22 July 2015 Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea
Today was chore day. Glenys spent most of the morning running backwards and forwards to the marina's laundrette. Meanwhile, I tackled the problem of getting fuel. There's a fuel dock in the marina with automated pumps, which take non-refundable, pre-paid fuel cards. This is a great solution for the regular members, but I wanted to fill up my tank and jerry cans and didn't know exactly how much fuel I would need.
I estimated that I'd need 200 litres of fuel, which would cost 600 kina ($180US), so I played cautious and bought 5 * 100 kina cards. We motored over to the fuel dock and, unfortunately, I could only squeeze 400 kina worth into my tank, so I'm left with a non-refundable 100 kina card ($30USD) - bummer! I gave it to Brian as a thank you for driving us around.
In the afternoon, we cadged a lift from Brian into the Indonesian Embassy and picked up our passports with our 60 day visas and then went to the supermarket to do a big two trolley re-provisioning. We caught a taxi back to the yacht club, dumped the shopping on board and retired to the bar for beers and a bar meal. We're planning to leave on the 24th for our 1,100 mile passage through the Torres Straits to Indonesia.
23 July 2015 Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea
It was a public holiday today. The boat looked like a bomb had hit it with provisions all over the place, but we left it all there and went out for a day trip on "Utopia". Brian had also invited "Peggy West" and an ex-pat couple called Ernie and Lorraine.
"Utopia" is a 50 foot catamaran with two big engines, which will do over 15 knots in calm seas. It's quite bizarre screaming along at those speeds with nothing tied down. Brian took us for a tour around the harbour, which is a large, deep, natural port which housed the whole of the American Pacific Fleet during the Second World War.
There are the semi-sunken remains of a warship and ruined Army buildings in the harbour, with large areas outside the harbour that are dangerous because of it was a former mined area and there may still be unexploded ordnance on the sea bed.
After our jaunt around the harbour, we headed out to Manubada Island, which is a favourite haunt of the Yacht Club members. It's only 5 miles from the marina, but is a pleasant little island with a white sand beach. There were three large traditional, Papuan barges on the beach.
Glenys and I went snorkelling for an hour, but the water was disappointingly murky, but I saw some Razorfish - strange thin fish that hang about vertically with their heads down. We had a boozy lunch, chilled out then whizzed back to the marina. Nice day out.
24 July 2015 Papua New Guinea to Tual, Indonesia (Day 1)
Sailors tend to be very superstitious and a few people told me that we shouldn't leave on a Friday. I'm not particularly superstitious, apart from knocking on wood three times if I say something that the gods could use against me - like "at least there's no lightning in this squall". So, I ignored the warnings and we left on Friday.
The day didn't start too well. Customs and Immigration said that they'd come to the marina between eight and nine o'clock to clear us out, but didn't show up until half past eleven; and then only after three "reminder" telephone calls from the marina office. We were ready to cast off our ropes at nine o'clock, so by the time that they arrived, I was sick to death of waiting around.
We finally managed to get away by midday. As we backed out of the berth, I noticed the sound of cavitation on the propeller, but ignored it assuming that I'd only heard it because the water in the marina was so calm. We motored across to the reef passage and out into a very pleasant 15 knot south-east wind putting us on a nice broad reach.
The sun was shining and all was well, so at two o'clock, I had a shower and went to bed. We always leave our engine gearbox in neutral when sailing, which means that the propeller shaft is constantly rotating, making a whirring sound that I can hear when in bed. It's actually a very useful indication of our speed through the water.
As I lay in bed, something didn't sound right, but I tried to ignore it to get some sleep. After 30 minutes, I'd decided that there was something wrong with the propeller - was it loose and slowly un-screwing, was the zinc coming loose causing imbalance? With a deep sigh, I climbed out of bed to investigate. Everything looked okay in the engine room, so the only thing to do was to stop sailing while I snorkelled under the boat.
We hove-to, but by this time, we had 2 metre waves and 20 knot winds, so we were moving too fast through the water. We rolled away the sails and lay a-hull, which was better, but we were still pitching and rolling alarmingly in the steep waves.
I put on my snorkelling gear and tentatively jumped in, grabbing the swim ladder to make sure that I wasn't swept away. The stern of the boat was rising three feet in the air and crashing down making it very hazardous.
I couldn't see the propeller from the swim ladder, so I took a deep breath and dived down to find a length of one inch diameter polypropylene (floating) rope wrapped tightly around the propeller. Glenys carefully passed me a bread knife and it took me ten minutes to cut the rope free, constantly battling against the movement of the boat and being careful avoid our 12 ton boat crashing down on my head.
Back on board, I had another shower and went to bed again. I lay there thinking that's two unlucky things - delayed clearance and a fouled propeller. Now highly superstitious, I was wondering what else was going to happen - bad things always come in threes.
It’s a bit frustrating that we had the rope around the propeller. We used to have a Rope Stripper on the propeller shaft, which has three very sharp blades that rotate and should cut rope before it gets wrapped around the propeller. However, it was worn out and rattling all the time, so I removed it in New Zealand and never got around to repairing it.
Over the past two weeks, I’ve been trying to arrange for some spare parts to be sent out to Darwin, where “Spruce” had said that they would bring them out to Indonesia for us. Unfortunately, the guy who runs Ambassador Marine, who makes the Rope Stripper, has been away on holiday and he replied to my emails too late for the parts to be sent out to Darwin before the rally leaves there tomorrow. I’m not sure where to get the parts sent to now. Indonesia and Malaysia are renowned for having lots of junk (including rope) floating in the water, so I’ll be keeping my fingers crossed that we don’t pick up any more on our propeller.
By the time that I got up at five o'clock, the wind had picked up to 25-30 knots and the seas were very unsettled with 3 metre waves. Glenys had already reefed the genoa and main, but with night approaching, I put a deeper reef in the main. By eight o'clock, the wind had dropped to 15-20 knots and was slowly backing, making the genoa flog as the mainsail took its wind.
I spent a very unpleasant thirty minutes, hanging on to the rolling boat, rigging the spinnaker pole to port. At night, when Glenys is in bed, I always wear a harness when working on the foredeck, which is a damn nuisance because the safety line is always getting caught or getting in the way, so it took twice as long as normal. By the time that I'd finished, the wind had backed a further ten degrees and there were ominous flashes of lightning behind us, so I rolled away the main sail and we ran downwind with just the genoa.
The next hour was both frustrating and scary. The wind continued to back - it went from south-east to north. The lightning got brighter and then it started to rain. Not heavy, but persistent. The wind swirled around, but stayed light, so we were down to 3 knots boat speed and rocking and rolling in the confused seas. Glenys got up to find out what was going on.
A huge bolt of forked lightning blazed down from the sky. We started counting out the seconds, getting to sixteen before a massive peal of thunder shook us both into activity - only four miles away. Glenys grabbed the iPad and I grabbed the satellite phone, shoving both into the oven, which theoretically acts as a Faraday Cage - we hope this will protect anything electrical inside if we have a direct lightning strike.
The lightning seemed to be north of us, so I headed south, guessing that the storm was heading downwind in a north-west direction. It was frustratingly slow trying to sail away and we seemed to be trapped in the middle of the weird winds. Eventually, the wind veered, quickly coming around to south-east again, but dropping off even more.
By the time that Glenys got up again at ten o'clock, I was motoring and the lightning had thankfully gone away. One hour later, the wind had picked up to 15-20 knots and Glenys was able to sail again. The rest of the night (Saturday) was lovely, drifting along at 4-5 knots on a broad reach.
25 July 2015 Papua New Guinea to Tual, Indonesia (Day 2)
The skies were overcast at dawn, but it soon brightened up. The wind was 20 knots from the south-east, so we poled the genoa out to port, pulled the staysail out to starboard and rolled off downwind at 6 knots.
The weather stayed consistent all day and we had a very restful time, catching up on sleep and getting back into the rhythm of life at sea. In the late afternoon, we rolled away the staysail and pulled out the main sail in preparation for turning more upwind tonight.
By sunset, we were passing the northern tip of the Australian Great Barrier Reef and entered the shipping lanes for the Torres Straits, which is one of the longest shipping lanes in the world, weaving its way through coral reefs and islands between northern Australia and Papua New Guinea. The Torres Strait is 150 miles long, so it's going to take us about 24 hours of careful navigation and good lookout to get through.
As we transit the Straits, we'll be moving from the Coral Sea to the Arafura Sea. These are both part of the Pacific Ocean, but are totally separate tidal basins, which means that they have different tides making it difficult to predict currents. In addition, the Coral Sea is usually up to ½ metre higher than the Arafura Sea, so there's a steady flow of water heading westwards.
It's far too complicated to try to work out the overall currents at any place, so all we can do is go for it and hope that we'll be lucky, because there can be up to six knots of current, which if it's against us would stop us dead in our tracks.
We'll be passing very close to numerous small islands that belong to Australia and there are places that we could anchor if the current or the stress gets too much for us. However, we won't be able to go ashore without going through the complicated and expensive clearance processes (which is why we're not visiting Australia).
By 2200, we had 25-30 knots of wind from the south-east and we were down to two reefs in the main and just the staysail. Our course along the shipping lane was 220 degrees, putting the wind just in front of the beam - it was a bumpy ride and very dark once the moon disappeared at 0100.
The shipping lane varies between one and two miles wide and passes within one mile of multiple reefs and small islands. Thank God for GPS, electronic charts and AIS - I wouldn't like to do this passage using dead reckoning and paper charts, because the lighthouses are few and far between.
We elected to hug one side of the shipping lane, reasoning that the big ships would want to be more in the centre. In the event, there wasn't too much shipping about. By dawn, we'd only seen one cargo ship, a fishing boat, a pilot boat and a tanker.
26 July 2015 Papua New Guinea to Tual, Indonesia (Day 3)
At daybreak, we still had 25-30 knots of wind, but it had veered by 20 degrees. In addition, the shipping channel forced us onto a course of 210 degrees - putting us fairly hard on the wind. We needed to charge the batteries, so we turned the engine on and motor-sailed for four hours - reefing the sails and making the motion more comfortable.
By midday, the shipping lane had turned more westerly, allowing us to ease the sheets onto a broad reach. As we progressed through the Straits, the wave height decreased and the sailing was lovely. The sea is very shallow, mostly around 20 metres, so with the blue skies, the water was a pleasant blue colour.
It was our 35th wedding anniversary today, but we didn't do anything special - just enjoyed the sailing.
In the late afternoon, we entered the Prince of Wales channel, which skirts a cluster of eight islands including Thursday Island - the most northern port of Australia. We sailed within 250 metres of Hammond Island, going inshore of the light on Hammond Rock. It's very strange to be passing so close to Australia and not stopping - if only their clearance procedures weren't so onerous.
Despite my earlier concerns about the currents through the Torres Straits, we experienced very little at the eastern and central parts and picked up a favourable 1.5 knot current in the Prince of Wales Channel. I'm not sure whether this is normal or we were just lucky.
Similarly, the shipping wasn't a major problem. By sunset, we'd passed only three ships, but after dark, there was a gaggle of them coming into the western end. They caused us to alter course a few times and, at one point, scurry across the shipping lane between the traffic.
We left the shipping lanes of the Straits at 2100, but still had another 25 miles before we were clear of patches of shallow reef. We were then able to set a course of 285 degrees, heading on a broad reach for Indonesia. The moon was out until two o'clock in the morning, the seas were less than a metre, the wind was 15-20 knots and we had a lovely night. I really enjoyed sailing through the Torres Straits.
27 July 2015 Papua New Guinea to Tual, Indonesia (Day 4)
The morning started off overcast, but soon turned into a nice, sunny day. The wind was consistent at 18-22 knots and we poled the genoa out to port running on a very broad reach. The waves started to build up a bit, causing us to surf at up to 9 knots at times and we began to roll more often. However, it's not as bad as the east side of the Torres Straits.
Glenys used up the last of her pressure-cooked stew last night, so I was allowed to fish and within two hours had hauled in a nice 3 foot Blackfin Tuna. I bled it to stop the meat being too red. This entailed making a slit in the flesh behind each pectoral fin to cut the main artery along the spine; slitting the lower part of both gills; tying a rope around the tail and then dropping the fish back into the water for ten minutes ... then praying that a shark didn't come along.
I filleted the fish on the bucking aft deck and Glenys then split the fish into five meals, vacuum packing four lots and leaving enough for dinner and some lunches. We had fried fish butties for lunch, of course.
We had a glorious afternoon and night brought us a ¾ moon and clear skies. The wind picked up a little to 20-25 knots and backed 20 degrees, so we rolled downwind at 6-7 knots all night. We also had a favourable ½ to 1 knot current, so we made very good progress.
We put the clocks back an hour, so we both got an extra 30 minutes in bed - luxury! On my 1-4 watch, I encountered a small fleet of ten fishing boats, which fortunately were well lit and moving slowly, so were easy to avoid.
28 July 2015 Papua New Guinea to Tual, Indonesia (Day 5)
It was another gorgeous day, screaming downwind at 6-8 knots. The seas are steadily getting bigger and the endless rolling is starting to get very wearing, but we're making good time - 165 miles in the last 24 hours, which is an average of 7 knots.
Once again the days are becoming a blur - just a series of watches and sleeping, interspersed by meals. Glenys made some Banana Bread today which will be very welcome on the night watches.
I've received an email from "Spruce" telling me that the scheduled events for the Sail Indonesia rally are all now happening a week earlier than was published on the Sail Indonesia website. The rally started in Darwin last weekend and there were some presentations about the events, but I have no details about them. I've emailed the organisers to try to find out more.
Top of our list is an event in Pasar Wajo in Buton, where last year the town put on a spectacular event with 20,000 dancers. I think that this is going to take place again sometime around the 18th August, so that's our target. When we get to Tual in three days' time, we'll probably just stay overnight and then move on - it's nearly 700 miles from Tual to Buton, so we haven't got a lot of time. I hate rushing through an area like this, but we should be able to slow down when we get to Buton.
Most of the night was lovely with clear skies and a bright moon. However, at three o'clock, a squall system sneaked up on me just after I'd made a 20 degree course change to starboard. Using our radar, I could see that the system was to our right, so I had to change back to our original course to allow it go past. The edge of it just clipped us and gave 35 knots for five minutes. Then I had to wait fifteen minutes for the wind direction to settle down before making my course correction and gybing the main. The rest of the night was clear.
29 July 2015 Papua New Guinea to Tual, Indonesia (Day 6)
At 0800, we'd done 775 miles with 250 to go. For the past two days, we've averaged 7 knots, so there was an outside chance that we'd arrive by sunset tomorrow, which was very encouraging.
We had another glorious day. Our course is turning slightly more north as we approach Tual (skirting around another large island group called Pulau Koba), so we swapped the pole over to starboard and gybed the genoa. The wind stayed at SE20 and we had very handy 1-2 knot current with us all day, pushing us along at 7-9 knots over the ground.
I received an email from the Sail Indonesia rally, which gives us more information and confirms that we need to keep pushing on. We were planning to meet the rally in a place called Wangi Wangi around the 14th August, but the anchorage is only suitable for 10-12 boats and our rally has over 40. To make matters worse, there's another rally (Sail2Indonesia) with another 50 boats scheduled to arrive on the 15th - it will be ugly with 80 boats jostling for space, so I think that we'll give that place a miss and join the rally at the next stop, which is Pasar Wajo, Buton.
The wind dropped a little in the afternoon, reducing our speed over the ground to a mere 6-8 knots, so it was looking unlikely that we would make it to Tual before dark tomorrow. The city of Tual is at the northern end of the Kai Islands, so I spent a few hours researching possible places to anchor around the southern end of the island group. Stopping at one of these anchorages would shave 30 or 40 miles off our passage and hopefully allow us to make landfall before dark tomorrow.
Just after sunset, on my 7-10 watch, a fleet of fishing boats suddenly appeared in front and to the starboard of us. Their strong lights could be seen looming over the horizon. They don't show up very well on our radar, so all I could do was to keep on our course and sail through the middle of them.
One of the fishing boats came to have a look at me, passing within 200 metres. The boat was lit by twenty or so very bright lights and I think that it was trawling a net because it was motoring at less than five knots. I can't be sure be sure though, because its lights were blinding me. The Arafura Sea is very shallow - we've been in 30-100 metres for the past three days since we left the Torres Straits, so I guess that it's a good area for trawling.
At our change of watch at 0100, Glenys gave out a little cry of astonishment when she saw that we were surrounded by thirty fishing boats. Fortunately for her, the fleet all disappeared behind us within an hour. The rest of the night was lovely, with a full moon, but we lost our favourable current.
30 July 2015 Papua New Guinea to Tual, Indonesia (Day 7)
We spotted land at ten o'clock in the morning, when we were 10 miles from the south end of the Kai Islands. We still had over 50 miles to sail between two islands and then into the large Tual harbour. This meant that we would be anchoring in the dark, but Tual is a large commercial port, so we hoped that the charts and buoys would be accurate. We decided to go for it.
The morning remained pleasant with SE 20 winds, but he winds and seas increased as we approached the southern headland of the islands. Once past the headland, we were in a 5 mile wide channel between two islands and the winds became very gusty - one minute we had 10 knots, the next 25 knots. It was very frustrating because we were under time-pressure to get there before dark, so we motored for a couple of hours. The wind returned briefly, but after an hour of sailing, we had to put the engine on again - then off, then on, then off, then on …
We motored in to the main harbour just after dark, so we were anxious to find a home for the night. Unfortunately, as we rounded a major buoy, we discovered that the Navionics charts are out by ½ mile (the chart is 0.4 miles from the GPS position on a heading of 225 degrees). This makes it a little difficult to navigate in the dark, especially as there are plenty of shallow reefs and seaweed farms around to add to the challenge.
Fortunately, our friends on “Red Herring” had given us the GPS coordinates of where they anchored, so we headed for there and dropped the hook at 05°36.67S 132°44.43E in 15m of water, just outside a sea-weed farm. It seems to be good holding.
We cracked open a celebratory cold beer and listened to the sound of the multiple mosques calling the faithful to prayer. We’re in Indonesia.
31 July 2015 Tual, Indonesia
We had a fabulous night’s sleep. After breakfast, we went closer to town, dropping the anchor at 05°38.04S 132°44.20E in 15 metres of water. It’s at the edge of yet another seaweed farm, which is a mass of small plastic bottles, which appear to be holding up lines where the sea weed grows - I need to investigate this some more.
After I’d lifted the dinghy off the front deck, we went across the harbour and tied up to the Coastguard dock (05 37.97 S 132 44.55 E). Everyone was very friendly with big smiles and there was no problem with us being there.
We walked out of the port into a sensory-overload of colour, smells and noise. I don’t think that they get a lot of white people (“Orang Bule”) here, so we were the centre of attention – it was very unsettling with people shouting things at us as we walked past, probably being friendly and trying to say hello, but not understanding a single word of Indonesian, I don’t know.
We were approached by a guy called Tukan, who had a nice car and offered to take us around. We thanked him, but said that we wanted to walk. One block away from the port, we found an ATM opposite a small mosque, but couldn’t get any cash out with either our Visa or Mastercard. A guy pointed us up the road to a bank, but we could get anything out of their ATM either.
No problem, I had $100US with me, so we’d go into the bank to exchange it. No chance. One of the guards spoke a little English and seemed to tell us that no bank in Tual would exchange any currency. Yikes … what do we do if we can’t get any money?
We decided to walk up to Immigration, where we’d heard that one of the ladies spoke really good English, but got a bit lost. While we were dithering about looking confused, Tukan pulled up alongside us (he must have been following us) and offered his help again. This time, with no cash and very anxious, we agreed to let him drive is around. Tukan speaks some English, but 50% of the time he didn’t understand us and 50% of the time we didn’t understand him, so there was a lot of smiling and nodding of heads.
Tukan took us to Immigration, who said that we need to first go to Quarantine. Okay. Back in Tukan’s car, we explained that first we needed to get some cash and our cards didn’t work in an ATM. Is there somewhere that we exchange some dollars? Tukan said knew a Chinese guy who changed money.
We drove across a bridge to the nearby town of Langur. Tukan stopped on the side of the road and started to lead us down a scruffy alley towards industrial warehouses. Errr… Should we be doing this? We followed because we had no other way of getting cash.
Tukan stopped at a warehouse door and walked into the gloom, speaking to some guys as he passed by. We were surrounded and waited. A young Chinese guy appeared and, with lots of smiles, exchanged $70US for 875,000 Rupiah. They were all so friendly, even posing for a picture.
Having obtained some cash and escaped a perceived robbery, we felt a little more relaxed. Tukan took us to the Quarantine office, who were very nice and spoke a little English. They didn’t charge us anything. We said that we wanted to leave Tual for Banda tomorrow morning and they gave us two certificates - one for the clearance into Tual and another for clearance to Banda. It’s a bit weird getting quarantine to another port, but I just thanked them and moved on.
We headed back to Immigration, who were lovely - very polite, no fees and lots of smiles - even playing us some Adele on their computer. Again we asked for clearance to go to Banda tomorrow morning, which was no problem. They said that we had to go to customs next and spoke to Tukan in Indonesian.
Tukan took us to an office right next to the Coastguard, where they spoke less English, but were friendly and gave us a very official looking document clearing us to Bintan, which is the last island before we leave Indonesia in three months’ time. I asked if that was everything finished and they said yes, so we left.
Back at his car, Tukan asked for 200 for his petrol. I was very confused, looking through my wallet at notes with denominations of 10,000 and 20,000. Eventually, I realised that he was asking for 200,000 rupiah ($20USD) and let him pick four 50,000 rupiah notes out of my wallet. It was probably a very good deal for him, but a bargain for us after two hours of driving around and his assistance.
Before we let Tukan go, we asked him to take us to get some SIM cards for our phone and iPad. Nobody in the shop spoke English and Tukan wasn’t very technical, so it took twenty minutes to get two SIM cards for $13US. Later on, we discovered that the iPad connected to the Internet okay, but we had no call time on the phone. Why on earth they didn’t sell me some airtime minutes, I don’t know.
After three hours, totally exhausted - mentally, emotionally and physically, we parted company with Tukan and escaped back to Alba for lunch. Our anchorage opposite the town was noisy with the sound of motor bikes and the (seemingly) constant calls to prayer, so we headed back up the harbour to a more peaceful spot. We anchored a little south of last night’s anchorage and a little more out of the shipping channel at 05:36.82S 132:44.45E.
We had lunch and chilled out. Glenys had a nap, but I couldn’t settle - something was nagging at the back of my mind. None of the officials had asked how much alcohol or tobacco we had on board - in fact, we’d not been asked any of the usual customs questions and no one had asked for our customs clearance from the last port.
At three o’clock, I cracked up, jumped in the dinghy and went the mile or so back into town to check whether we’d completed the clearance. It turned out that the office that Tukan thought was customs was the Port Captain and yes, we needed to see customs as well - I obviously asked the wrong questions this morning.
As I walked out of the Port Captain’s office, my mate Tukan was lurking about and said that he’d take me up to customs for no money because he was happy with me. OK - I’ve obviously paid him too much.
The customs were great. It took over 30 minutes to sort out my paperwork, but I spent the time chatting to four officers (and Tukan) about snorkelling, England, smoking, alcohol and other blokey, blokey stuff. Two officers wanted to come out to do an inspection of the boat, so Tukan dropped us off at my dinghy. Tukan wanted to come with us, but I stopped him because I knew that we wouldn’t be able to plane with four people - I feel really bad about it now. No doubt he would have enjoyed visiting a yacht - I’ll make sure that we invite more people on board as we continue through Indonesia.
The customs guys were wonderful and their inspection was very relaxed. They took photos of random lockers and our medical kit, as well as asking questions about alcohol, tobacco and drugs. Interestingly, they said that if we had beer that was over 5% then they would put it under customs seal until we leave the country, but in moderation, wine at 12% and rum at 40% is OK. Before they left, they wanted to take “selfie” photographs of themselves and us on our foredeck.
I dropped the customs guys back at the Coastguard dock, where Tukan (bless him) was waiting to take them back to their office. I said goodbye to Tukan, once again regretting that I didn’t bring him out to our boat.
Back at the boat, I put the dinghy on deck and then collapsed with a cold beer as the sun went down, waving to the friendly locals coming to have a look at us and listening to the mosques starting their mournful chants calling the faithful to prayer.
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