Welcome to the Solomons.’ But when someone from a yacht says they are from America, we say “WELCOME TO THE SOLOMONS MY FRIEND. THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU” as he dropped to his knees and spread his arms wide, a big smile on his face.

We are feeling very welcome, indeed.