Can you canoe?

 

The villagers in Ninigo sail outrigger canoes. When we visited Longan, we (along with our friends on Field Trip) were privileged to be taken out sailing in one of these sailing canoes. It was a welcome change to speed along in a sailboat that rivals Hobie cats for their speed. Our captain and crew were two local boys who expertly raised and trimmed the sails by tying knots and bracing wooden posts against one another. It was  truly impressive what they could do with a wooden canoe and plastic tarps.

Tunung, The Hermits and Ninigo

Our time since leaving Kavieng has been relaxed and full of friendly villages, beautiful corals and abundant fish. We spent a day at Tunung and dove the World War II submarine and ship wrecks there with Clem. Clem runs a laid back surf resort and is about as well-spoken and savvy as any Papua New Guinean that we have met.

We had heard so many rave reviews of welcoming and generous villagers in The Hermits and Ninigo that I thought there was no way that it could live up to the hype. I was wrong, especially about Ninigo. We have been greeted everywhere with friendship and gifts. We have been enjoying the diving and snorkeling as we wait for a wind and weather window to Vanimo, where we need to get our visas for Indonesia.

Life on the Chain Gang

Mark celebrating the availability of locally
grown carrots at the market

After waiting a month for the ship from Lae to bring our new anchor chain, it was finally due to arrive on Monday. Unfortunately, the ship was stuck in another port because two other boats were unloading ahead of it. The ship eventually showed up on Wednesday and by the time it was unloaded and unpacked, it was Thursday morning before we could get our chain.

Around Kavieng

Blow holes on Nusa Island

We have taken advantage of the supplies in Kavieng to stock up for the next couple of months. Kavieng has better than average provisioning for a South Pacific town filled with mostly Chinese-owned shops. The bellwether for us is usually ice-cream, but this town even has such hard-to-find gems as potatoes (yes, the lowly potato becomes something you crave and usually can't have), cream cheese and bacon. We even scored lots of avocados and mangoes, which are apparently out of season. The other day, Mark and Conrad caused much amusement amongst the locals as they lugged a package of 40 rolls of toilet paper down the street.

Boang to Tabar to Kavieng

Canoe race in Takuu

After Boang, we spent a few days in Tabar. The villagers were very welcoming but were somewhat used to yachts coming and bringing lots of goods.

Takuu to Nuguria to Boang

Our friends on Field Trip have a knack for making connections at the villages. Sarah, an elementary teacher in her former life, visits the schools and offers help. Mark on Field Trip usually offers assistance to fix whatever needs fixing. We were lucky to piggyback on their efforts in Takuu and Nuguria. Both of these islands have been extremely welcoming and generous. At Takuu, we were the honored guests during a "Book Week" celebration where the whole village turned out to watch the school children perform modern and traditional dances and stories. In Nuguria, Conrad and Mark enjoyed helping to give a joint presentation about American culture and our boat travels to the whole school. We were inundated with gifts of lap laps (the local version of a sarong), necklaces, food, and other local items. We made new friends and got a deeper connection than we normally do when spending just a few days at a place. Both places are more Polynesian in culture and are part of the Autonomous Region of Bougainville.

Leaving Nuguria, we used a period of favorable wind to head east to the Tanga Islands. Our short overnight trip to Boang netted us a 50-lb wahoo and 60-lb yellowfin tuna. We broke our streak of Solomons doldrum fishing and actually landed both fish (and without losing a gaff!). Matt struggled a bit to fillet the fish because they were too long to fit on the transom. Boang is a more traditional Papua New Guinea Melanasian village. The villagers have been very welcoming but they don't get many cruisers that visit (only 1 boat in the last 20 years or so), so we have had a lot of canoes that want to just hang out around the boat. With no television and no Internet, we're apparently the most interesting show around for the moment. We chat with them as well as our limited Pigin and their limited English allows, but eventually we leave them to go do other things. This doesn't deter them and they simply continue to hang out around the new 'water cooler' in the area (a place to meet and chat).

Solomons to Takuu

After almost nine months of motoring through the Solomons (the longest we have been in any country while on the boat, by the way), we finally got our parts installed, made the last minute dash to the market to buy as much produce and fruit as we could store, checked out and headed for Takuu. We saw every kind of sailing, from perfect beam reaching through flat seas, to downwind in heavy seas, and upwind into waves and rain galore (to say the forecast was a bit off may be a bit of an understatement). We made some rookie mistakes: Mark's hatch wasn't all the way closed so his mattress was soaked with sea water--first time we have had that happen in 4-1/2 years of sailing. Conrad tossed his cookies inside the cabin and didn't make it to a bucket right away. We also lost a lure to something huge that about ripped the bungee cord in half, let alone snapping the 150 lb test line like it was nothing. Ripe bananas from the humongous stalk that Matt couldn't refuse (less than $3 US) started plopping down as the boat moved from side to side (a la the Pacific crossing), so it's lots of banana bread for the next while.

Takuu (Mortlock) is an atoll that is technically part of the Bougainville Independent government (which is itself nominally part of Papua New Guinea), though they get almost zero and are basically left to themselves. The inhabited islands are only a meter above the sea, so rising sea levels are a real concern facing the 200-300 residents and during very high tides some of the houses get inundated. The government wants the islanders to relocate, but many are reluctant to leave their home to move to a place with a different culture (Takuu is Polynesian in origin, while the rest of Papua New Guinea is Melanesian) and way of life. Our friends on Field Trip have been here for over a week and have making friends and fixing boats. We are enjoying the nice calm anchorage while we dry out Mark's bedding. Conrad turned 11 today (Matt made donuts to celebrate) and is itching to try out the new camera his grandparents got him.