wow another really long post....

October 15, 2007 Vanuatu to Alotau, Papua New Guinea (PNG)

Sorry I’m really grouping lots of days together now, but we’ve just started our 2 wk voyage, and not too much went on during the last week in Vila. When we first arrived, everyone made trips to the hospital to see Max and Eibes as their plane to New Caledonia left at 6 that day. When I went to the crap island style hospital to see them, they were in good spirits and looked good. The hospital was in pretty rough shape. There were no real rooms just curtains separating patients and then all their visitors were sleeping all over the place on mats on the floor. Turns out that Eibes is going to have surgery in New Caledonia and Max is going there, but won’t need surgery, he’ll just need rest and relaxation for a few weeks. For the rest of the time in Vila we did random mindless jobs on the boat to fill time like redoing the anchor locker hatch, hull scraping, and worked on science website stuff.

There was this huge tall ship schooner that came into the harbor that we knew from Fiji. The Alevi. It was turned into a sailing ship from a steam engine boat. One night a group of us all went over to tour the ship and have dinner there with other yachties from around the anchorage. They really rough it on that ship. Everything is wood so there’s tons of varnishing, you have to climb out high on the spreaders to raise the sails, and there’s about 16 sails! They only average 3-4 knots too! I’d go crazy. 1 toilet, that doesn’t pump, it has to have water poured down it, and no shower. Dinner was good though. Philly cheese steaks, rum punch, salad with blue cheese, and banana bread. Oh and the engine is a 2 stroke that has to start off of compressed air, its nuts! So loud and you can hear it fire so loud through both of the cylinders every time. The captain, that built the ship himself, was interesting though, a real old salt.

Heather went with Eibes and Max to New Caledonia for 4 days and we had to wait around for her to return before we left on the voyage. It was kind of a pain that she went and did that, when it really wasn’t too necessary. Orla came back on board for the voyage, from LA where she was having meetings with Gaie and Laser. She’s so bubbly and fun, I’m glad she’s back on board. I was able to do lots of emailing and expensive phone calls to home, which was good. I really left in a happy state, where I felt pretty good about being away from civilization for 2 wks in the open ocean. I was also able to have a couple nice French meals off the ship in which I savored the ice in my glass, and ice cream for dessert. Our last night in Port Vila, we had a sunset kava session with just about all of Michel’s and the Infinity’s connections in the town. There were quite a few people on board, both French and Ni-Vanuatus. Mellow evening though, they drank a lot of super strong kava all night, and then finally had a bit of dinner to nibble on. I just had a half shell of the kava, too strong for me.

And now we’re 2 days into our 2 wk voyage to PNG. We’re averaging a hundred miles a day which we wanted to do. The trip is about 1500 miles. We haven’t caught any fish yet. The sea is so flat and calm though. Not too much wind, but sometimes we are able to sail comfortably with the jib and main at 3-4 knots. It has been nice being so calm, because we’re able to open the hatch in paradise so we have some air circulation down here. Zack, James, and I have set up our couch under the hatch and chill out and watch movies when we’re all not on watch. Oh! I have the best watch ever! Its me, Zack, and Kitty on the 8-12. We help out with dinner, have to do some cleaning, and other random jobs (which the crew made a whole list of today), but its great because we get a full night’s sleep. I’m a big fan of the 8-12. Its also sweet to have Zack on my watch, having someone to joke around with all the time and actually have fun on watch makes it go a lot faster. Kitty is ok. She always wants us to be up and doing something. I think she just needs to chill out a bit and relax. I can feel her pent up pressure as she is the first mate now and has to be so responsible. When I’m not on watch, I have been quite lazy. Laying around all day, watching movies, reading my book (still Typee, not really a fast read)….I’m trying my hardest not to get too bored. We’re going to have acting class, cooking classes with Michel, and a dance party at sea so I’ll look forward to those in the upcoming days.



October 16, 2007 Voyage to PNG

So pretty much just as I finished typing the above journal entry yesterday afternoon, the day got so exciting. I sounded like such a bore, so I better tell you what really happened. Arie and James noticed a huge fish off the stern on the ridiculous handline we troll with. I have always thought the thing is a waste and we would never be able to bring up a fish on it, but I was sure proven wrong. The fish, about a 5 foot wahoo, was long dead on the line and was pulled up easily. It really chomped on the hook, and was basically just dragging behind the boat at 3 knots for who knows how long. I skipped out on the filleting of that one…maybe the next fish. The wind picked up after sunset, right before dinner. It was real strong at dinner, about 23-24 knots. We had our 2nd to largest jib up, so we were cruising at 7-8 knots. My watch just began and I almost really jibbed the jib. Kitty came out all pissed. I feel like I have no control going downwind like this, with the huge swells. They really just toss you around. The swells have been at least 10 feet! Double overhead for all the surfers out there, but the waves aren’t breaking, they’re just gliding us along. Well, back to my almost-uncontrolled-jibe. It was pretty scary, but then maybe a half hour after that, I was still on the helm, and Orla came, got on the helm, and said I was needed up on the bow. About 10 of the clips on the stay, holding the jib up had broken free from the sail, and the massive sail was flapping wildly out over the wild swells. It was quite a site to see. We had to lower it; I tried to be in the middle for the lowering, but we couldn’t really go full on into the wind, so the sail was coming down just off the side of the boat. I went up to the bow, near the stay, to help James there and I really ended up just holding him down so he/we didn’t fly off the boat with this stupid sail. Well everyone in the mission, now was frantically yelling at us to move forward onto the bow sprit so we didn’t go overboard with the sail. We figured out what meant, and went up forward to let the pros handle it. I was telling James, “We’re losing this sail, we’re so losing this sail.” It was a bad scene. They finally managed to get the bottom of the sail inside of the lifeline, and then just ended up lowering the rest of it over the side. Everyone helped to yank it in quickly before the wind and the waves took it away. Crazy! And this was all after Zack and Heather cooked delicious pizza for dinner, that I thoroughly pigged out on, because it was so good. I really felt sick for the rest of my watch, but Zack helped to laugh me through it, as he slid back and forth with the swells, across the main room on cushions.

That was all last night! This morning the wind was still howling. We’ve still been able to make 100 miles a day, in the right direction, just sailing, which is good. All in all, since the wind picked up, we’ve gone about 150 miles, but not all in the right direction. As a crew, when the weather was calmer, we wrote up this work list of things to get done (these include a dance party, celestial navigation, sextant classes, etc.) on the voyage. Michel agreed that if we finished all but 3 things on the list, we could make a stop at one of the sweet diving spots right off of PNG. I hope we can do it, James the first said the diving at one of these spots, ‘Magic spot’, was the best he’s ever done. It is a pretty extensive list…we’ll see. After morning meeting, we all stuck around and Michel gave his first of several cooking classes on sauces. Pretty interesting, I for one am going to try to experiment with sauces in the galley some more. In the afternoon, I finally watched Ratauollie with the boys. I bought it in Port Vila. I’m a little late, I know Zac back home saw it in June. It was a cute cartoon, but pretty corny. Tonight is Tuesday night, and we’re watching some Aussie flick about how nuclear wastes are affecting the environment there. I really think we’re all just going to slide around the floor and bump into each other for a few hours, but I guess they still do movie nights in seas like this. Its ok, at least I won’t be too bored on my watch.


October 17, 2007 Voyage to PNG

We caught another big wahoo during my watch this morning on the hand line. Again, we were probably dragging the fish along for a while before anyone noticed a fish on the line. I filleted it this time. I did an ok job. There wasn’t so much pressure to get all the meat off the bones, since the fridge is still loaded with fish from the last huge wahoo. Did some chores on the list, watched another movie, and nothing else really happened. Zack and I are becoming more and more like brother and sister everyday as we pretty much spend every blinking hour of the day together. I’m starting to really know what guys talk about when girls aren’t around…trust me, you don’t want to know. Ha! We’re still sailing, about 100 miles a day, which is great. Slower now, I think the system that we ran into is slowly moving away. The swells and wind are calming down. I’m also trying not to eat so much. We don’t do much in the way of exercise, and I pretty much just lay around all day, so ya I’m not pigging out. Oh and also the constant rocking and rolling isn’t so great on a full stomach, so it helps not to be stuffed with food. We are eating great though, not sure if I mentioned that before. Things I would never eat at home. Like breaded veal…baby cow, so sad, but so delicious. Tonight James and Zack are going to make sashimi and fish curry. Yum! We’re almost to the halfway point! Ya! 700 more miles to go…


October 18-19, 2007 Voyage to PNG

We had a book night last night, again reading a chapter from this same book we read again and again. It was all about globalization and how the US is a horrible country. We always read about the same thing. Wish we could read something less hippy and more pertinent from the library. Like Captain James Cook’s adventures for example, is just the first thing I’m seeing here right now. But of course, Thursdays are Carol’s nights and her pick of the hippy book for the reading. Carol and I once again had a falling out. I was cleaning wood on the sliding doors to the main room, so it could be oiled. Well Arie had just done the other side and he told me to use vinegar with water to get the mildew off. So I did! Carol wasn’t meant to be up for 2 hours, but she came out and said, “Umph.” To the job that James and I were scrubbing the crap out of. No, great job, thanks a lot guys. And then she saw that I put vinegar in the water and she flips out. “No vinegar! What are you doing? Just water, just scrub it!” God chill out chick! So we spent an extra 20 minutes scrubbing the heck out of it, as it came off better with vinegar, but now we were stuck with just using water. She then insists to bicker with me, as I said she could at least say we were doing a good job, before she flips out and tells us how to do the job. She said I missed the good job…guess that was the umph, in the beginning. Oh well, going to steer clear of Carol for a while. Crazy Carol again, can’t deal with real people as she grew up with cows and sheep on a farm in the middle of nowhere. She’s trying to get all chummy chummy with all the guys again, now that Eibes is gone. It’s the same thing she did with Fred before he left. Whatever, can’t really stand her right now. But other than that, life has been pretty much the same. Zack, James, and I have our family time every day, where we all aren’t on watch, lounge around, and watch movies together. I’ve probably have been watching too many movies. I made meatloaf the other night, def not my best…I can make pretty awesome meatloaf sometimes, but people liked it so it was okay. Its day 7 of the voyage. Pretty crazy to be sailing non-stop for a week straight. We’re still cruising with good wind at 5-6 knots all the time. Making over 100 miles a day. Its still really rocky and rolly though. How many more days of this? We’re going to have a work out acting class and a party tomorrow. Something out of the ordinary to look forward to. Oh and I think we’re switching sails too. We’ve been making such good speed, all just with the smallest jib we have, the storm jib. Putting on the standard one we usually use, the workhorse tomorrow. I miss the news, I’ve tried to listen on the SSB, but without too much luck. What’s going on out there?



October 20-21, 2007 Still Voyage to PNG

Wow. Really over this trip. Today is day 9….ahhhh! Really sick of being on watch, even if it’s the best watch there is. We’ve been catching a lot of fish. Yesterday James caught a mahi and a barracuda (which I’m not eating, because of cigaterra), and there’s been 2 huge knock downs where we’ve lost really nice lures, probably sharks. Also yesterday we had an acting class, that was really hard to not get sick during, as we ran around in circles with these gigantic swells that kept tossing us about the main room. Last night we had a semi-dance party for sunset. A few appetizers, some music, cocktails, it was the way we should spend every evening on this ship. Grrr! If I was sailing with my parents, that’s def how we would spend every evening. The crew’s taste of music right now is a little eclectic. 30 year olds listen to like horrible techno crap and they love the 80s. Neither of which I had any music to contribute, but I was able to sneak on a couple songs. Everyone was dancing inside the main room and out by the helm, it was great. I had a couple more rum drinks with the boys and then had to be on watch at 8…yuck! It was so hard to stay awake. The swells were so huge. At one point when I was on the helm, the main sail got stuck behind the shroud (no idea how that could have happened), but we had to go into the wind so it could flop itself out of there. It was pretty crazy. Today the wind has calmed down a bit, and I’ve been trying to catch up on some sleep throughout the day. We still can’t see land! Frustrating! Its right there…only 25 miles away. Maybe by the end of the day we’ll be able to see it. Still sailing at 4-5 knots. I just want to get there already! Its another Sunday again, speech night. Think I’ll talk about the golden rules of life tonight.


October 22-24, 2007 Papua New Guinea

Wow…again I’ve totally lost track of time and the days have passed me by without me keeping up with this journal. Ok, so on day 11 we arrived in Milne Bay in Papua New Guinea. I woke up that morning to seriously stormy weather and James had already caught a big eye tuna and a mahi mahi in the last hour! Crazy morning, but pretty much at sunrise that day, we stopped the boat at a dive spot called Solomon Patch and we all got a chance to finally dive in PNG. The spot was weird, it was really just a large shallow reef patch, a good distance from shore. We actually drifted the Infinity over the spot and lowered the dinghy to follow the divers around the reef. It was pretty cool to just abruptly do that, its really unlike the crew to do something like that. I dove the first dive and tended the second. Not an amazing reef, pretty dead. I did see 3 small sharks (just white tip reef sharks), lots of soft coral, and abundant with all kinds of different schools of fish…barracudas, jacks, anthias, wrasses, parrot fish, just lots. It was good in that respect, but it was so abundant with fish life, that there was loads of jellyfish and plankton in the water. We all got stung real bad on the face, hands, anything that was exposed. It was funny when we got back, everyone was searching for the no itch stick.

After the dive, we motored another 4 hours into the bay (big bay! 40 miles!) to Alotau. For almost the whole 11 days we had clear, beautiful, perfect weather, and we arrive in Alotau to a torrential downpour. Nuts! We motor to the anchorage, a few miles away from the city, in a small shipping commune, at a more protected anchorage than the one right off Alotau. I get the anchor hanging and good to go, and then port authority decides to call and they want us to clear customs at their dock. Grrr! Did I mention it was really pouring now? Like you almost needed your mask to see. Well we did it, we docked the Infinity right along their dock and spent a couple hours getting cleared in to PNG. It was almost dark by the time we got back to the anchorage and dropped anchor. Everyone was a bit stir crazy, so we had a night out. The guys and I went out with Carol and Kitty to these 2 hotel restaurant/bars. Nice to get off the ship, but we really weren’t experiencing Alotau hanging out with all the expats and this conservation conference group that was in town. Nice hotels, I think I want to take a few nights off at some point and stay at one of them. But yeah exactly how I wanted to finally spend my night off…with Carol. Kind of sucked, but we ate a lot of pizza and drank lots of wine.

The next morning, we woke up to yelling and whistling as two long canoes (prob training for the races) sped past us with 20 people in each canoe. Pretty unique to be woken up by something like that at 7 AM. We weren’t sure when we were leaving Alotau, so everyone had to have a chance to go into town. I jumped at the chance, and went in with Heather and Michel first thing in the morning. They went off and did their thing and I was on my own in Alotau for most of the day. Ok, impressions of Alotau…Mom, hope you’re sitting down for this one. As first impressions go, Alotau is a pretty rough place. The capital of PNG, Port Moresby is the city that is really in shambles, but to me Alotau was pretty sketchy. I will def go with one of the guys next time I want to go into town. So to start, everyone chews beetle nut here. As in signs say, ‘no smoking/no chewing beetle nut.’ It’s a small nut that’s chewed with coral lime powder. The thing is it turns your mouth and your teeth blood red! No wonder everyone thought they were crazy cannibals forever! Absolutely everyone is chewing it too. Kids, men, women and everyone is hanging out all over the place doing it. Scary looking when a group of guys sitting on the sidewalk smile at you grinning with these blood red mouths. Ewww! The male to female ratio in the city must be like 5 guys to 1 girl. Not sure if the girls were just at home or at work, but it really seemed like there were just a lot of guys out and about. HIV/AIDS is also a real problem in PNG. The one big billboard I noticed in the town said AIDS in huge letters, and then I had to use a disgusting public restroom to find no TP anywhere, and a large free condom dispenser next to the door. I don’t know, that kind of stood out for me. I picked up a local newspaper, of course to find horrible news about Port Moresby (which I expected), but there was numerous violence cases about men beating women. I did have an idea that it was like that though, Julia had told me a bit about PNG awhile ago. Come to find out she is in Port Moresby, so we won’t even get to see her when we’re here. I guess the crew knows her family, so I’m sure they’ll be on and off the boat a bunch.

Back to Alotau though, and my first trip in. I was able to do a little shopping, have a bite to eat, go to the market, and use the internet. I came back to the ship to spend the rest of my day cleaning and doing laundry. It’s such a treat to use the washing machine on board…I love it. After all the mindless chores were done for the day, I spent the sunset on the bow listening to a new reggae CD I bought in town, eating a chilled star fruit, and sipping on a rum and sprite. Ahhh! Wish every night could be like that. We had a canoe festival themed dinner, with short movie clips afterwards…I was so exhausted, I was disturbing the movie with my snoring.


October 25, 2007 Alotau, PNG

Well it turned out that all the boys weren’t able to get money out of the bank on their town trip yesterday (w/o a passport), so they all went in for a second time today. I stayed on the ship. I was producer, and cooked eggs in a frame for breakfast and delicious fresh tuna tacos for lunch. The tacos were a lot of work, but I think I’m starting to get that Mexican flavoring I crave sometimes. Michel found out about mid-day that we were needed as the escort boat for the canoes coming from Esala, sooner than we were planned to be there…so I spent my day ship shaping and getting things ready to go for the short voyage. I think it’s about a day voyage to Esala. We picked up anchor right after sunset and have now started to motor out of the long Milne Bay. We’re only doing watches for 2 hours at a time, so that will be good. Well off for a week, following with these canoes around….


October 26, 2007 Near Esala, PNG

We’re not actually at Esala, we’re across the bay from it (Esala is just a small village anyways, its not a major town or anything). It’s so beautiful here. Alotau was nice, but its really remote and pristine in the outer islands. The water isn’t crystal clear, but the lush mountains surrounding us on all sides, really makes the anchorage. It was a full moon last night, so I did some ‘moon bathing’ on the platform. Huge moon that came up for sunset right over this small stretch of land. I helped James cook dinner last night, we had great plans for pineapple/mahi skewers, but those kind of feel through as we didn’t have skewers or a bbq. We cooked a pretty bad dinner though. We just ended up baking the fish in the marinade we were using, coconut milk, lime, pineapple, green onions, rum…sounds good, but together it wasn’t good at all. James also made gnocci which was not a success and I cooked chocolate pudding for dessert that was semi-good. Well it was just an experiment anyways. We have a schedule for the canoe events. Sounds like we will follow them around for 4 days and then they race for a couple hours to Alotau, where all the canoes will meet. Michel is so stoked, and it seems like the crew is real nervous to handle the boat without him on it, (as he will be filming the canoes and not on board most of the time)…so its kind of a weird underlying feeling. We’ll see how it goes though, knowing this boat I’m sure the shit will hit the fan soon.


October 27, 2007 Near Esala, PNG


What a day! I’m starting to feel that ‘Somosomo, Gau Island’ feeling for this place. I still can’t even pronounce the names of the villages, but we’re near Dobu Island. This morning I was woken up on deck to giggling little kids on their canoes on the stern. They stayed all morning/day with us. They were just excited to be on the ship and it was weird for us to be the center of attention. Instead of going to shore right away to see the sailing canoes, I stayed on board and hung out with about 15 kids. My fav was this little girl named Bernadette who was just a year old, oh so spoiled! But so cute. She liked me, and really liked me to pick her up and carry her around. I actually wanted to go back to sleep, but that sure didn’t happen. At first we were taking pictures of the kids, James was letting them shave each other heads with his buzzer, and then they were all jumping off the bow.


After a bit, I successfully paddled a canoe into shore with this nice girl named Senorita. She was 20, just finished school, and could speak pretty good English. James was in another canoe with a little boy and we raced for a bit. The boys won. On shore, we met Senorita’s older sister, Mitchella, her kids, her husband, and other passing friends from Dobu. She was also super nice. Answered all kinds of questions we had and fixed us up coconut juice and bananas. Mitchella had a little 2 yr old girl that kept checking me out. I’m sure I was the first white person she’s ever seen. She was almost growling at me she was staring so intently. After a while of chit-chatting with them, we went back to the boat for lunch. Arie cooked soup and we ate while the kids hung out on the stern. After lunch, I set up Finding Nemo in the aft cabin on my laptop for all the kids. They loved it, well the action, even if they couldn’t understand the words. It was neat to see them watching it, so entertained. I’m sure most of them have never seen a movie before. There was about 15 kids in the aft cabin watching, so it got pretty hot in there. I felt bad, brought in a couple fans, but it didn’t really help. They sat in there though, for the whole thing, they were even wanted to sit through the credits (Arie finally shut it off).


After the movie, I took a 2 hour nap, which was much needed. The guys woke me up to go for a ride on the sailing canoe that was on the stern. It was so much fun. The name of the canoe is Urani Natangi or something like that, it means ‘my son.’ It’s crewed by 11 guys, but only 3 took us for a ride. Crazy how they sail though, its just like pics you see. A patch worked together triangular sail, the canoe, and then outriggers on one side of the canoe. We were really moving in just the smallest breath of wind. Ok, and to turn around, or tack, they just physically reverse the sail direction. They move the sail 180 degrees in the opposite direction, so you actually have to turn around to face the right way. We made a couple passes with them, and then back to the ship. A large paddling canoe came to the stern when we got back, with lots of food they we will transport to the festival for them. After more sailing trips and relaxing around with everyone, at sunset, it was time for them to go. And as the canoes were departing on the port side of the boat, two dolphins were jumping in the air on the starboard side. No I’m not lying, it was unbelievable to end the day like that. Beautiful sunset too. As Arie would say in a deadpan voice, “Wow.” Just wow.


October 28-30, 2007 Near Esala and East Cape, PNG

Grouping a few days together again. We attempted to follow the canoes out of the bay near Dobu and Esala, but they really didn’t wait around for us. We are transporting a bunch of their food to Alotau for them. It seems like we should just ask if they want to be filmed and if they could work with us, instead of just revolving every move we make for these canoes and the canoe festival. We did catch a small wahoo on the way down to East Cape. The anchorage was a deep drop off and then a really shallow slope, but it worked as the wind wasn’t blowing us onto shore. After anchoring, Gaie and Laser were on the shore ready to be picked up. Semi-good to have them back on board. We went through the ‘accident sequence’ of the event in Vanuatu for a 4th a final time all together. Then we proceeded to all get in the dinghy together and made peace with the engine part that we didn’t have before, that caused the accident. Ha! We’ve been having pointless meeting about everything and nothing for the past 3 days that they have been on board. It’s almost funny now when another meeting is called. Also, that night I tried beetle nut with Zack for the first time. It was pretty gross. Kind of like chewing tobacco in a way. Not that I’ve ever done that, but I’d imagine it would be similar. You have to keep the nut in your mouth for a few chews then you chew up this mustard seed dipped in lime powder. Then you slowly spit out the nut as you chew it. You’re supposed to feel dizzy and stoned, but I felt neither, I think I didn’t keep chewing the nut for long enough. It didn’t taste good at all. You have to try everything once I guess.

In the late afternoon of day 2 at the anchorage at East Cape, the wind shifted and we drug anchor and had to move the ship pronto before being washed up on the reef. Well you know the crew, instead of just scoping it out and looking for another spot to anchor, we just motored out to see and drifted all night and were on watches once again. I’m really getting tired of being on watch, it’s almost been non-stop for 3 wks now. Ahh! James spent all day perfecting these awesome custard tart pastries, so that was a hit, even though we were stuck at sea on watches for the night. The next day, we reanchored on the opposite side of East Cape and now we’re just waiting for the sailing canoes as they will be racing from here to Alotau tomorrow. We will follow them to Alotau and then get all set up to film 4 days of canoe festival there. In that next week, we will also get 3 new volunteers and Max back on board. It will really be a full house then. But all in all, I’m really hoping this canoe festival will be worth it in the next couple days.


October 31, 2007 Halloween! Alotau, PNG

This was definitely the weirdest Halloween I’ve ever had. I was in such a foul mood I thought I was going to literally punch someone. Between yesterday and today we had lowered the small boats (yellow boat and red dinghy) and swapped their engines around about 6 times. I’m so fed up it’s ridiculous. We never leave dinghies down underway and we can’t have 2 dinghies down at night either. Procedure, procedure….blah! Ya it really sounds like a good idea to try this certain combo of engine and small boat, but when it comes down to make it happen. It’s the four of us volunteers, raising boats, raising engines, lowering boats, changing engines. And we get this new combo all set up and then the engine stops working, or doesn’t go fast enough. So we switch everything around and are right back where we started.

By the time we got anchored and had a chance to relax and had raised and lowered 2 boats and swapped engines once again, I drank the rest of my rum myself. James, Zack, and I were stuck with Carol and Kitty, on the ship on watch for the night. Ya for this festival, there has to be a whole crew on board all the time taking care of the ship. Carol understood how our day was shitty because we were mad we couldn’t go to the festival tonight. Ha! Ya right! I really don’t care about not going to town tonight, its dealing with these stupid engines and boats all day, every day. Grrr! Oh and also there is a piece that is broken on the generator so we won’t be able to use much power until that gets fixed in a few days. Lovely…no showers, no lights, no computers. Hopefully tomorrow it will be sunny and we can get some solar power that way. After dinner, the guys and I listened to music and hung out on the bow all night. Just thinking back to my last few Halloweens and how crazy they have been while I was at school….missing that right now.


November 1, 2007 Alotau, PNG

Today the ‘A’ team is stuck on watch during the day again. Its been pretty relaxing which is nice though. We got to sleep in, and we’ve only had to lower one boat and put one engine on the boat. But it is only 11 am, so there is the whole day ahead of us. The change over is at 3, and we get to be in town from 3 to 10. PCRF is doing a short video presentation at the festival for an hour tonight. That should be pretty cool, if people are into it. But other than that at the festival, I want to use the internet before it closes, deal with getting a SIM card for my phone, and have a few drinks at the Napatana Lodge bar. Ahh…at least I have that to look forward to today.