Later that night after our first day on Sand Dollar Beach, I noticed that Hazel was burning hot when I started to carry her to bed after she fell asleep watching a movie. We checked her temperature, and it was 102.5 F. Earlier in the day she had complained of headaches and neck stiffness. All of this set off alarm bells for me and Jenna, because a quick search of the internet showed that these could be signs of meningitis.

So we did phone consultations with my daughter Sara (nurse practitioner in Boston) and Jenna’s sister Julie (pediatric resident at a children’s hospital in Philadelphia), and they both suggested we do some physical exams to test Hazel’s nervous system. She passed. So we gave her children’s ibuprofen and put her to bed.

The next morning Hazel’s fever was down to 100 degrees. She still felt soreness in her neck. Holly (DPT in physical therapy, works at Harborview Medical Center in Seattle) conducted one of those eye exams where Hazel had to follow Holly’s finger, and Holly noticed a flutter in Hazel’s eyes. We discussed this and decided that it made sense for us to get closer to a hospital. It was 10:00 in the morning, and our plan had been to slowly motor to Labuan Bajo overnight in order to conserve fuel.

That plan was quickly thrown out the window. We pulled the anchor and cranked both motors at 2600 RPM. We also had both sails up. The weather was hot and the seas were flat. It was like motoring in the Strait of Juan de Fuca in August except now we were on a mission. We were low on fuel, and if we ran out I was prepared to pull the boat up to shore, dinghy the girls in, and have them grab a car into town. We were also racing the sun.

It turned out there was no need for an emergency beach stop, because we covered the 80 miles to Labuan Bajo in 9 hours. We did blow past schools of large jumping tuna without stopping. This was serious business. We made it into town and anchored in the mooring field in the dark. Hazel spent the afternoon watching movies and eating mac and cheese. She was in good spirits and had lots of energy.

This morning Hazel’s fever was gone and she remains in good spirits. We had to move the boat because it turns out we had anchored in a shipping lane. We are now anchored off a beach in front of a hotel.

Jenna and Holly were planning to head over to Bali tomorrow to spend a day there before Holly flies on to Seattle. Instead all 3 girls are heading over to Bali today. They have some excellent hospitals there, and Hazel has an appointment with a doctor this afternoon. They will then hang out in Bali, lounging by the pool and perhaps hitting a spa. We’ve heard that Bali can be fun for groups of girls who hang out there together. Hazel is quite excited to go off on a mini adventure.

We are sharing this with all of you to keep you up to date on what is going on with us. Hazel is fine, but airplane tickets from here to Bali cost $60, so it makes sense for her to see a doctor. In the meantime, Leo and I are going to hang out on Sophie where we will clean the boat, do Sophie school, watch war movies, and drink beer.

I’ll let you know more as I know more. Lucky luck lucky.

Last night during my shift I watched the movie “Titanic.” At one point in the film, the captain wrote down the coordinates for the location in the North Atlantic where the Titanic hit an iceberg. 41.46 N, 50.14 West. I entered that as a new waypoint into our chart plotter and saw that it is on a latitude south of Boston. It is also just 8700 miles from Sophie’s current position. Since we have already covered over 1200 miles since we arrived in Indonesia in November, the spot of Titanic’s sinking doesn’t seem that far away to me right now. We are currently thinking about crossing the North Atlantic in the summer of 2017. It would be really sad if we hit an iceberg. But that is a worry for another day.

The only ice we like to think about these days is the ice that goes into our passage enders, like the run and coke I enjoyed after we dropped an anchor at noon today in the Riung island group on the north coast of Flores, 250 miles and 50 hours from our starting point in Hoga.

We had no squalls over the last 24 hours, and the wind died out at sunset. We motored throughout the night directly towards our destination in order to give Holly a day of beach time. We wound up running both engines and cruised along at 7 knots through a glassy sea.

Flores greeted us this morning with a rosy sunrise and a string of active volcanoes. It was pretty cool. I did the 2:30 AM – noon shift to give everyone else the opportunity to sleep in and then have a productive morning of Sophie school.

Our morning was interrupted by a fish ball encounter. We saw some birds working a disturbance in the water, and as we got closer we saw a school of large tuna arcing into the air. Some of these were big fish, and they were jumping high. We already had a tuna lure and a Rapalo in the water, and I quickly added another big marlin squid which doubles as a teaser. We drove through the school multiple times, all with no luck. We soon learned why.

In the middle of the action was a line of dolphins lined up like armored knights on horseback in a Peter Jackson film, marauding through the tuna like they were a band of overmatched Orcs. Here are two of them, all business. The odds of those tuna hitting our lures were equivalent to the odds of my stopping for a pastrami sandwich while being chased down an alley by an armed gang. Or a line of armored knights on horseback. It just wasn’t going to happen.

The action did get everyone out of the cabin and into the sunshine. Holly and Jenna got some good photos. Everyone had fun.

Our anchorage in Riung is spectacular. We are nestled up against a small island surrounded with beaches, one of which Leo named “Sand Dollar Beach.” The rest of the crew paddleboarded in and explored the island while I enjoyed a post-shift nap.

We will spend two days here enjoying the serenity of Sand Dollar Beach and then motor the 80 miles overnight to the port of Labuan Bajo, where Holly will catch her flight back to the US. There is no wind forecast for the next few days, and I am pretty certain we won’t have to worry about icebergs. We have been pretty lucky in that department so far.

Sophie left Hoga yesterday to continue on our passage from Ambon to Labuan Bajo on the western tip of Flores Island in Indonesia. We have a 10-12 knot westerly wind plus a slight current against us in the Flores Sea and covered 130 miles over our first 24 hours. It has been a relatively gentle passage so far. Holly and the kiddies took some Dramamine before we left, and no one has gotten seasick.

Our current position is 07.05.210S, 122.39.873E. We are heading due south at 5 knots. The wind is forecast to die down as we approach Flores, and when it does so we’ll hang a right and travel along the coast.

We left Hoga by heading around the top of Kepulauan Island and then sailing 14 miles southwest towards an unmarked pass in the Pulau-Pulau reef. Well, it turns out the Indonesian government has erected an enormous navigation marker on the southern end of the pass, right next to six fishing huts mounted on stilts over the reef. While there we were treated to dancing dolphins and then turned around to see a massive squall, complete with a waterspout, attacking the anchorage where we had been swimming just 90 minutes earlier. We certainly picked a good time to get out of Dodge.

We sailed almost the entire night with no motor under a full moon. It’s the first time we’ve done this in a long time, and it was beautiful. On two separate occasions Holly and Jenna spotted unlit fishing platforms the size of log cabins. They were both anchored in 5000 feet of water and lay directly in Sophie’s path. The girls were able to skillfully avoid collision each time. Thank goodness for the moonlight.

During my moonlight shift I unreefed the main and got Sophie up to 8 knots of speed a couple of times. I was smiling a lot. We seemed to have left the fishing area, so I watched the movie “Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou”, laughing at how much Bill Murray’s character reminded me of our friend Colin on the cat Segue. That was until the last 5 minutes of the movie, when it suddenly dawned on me that Steve Zissou was me, and that 11 and a half was my favorite age.

Jenna has become quite good at Indonesian cooking. Yesterday’s lunch was a stir-fried tempeh in a peanut sauce that melted in your mouth. Our meat/meal ratio is plummeting the longer we stay in this country.

It’s 115 miles to the “17 Island National Reserve” on the north coast of Flores, and our current plan is to drop a hook there on Saturday morning and spend a day relaxing and snorkeling. From there it’s just 70 miles along the coast to Labuan Bajo and another 15 miles to Komodo, home of the dragons. We are going to need a little more luck in the wind and tide department, but we would love to get a photo of Holly posing with some dragons to cap off her vacation with us. That would be awesome.

We arrived in Hoga safe and sound two days ago. Our passage from Ambon wound up being a gentle and safe passage after our initial squall coming out of Ambon.

As I mentioned in our last post, Jenna’s cousin Holly has joined us for the passage from Ambon to Flores Island, and we are giving her the complete Sophie Adventure Cruise experience during our stopover in Hoga.

We arranged for a dolphin show…

… and a sunset-lit thunder boomer …

… followed by a rainbow …

.. and capped of with an eggplant parmesan that Hazel and I prepared in Holly’s honor.

We are currently anchored in a passage between the islands of Hoga and Kepulauan. In reading the description of Hoga published in the book “101 Indonesian Anchorages,” we thought it would be a remote and wild nature reserve. It turns out that Hoga is indeed part of the the area’s Wakatobi Marine Reserve, but it has a village and a dive resort. Across the bay in Kepulauan are multiple large villages complete with stores and cell phone towers.

We’ve spent two nights here and have fully recovered from our trip from Ambon. Activities here have included swimming, snorkeling, poker (Leo has learned a new game!), and Settlers of Catan.

The weather looks pretty settled over the next 4 days, and we will depart in a few hours for the 280 mile passage southeast to Flores and Komodo Islands. I’ve been worried about this passage over the last month because I’ve seen nothing but 20-30 knot westerly winds in the Flores Sea weather reports since Christmas. Our current forecast is for 10-12 knot westerlies today, dying down to under 5 knots over the weekend. The local dive master says that in March, the wind transitions around from northwesterlies to the southeast monsoon. Based on the forecasts we are seeing, I believe that this transition period has begun. This is great news for us, because it means Sophie will soon begin sailing downwind as we continue on our journey to Bali, Kalimintan, and Singapore.

That’s about it for now. Holly and Hazel are making crepes. I assume they will be delicious.

I took a break from writing the blog over the last 10 days while I was in the US for my annual cancer screens. Great news all around. I am still cancer free, I had the opportunity to visit with good friends back in Seattle, Jenna’s cousin Holly flew back to Indonesia with me for a 12 day Sophie Adventure Cruise, and we decided to depart Ambon for Hoga Island in the Wakatobi Group the morning after Holly and I arrived back on Sophie.

Oh yeah, and we also just learned that our beloved New England Patriots won the Super Bowl over the Seattle Seahawks in a nail biter of a game. Go PATS!, and thank you Seattle fans for all of the love and respect you showed me and my Patriots hat over the last week.

We didn’t watch the game because we had a good weather window for a Sunday morning (local time) departure for our 300 mile run from Ambon to Hoga. There are prevailing westerlies in Indonesia this time of year, and we have committed to friends that we will travel 800 miles to the west and into the wind from Ambon to Bali within the next three weeks. Our strategy is to first cover the initial 300 miles in a hop over to Hoga, then cover another 300 miles southeast to Flores Island, then skim along the coast of Komodo, Sumbawa, and Lombok in order to get to Bali. After we explore Bali for a bit, we will probably cruise back around these 4 islands for a couple of months as we wait for the local weather to transition to monsoons from the southeast, then we will sail with the wind up to Kalimintan to visit some orangutans and then head on to Singapore, Malaysia, and Thailand

So this initial Hoga leg was pretty important to us, important enough to make us decide to skip what turned out to be an awesome Super Bowl. The weather forecast called for 5-15 knot westerly winds from Sunday to Monday night, increasing to 10-20 knots Tuesday through Friday. We now know that in this part of Indonesia, the wind speed can easily be double what is forecasted, and Jenna and I were not thrilled at the idea of motorsailing into 30 knots of apparent wind for 300 miles just so that we could watch the Super Bowl. So it was an easy decision to take off on Sunday morning.

It was tough, however, to say goodbye to our friends in Ambon. We have sailed with the Kee family and their boat Per Ardua for 3 months and 2500 miles, but their boat simply cannot motor to weather the way that Sophie can, so they will be heading Southeast to Banda and will hopefully rejoin us in Malaysia in June. Spending an extended amount of time with the Kee family was everything we had thought and dreamed cruising in the tropics would be like. We are all going to miss them very, very much. The same goes for John and Sue on the catamaran Ocelot, who will be heading to Banda with Per Ardua. Finally, while in Ambon we were able to connect with the Moores and the Connors, two lovely American expat families who shared with us incredible kindness and hospitality while helping us navigate around town. They were an especially big help to Jenna and the kids while I was back eating cheeseburgers in the US. We hope they can come and visit with us as we continue to head west.

Sophie pulled anchor in Ambon at 10:00 AM local time on Sunday and enjoyed a fast motorsail for the first 20 miles out of Ambon Bay. Then the seas turned into a bit of a current-induced washing machine, and Holly became seasick. Then we were hit by one of our biggest squalls on the trip, a 15 mile-wide monster with sustained winds of 20-35 knots for 2 hours. It blew out by 8:00 PM, but it took the seas several hours longer to calm down. We’ve been motoring into a 10 knot headwind and 1 knot current for the last 15 hours. Both engines are running @2100 RPMs, no sails are up, and we have been averaging 6 knots since we left Amobon. We had a beautiful moon throughout the entire night and today has been bright and sunny with no rain. The current keeps the seas flat, and Sophie has a gentle motion. It’s great to be back where I belong.

Our noontime position was 04.37.22 South 124.38.46 East. We covered 160 miles in 26 hours after leaving Ambon, and at this speed we will drop an anchor in the lagoon at Hoga on Tuesday morning. There is supposed to be excellent coral and beaches there, and we are all looking forward to getting back into the water.

We are so lucky to be doing this, and we look forward to watching a DVD of the game in a couple of weeks.

Sophie has slipped the mooring cable at the Misool Eco Resort and has begun a 200 mile sail that will get us to the western side of Ambon Island. Currently motorsailing at 7 knots at the location of 02.15.550S 130.25.336E. We’ve spent the last 6 weeks in Raja Ampat, and it has been a highlight of our entire cruising adventure. We will miss this special place a lot.

We left the anchorage at Balbulol yesterday morning. We spent a week there and loved every minute of it. We snorkeled the coral walls for 3-5 hours every day. Jenna took 5,000 pictures with her GoPro. She even tied it to a 10 foot long string and lowered it down for coral and fish close ups. We saw tens of thousands of fish and an amazing variety of coral. We even saw what turns out to be the world’s most deadly sea snake. It’s 5 feet long, 2 inches thick and has black and white stripes on top and a white belly below. I first stumbled across her while snorkeling for lobster. She was in a little cave, and when she saw me she slowly got into a cobra pose and looked poised to strike. My fear was making me want to swim away, but my utter fascination was drawing me in closer.

I now understand snakes.

We experienced a couple of hiccups while tied to the walls in Balbulol. Our genset overheated and then stopped. It turns out we had sucked a couple of plastic bags into the raw water strainer, and this blockage caused the genset impeller to lose all 13 of its blades. When we disassembled the genset’s heat exchanger, we discovered 25 impeller blades there. Obviously the tropical ambience of the lagoon put the impeller blades into the right mood, and they multiplied as a result.

I also got a bit of a leg infection when I scraped against some coral while hunting lobster. I never actually caught any of the little suckers, because they scoot way back into their holes when you try to grab them. But my leg hurts a lot, and my daughter Sara-the-nurse-practitioner has put me on a couple of antibiotics. I’ll be fine.

The three boats left Balbulol at first light yesterday, with Sophie and Per Ardua heading 15 miles south for the Misool Eco Resort. We caught the world’s smallest mahi mahi on the way. It was only a foot and a half long, and he swam away vigorously when we released him.

The Misool Eco Resort has a good reputation with cruising boats who have visited there, but we had a terrible experience yesterday. The staff was quite friendly, and the facilities looked great. Steve snorkeled the wall and saw some huge fish. They even let us use their incredibly slow wifi for free and let the girls play on their beach.

Our problem was with their mooring lines. Sophie and Per Ardua were both moored in a little pass with a bit of a current directly in front of their pier. Per Ardua’s mooring line … dissolved and separated 3 hours after they tied on to it. Fortunately I was at the bar with Steve and Mellia watching the girls play on the beach when I noticed Per Ardua drifting close to their dinghy dock. Peter was on board, and I called him on the VHF. He came up on deck and realized the boat was simply drifting in the eddies of a passage with reefs and cliffs 20 meters away on either side of him.

They could have lost their boat.

Fortunately it was 4:00 in the afternoon and Peter quickly got his engine on and the boat under control. Sue, the resort manager, was very nice and said there was another mooring a mile away at Kalig Island, but Steve and I went over in our dinghy and could only find some wall ties. Perhaps that is what they meant. The resort’s mooring up on Yilliet Island, which our friends have used in the past, broke a month ago. The resort also had another mooring around the corner on Batbitiem Island, but that appears to be gone as well.

So Per Ardua decided on the spot that their best option was to leave for an overnight sail heading upwind for a sheltered anchorage on the west side of Misool. Since the sun was setting, they really had no other choice.

Sophie was on the mooring that their provisioning ship uses, and after Per Ardua left I dived the line as far down as I could. I couldn’t see the mooring block — we are in 25 meters of water — but the line was 1.5 inch nylon and looked new.

Nevertheless, we were in a bit of a rolly channel, and at times Sophie’s transom was only 20 meters from a cliff. Dinner last night was a quick bowl of pasta, followed by the movie Battleship (which was an excellent choice given our predicament … think board game + aliens + Rihanna with machine guns) followed by an uneasy night with the anchor alarm on.

The Misool Eco Resort seems like a nice place, but if they want cruising boats to use their moorings, they need to regularly dive them and inspect them. Most of us would be happy to pay a mooring fee.

And we won’t let the events of the last 20 hours shape our view of Raja Ampat. Best place ever. On to Ambon.

Sophie is currently tied to the cliffs in the lagoon of the island of Balbulol of the east coast of Misool in Raja Ampat, Indonesia. Per Ardua is rafted next to us, and Ocelot is tied up on the other side of Per Ardua. I think this is our best anchorage yet in Indonesia.

We spent two nights anchored near Mustika, the place where we stopped after catching the six Spanish mackerel. It was not a good anchorage, at least during the northwest monsoons here, because we were exposed to a northerly wind. There was also a current that was so strong I was swept away in an attempt to swim the 20 meters between Per Ardua and Sophie. Peter tried to rescue me in an inflatable kayak, but the current was too strong for him to pull both of us. Jenna had to drop our dinghy and zoom 300 meters to rescue me. She was a little worried. I was enjoying a swim. The highlight of our stay was Sam’s 10th birthday party on Per Ardua. He loved his multimeter and tested the resistance of every component on his family’s boat. They served up homemade pizza, and somehow a bottle of Jameson’s managed to disappear. It was a fun night in a bad anchorage.

Balbulol is simply spectacular. 02.01.494 S. 130.40.429E. We are in a small cove surrounded by cliffs that run 30 to 100 meters high. It’s totally protected here with no swell and little wind. The water beneath us is 35 meters deep, hence the need to run lines fore and aft to attach to the cliffs. A coral reef clings to the cliffs as they run straight down underwater. Actually, they don’t run straight down, they run inward creating caves and coral overhangs. There is great diversity of coral and many large fish. I saw this grouper-like thing that was 4 feet long and must have weighed hundreds of pounds. I also saw a shark, but she was on the small side.

We will spend up to a week here. Leo finally finished up his oral report last night and has completed 4th grade. We are spending 4-5 hours a day in the water. We have plenty of fresh produce, fish, beer, and cheese. We are listening to classic 70s rock, including Foghat, Boston, and Heart. Nothing is broken, and the boat is clean.

After I write this, I think I will go back in for another swim. Then maybe a nap. Then I might go for another snorkel.

Things are pretty good right now.

Sophie celebrated the New Year with a bunch of WHAMS! today, catching SIX Spanish mackerel (and keeping four) during our 45 mile motorsail southwest from the western tip of Papua to an anchorage on the east coast of Misool (01.53.503S, 130.26.986E).

As I’ve mentioned recently on this blog, I’ve been worried about reports that there are no more fish between here and Thailand, with the exception of potentially catching a Spanish mackerel around Misool. But not today, baby. We had 3 lines in the water: a 3 inch squid on the pole, a rapalo on a 30 meter meat line, and a big marlin squid on a 10 meter meat line.

The rapalo KILLED it today, catching four fish in an hour. We have never caught fish with that lure before, and I had even been thinking about getting rid of it. But no more.

The carnage started when our guest Steve Schufreider pointed back at the rapalo and said “I think we have a fish.” I didn’t even bother to look up and said “No, that’s just the diving movement of the lure,” (knowing full well that the rapalo simply doesn’t catch fish.) I’m quite smart, you know.

Steve then said “Well, what’s that thing splashing on the surface?”

It was a 14 pound Spanish mackerel on the rapalo. We got it on board, bled it with the rope Melissa gave us, cut it up and then vacuum sealed it into 5 freezer meals plus lunch. Just as I was about to start cooking the fish for lunch, Steve said “I think we have another one.” It as on the rapalo again, and just as I started pulling it in the reel on the pole started to go wizzzzzz. Two fish at the same time! The first Sophie Double Takedown of 2015! We got both fish on board, and just as we had finished bleeding these two fellows (now using both ends of the rope Melissa gave us), there was ANOTHER fish that hit the rapalo.

Four Spanish mackerel in 30 minutes, ranging from 6 to 14 pounds.

I took the three new fish, cut them up, vacuum sealed them, and added 9 more meals to the freezer. Spanish mackerel is delicious, and we are looking forward to sharing it with our friends when we reach Bali next month.

But I was pretty tired after landing and processing four fish. I had also disassembled and fixed a toilet earlier this morning. I am not complaining at all. I actually like this adventure we are on.

But when Steve said “I think we have another fish on the rapalo”, quite frankly I had no interest in landing it. But this gal was a JUMPER. She lept out of the air multiple times, so I got her within 10 feet of the boat and yelled for Jenna to get the camera. I was hoping she would jump one more time. She did, we didn’t get the photo, and she spat the hook. But I am calling it a landed fish because I had the leader in my hand.

At this point I didn’t want to deal with any more fish. 15 meals in the freezer is a good day, and we were approaching our anchorage and needed to clean the boat. So I reeled in the the line on the pole and put away the meat line that was trolling the rapalo. I was too tired to deal with the big marlin lure and figured I’d deal with that at the anchorage. Besides, a Spanish mackerel would never hit a lure that big.

Wrong.

Steve said “Jamie, I think there’s a lot of splashing coming from that last lure. I think we might have another fish.” I didn’t even bother to look up and said “No, that’s just the splash coming from the concave head of the lure,” (knowing full well that a smallish Spanish mackerel would never hit a big marlin lure we were using as a teaser.) I’m still quite smart, you know.

Wrong.

It was a four pound Spanish mackerel that had attacked a lure half its size. I pulled him in and let him go, because he was too small and we had caught enough fish for one day. I put away the last meat line and we headed towards the anchorage. No more fishing for the day!

But then we started to pass multiple bait balls with diving tuna beneath them and attacking birds on top of them. After passing the fourth ball in 10 minutes, I turned to Steve and said “let’s put a line back in.” (I have self-control issues you know, but at least I am aware of them.)

We trolled around and through another 8 bait balls but had no luck. We then made it to our anchorage, dropped a hook, and waited for Per Ardua. They track us closely on AIS when we are underway together, and they now know that when Sophie starts doing Crazy Ivans it’s because we are fishing.

The anchors on both boats are now down in a calm spot surrounded by coral. There are craggy jungle-covered limestone mountains covering 180 degrees of our horizon. We’ll be making pizza tonight on Per Ardua to celebrate their son Sam’s 10th birthday. He doesn’t know it yet, but we are giving him our backup multimeter as his birthday gift. He is really into learning about marine electronics, and we all know that this gift will make him very happy.

Fish. Tropics. Calm Anchorage. Sharing with Friends. 2015 is getting off to a pretty good start.

It’s New Year’s Day here in Sorong, Indonesia. We decided to slip in here yesterday to grab some diesel and cheese and then watch the fireworks display. We are headed south to Misool and Ambon with Per Ardua. Fortunately, there were 6 other cruising boats iin the harbor, and we got together for a party on the Privelege 58 Downtime. We drank beer, watched fireworks, and were asleep by 11:00 PM.

Remember, when you’re cruising in the tropics, 8:00 PM is the new midnight.

We had a busy yet relaxing holiday week. Our little Christmas fleet scattered after Boxing Day, and Sophie and our BFFs on Per Ardua sailed up to an anchorage on the north side of Gam called Kabui Pass.

We stayed there for three or four days, snorkeling the pass and playing in the water. The kids had a great time on the kayaks and paddleboards.

Even Jenna got into the act with some standup paddleboard yoga.

We were low on food over the course of the week and had to get creative with our cooking. We had lots of fish, noodles, and beer.

One night I made marlin poached in coconut milk with ginger, soy, turmeric, and corn. This is the same marlin that Dan Rogers caught last April. It’s the gift that keeps on giving, and man does Sophie have a good freezer!

Another night I served grilled yellowfin steak sandwiches on home made rolls. It is the first time in my life I’ve ever baked bread in an oven. It tasted as good as it looked. The middle loaf was a gift to the Per Arduans, 80% of whom are vegetarians. That means they have to eat twice their body weight in food every day in order to match the caloric intake of us cruising omnivores. The loaf was devoured in 12 seconds.

Jenna also made pad thai a couple of times. Her Southeast Asian cooking skills are becoming quite good.

Steve Schufreider from Seattle is with us for a few weeks. He was an excellent mule on his flight from Seattle, bringing with him Leo’s fifth grade books, new cables for our bowsprit, 2 new pumps for our freshwater system, some Christmas presents from back home, and a container of honest-to-goodness real American dishwasher pellets. No more concoctions of dishwashing soap and baking powder for us!

One of the first things we replaced with the parts Steve hauled halfway around the world was the broken water pump. We think it may have been damaged in Fiji when someone took an exceptionally long shower. Or it may have simply worn out.

As you can see in the photos above, it’s part of a two pump system. The bottom pump draws the water from the freshwater tanks and pressurizes it to 2 bar. The top pump increases the water pressure to 2.8 bar. This system enables us to take showers, flush toilets, run dishwashers, and wash clothes all at the same time. With the top pump out of order, our water pressure was much lower and we couldn’t do all of these water activities simultaneously.

Fortunately, the replacement pump fit exactly where it was supposed to. We got everything wired and plumbed together and fired that baby up. Can you guess what happened next?

Pipes started bursting!

The first to go was in a length of bad hose under the floor in Leo’s cabin. The hose was installed by Lagoon in their factory in 2007. This 2 meter stretch of hose has sprung 5 leaks since San Diego almost 2 years ago.

I’ve used hose clamps and rescue tape over the last 2 years to continually patch pinhole leaks in this … thing.

We cut the … thing open and saw that the outer hose, the layer of reinforcing nylon, and the inner hose had completely delaminated. We think the hose may have been left out in the sun in some warehouse parking lot for a year or two before it was installed in Sophie.

Fortunately, while walking around Waisai we spotted a shop with coils of 1/2″, 3/4″, and 1 inch nylon-reinforced high pressure water hose, and they were selling it for around a buck a meter. We bought a lot of each size, and I was able to replace this … thing once and for all.

That’s the shiny new hose at the bottom of the photo.

Later on that day, we had two failures in a length of 1″ hose that runs directly from the water pump into a series of manifolds that distributes the water around the boat. The first failure was right under the hose clamp at the pump itself, so Steve simply cut off 2 inches of hose and reattached it. The second failure was catastrophic, meaning the water leak forced the bilge pump (and its shrieking alarm) to run constantly. So Steve replaced the entire run with the brand new 1″ hose we had just purchased.

Here is the offending hose. And yes, this is indeed a selfie showing off a broken hose, a Christmas tree, and a bit of my tattoo. While anchored in Sorong, Indonesia. I believe it’s a world’s first.

Anyway, the plumbing has been stabilized for several days now, and we are enjoying our increased water pressure. We think we might be using more water now, and I will install a switch that turns off the new pump if we ever want to go into water conservation mode.

But enough about plumbing, let’s talk about garbage and diesel. After Kabui Pass, we decided to head south to an unnamed anchorage on the eastern tip of Batanta Island, with a 2 hour stop in Wasai along the way to buy produce and dispose of our garbage in an actual dumpster in the market. There is a lot of plastic in the water here, and we do not want to contribute to the problem.

As part of this trip to the dumpster, we decided to get rid of our beloved Relaxation Station, a floating lounge that often drifts behind Sophie at anchor. This one simply had too many tears along its seams for us to keep afloat. I am already scheming on how I am going to replace it in time for our stay in Bali next month …

After Batanta, Jenna and I decided we should make the quick overnight stop in Sorong since it was on our route south to Misool. It was New Year’s Eve in Sorong, meaning the shops were full. Jenna apparently had to fight through a bit of a frenzy at the grocery store, including a crowd of angry women shaking their fists at the empty meat counter. Procuring the diesel was much easier. Our friend Victor simply arranged for 600 liters to be delivered to the waterfront in 25 liter jugs, and we once again ferried them out using Sophie’s dinghy and siphoned it into the tanks of the 2 sailboats.

Fortunately, Steve and Peter (the omnivore on Per Ardua) were there to help. And yes, that is the famous cat Skimpy in the background. It is legally registered in the Bikini atoll, and it does indeed have the words

Skimpy
Bikini

written across its transom.

What a journey.

A year ago we celebrated New Year’s Eve with fireworks on the Auckland waterfront. We’ve sailed over 5,000 miles since then, enjoying our best year ever. Above is a photo of our track from 2014.

Who knows where we will be a year from now?

On behalf on Jenna, Leo, and Hazel, we want to wish all of you a Happy New Year. We are extraordinarily fortunate to be on this adventure. We miss our good friends and family back home, and we hope all of you come and visit us 2015, which will be the best year of our lives.

Again.