Madang to Vanimo, passage in PNG

Okay, let's start with the end.

It's the morning of the last day of July and my diver's watch tells me that the sun should have risen about one hour ago. It's a grey, rainy and miserable day, just as the whole night has been. We're approaching Vanimo, the last stop of Papua New Guinea before we are supposed to dart over to Indonesia and Jayapura. Egil is asleep below, he's pulled the midnight-to-four watch, whereas I've done the evening-midnight and am now doing the four-to-morning watch.

I'm wearing shorts - as I have been for the last eight months - and an oilskin jacket. I'm standing in the bow clutching a coffe-mug in one hand and the bent-and-mangled boathook in the other, while the windwane is steering the boat. There are quite a few major rivers running into the sea around here and they seem to be dispersing driftwood of impressive size that lie in belts that can stretch for miles into the sea. We hit a log yesterday, but luckily without any other damage than a few branches stuck in our fishing line. Now we're running through another one of these belts of up-to-no-good driftwood. So, I'm standing in the bow, having a coffee, keeping a lookout and being ready to fend off any evil-doing semi-submerged logs, it's seven-thirty in the morning and I think to myself, quite philosophically: "We're approaching a town which potentially has an internet-connection, what can we write in the blog? What's happened since Madang?" The answer comes to me as a revelation after another sip of coffee as another four-metre piece of driftwood misses us by two metres: "Not an awful lot."
Yep, that's it folks, so little we didn't even take any pictures. The pictures in this post are mostly old, but previously unpublished. We had a lot of fickle winds, and since we're expecting quite a lot of that for the next month or two, we've decided to start motoring when there's no wind. (As opposed to the "drifting and waiting" policy we've exercised so far). So a lot of motoring this leg, and of course we had some problems again, but they seem to be fixed (again). We expect it's a leakage in one of the dieselfilters. However we are also keeping the options open for it being a problem with the cooling, the exhaust, the pistons, the air-intake or any other part of the engine since we have no clue what we're doing.

The only thing to break up the monotony on this leg was a short stop for half a day and one night on Laing Island, a tiny thing that used to have a Belgian research station on it, now there's nothing. We met some locals there, had them over for coffee and joined them at their campfire in the evening. We were also approached by some other locals who wanted to sell us marijuana by the kilo. Early next morning we headed out again and pretty soon we had ourself a nice mackerel, way to big for only the two of us, so after Øyvind had made his debut cutting fish-fillet we headed over to an outrigger canoe we were passing. The guy was obviously fishing, so we figured we'd cut his workday short by handing him a couple of kilo's of mackerel-fillet. However as we approached the guy started paddling away from us, but we were faster and in the end we caught up. The guy looked rather terrified, but after we handed him the bag of fish he was only looking suspicious. We had a rather broken conversation out there on the sea with him asking us questions in mixed pidgin and english and we answering "From Madang" "Norway" and "to Vanimo" randomly. After the "to Vanimo" part he looked satisfied and we headed off again. The last we saw of the guy was him inspecting the plastic bag with his "catch" of mangled mackerel fillet.

Honiara, Solomon Islands - Papua New Guinea, a passage of disease, engine trouble, fickle winds and a first 29th birthday.

We left Honiara, Solomon Islands where we had stayed for three days without ever clearing in. We left our status of illegal aliens behind and took off knowing that we're closing in on equator and that we can no longer rely on the tradewinds to supply us with steady sailing winds. We had therefore decided that we would be a bit more generous with the engine power. No more drifting around for 24 hours waiting for wind.

The first thing that happens is that Øyvind starts to develop symptoms of a cold or a flu or somewhat. Great thing to feel tired even before you've started doing four hour interrupted sleep-cycles.


The day after the wind dies down. Again. No problem, we fire up good old Yanmar 2GM20(F). This works fine for about 30 minutes. Then it dies. This is the first time ever we've had troubles with the engine. The day was spent inspecting fuel lines and pulling filters and generally despairing over our complete and utter lack of techno-knowledge. By sundown no fault was found and we wrapped up to continue the next day. Luckily we got some wind during the day, so at least we're moving and not rolling violently which for an hour or two contributed significantly to the general frustration.

The day after the engine breakdown Øyvind is just getting out of bed and we're trying to get motivated for more mechanicking when we hear a crashing noise. In itself nothing spectacular, sometimes things work themselves loose on deck and make crashing noises. However this time it's the cable for the centerboard that has snapped, and the noise was the centerboard crashing down, still hinged to the keel, but without the cable to keep it up. We know the cable is a weak point and that it will break occasionally, however it broke the last time less than a month ago, and it's not even supposed to break annually. What's more is that the last time it broke we were able to pull into a protected bay where we could anchor within the hour. Now we're offshore. And we used our last spare cable fixing it the last time it broke.


We work out a plan. We're gonna use one of the old cables and somehow work around the problem. However to change the cables we need to dive on the boat. Øyvind accepts the task, ties a line between himself and the boat such as not to lose the latter in mid ocean. Then he jumps in trying not to think of sharks and his resemblance of bait on the end of a line.
The plan seems to work fine, except that we of course run into trouble when the cable has been pinched between the keel and the centerboard and we use a couple of hours rigging a system with an anchor to help pull it loose which works in the end. We sigh with relief when we are finally able to raise the centerboard an hour later, 5-6 hours after it broke. We can now head on. Øyvinds state is detoriating, but Egil steps up and gallantly accepts the lions share of the tougher watches.


Then it's Øyvinds birthday. Egil has had the morning shift and the birthday baby wakes to the smell of frying eggs. Later he makes a bloody cake! That guy will for sure make someone an excellent wife someday. We fill the day with more engine work. As a birthday present Øyvind is able to, by pure luck and total lack of skill, of course-, stumble across the fault. The top of one of the dieselfilters is busted and we cannot get the compression right. We're able to fix it somehow, and we have a working engine yet again! ...However we are not too certain about the quality of the mend and decide not to use the engine before we're about to anchor, such as not to strain it unecessary before we need it. Later the same day we catch our first (!) fish. We have no idea what it is, but it looks scary with pointy teeth. Perhaps a barracuda or something. We take our chances of it not being overly poisonous and eat it for birthday supper.


The plan of not using the engine fails when we encounter absolutely crap winds the last 150 miles of the trip. Luckily the thing seems to work allright, but we never push it. We do however get plenty time to take in the view of the mountains at Irian Jaya, New Guinea's main island. The first proper mountains we've seen since NZ. Finally we're able to clear in to PNG at Madang. They seem a little curious about the fact that our visas are issued in Solomon Islands since we, according to our papers, have never been there, but hey, no trouble. We're free to rock on towards Indonesia.