11/06/2009
September 30-November 1
With 20-25 knot breeze and 3-5 foot swells, I hardly call the trip to Townsville cruising. On a night watch, Anna and I had to wake Chris up..we were on a collision course with the above boat. We tacked safely out of the way, gawking at the cruise ship as it rolled on by...it must be a really cheap cruise...then caught a whiff and realized it was no cruise ship but a sheep freighter. Not a pleasant smell...especially to my nose which was sensitive due to a few days of seasickness.
The trip was not miserable though! When I wasn't leaning over the side of the boat, we did see a turtle and fed some baby sharks Irene's leftover kebab...yum. Chris, being the ethically responsible skipper he is, had to whip out the kayak and VHF when he noticed a small motorboat that was dragging it's anchor while stopped at Fitzroy Island for the night. He found the owner on shore, scratching his head, wondering where his boat had gone.
We did miss Halloween though (an American favorite)...unless dressing up in our foul weather gear counted.
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11/06/2009
September 28-30
This is me, Katherine, a new American volunteer. I joined up with Chris, Irene and her cousin, Anna, on Magic Roundabout in Cairns to start the first ever OceansWatch promotional tour down the Queensland coast of Australia!
The most important part of my job on this trip is to distribute our brochure--hot off the press from New Zealand (many thanks to our writer/volunteer Sam)--to yachties in every port we get ourselves to, trying to gain a base of supporters in Australia and worldwide. While I feel super enthusiastic and and supportive of OceansWatch and the work we do, being a new volunteer and relatively new at talking up a new cause within the yachting community, I started off getting frustrated easily when people didn't want to learn about our approach to "cruising with a cause." Our last night in Cairns was spent chatting with a fellow American, Bill Hanlon, who happened to be refitting a schooner native to Long Island where I grew up (www.seawanhaka.com) and Charlie and Graeme from Loggerhead. It was then I realized the support is out there, it's just going to take some digging to find it. Here's to more luck in Townsville!
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11/01/2009, Cairns
The picture is of us with about the only yacht we met in PNG, Loggerhead with friends Charlie and Graeme from the UK. They are sailing around the world the wrong way...........it takes all sorts;)
So we made it to Cairns with no problems other than sailing too close to the wind for too long. It was pretty exciting to get back to civilisation so the first day was spent catching up on good coffee, good wine and good food.
After the big clean-up Cleo headed off on a road trip to Sydney, Alison headed to Bali to meet a guy she met in Madang and Gardner went back to the USA for the first time for years. 3 days later he had a real job too.......working for Adobe!
I caught up with OceansWatch emails then finally had a very much needed 9 day holiday with my lovely wife, Julia. We chilled, drove around doing the tourist thing and had a few days on the boat at Fitzroy Island.
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10/07/2009
Hello all!
This is Katherine, a new volunteer for OceansWatch (from New York), writing from Mamaki (NZ), as the Magic Roundabout team does not have internet access.
Chris and the team are about ready to leave Samarai, the very southern tip of New Guinea, making their way to Cairns, Australia. From there, most of the original crew will be departing and going their separate ways, and I will be joining Chris along with Irene (our science adviser) and two other volunteers who have yet to be chosen to do a promotional tour down the coast of Queensland. If any members will be in the area from Cairns to Brisbane during the month of November, contact us at info@oceanswatch.org, I'm sure we could really use your help!
Last but not least, if any members have a video projector that they wouldn't mind loaning us for the month so we can make presentations/show videos at yacht clubs, marinas, and schools on our promo tour, please contact us!
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09/24/2009, Kavieng
September 25
Early morning with a full day. We stay the weekend here to pick up our video camera and some parts from DHL. Unfortunately Hugh Walton is in Morseby so we won't be able to meet with him before we leave for Vitu Islands. Our pre-Cairns-arrival jobs list is ready to have items checked off of it.
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09/24/2009, Moussau
Chris comments: here in Moussau the community is still very traditional. I was interested to see how the fishermen use coral stones to weight their hooks to get down to > 30 m where the bigger fish are. They tie a piece of coconut palm leaf around the stone then put the hook through the leaf. When the stone hits the bottom a sharp tug pulls the hook out of the leaf leaving an un-weighted hook on the bottom. The bait they use is a piece of condom! The condoms are supplied to the communities free by a family planning NGO. All the fishermen we met used condoms as bait and are very grateful to the NGO for endless free lures!
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09/24/2009, At sea
September 24
Underway from Mussau back to Kavieng. The boat was extra full and we had to provision the diving BCDs as emergency PFDs. At about 11:30 in the morning Magic Roundabout was surrounded by a pod of pan tropical spotted dolphins that Cleo reckoned were hunting. It seemed like another pod came to join in as the dolphins played around the bow of the boat and others jumped out of the sea hundreds of meters off in the distance. We were surrounded.
We arrived just after 17:00 and did a logistical shuffle with Keithsons' banana boat, the hitch hikers, and their cargo before setting anchor near Nussau Island just on the other side of the channel from Kavieng town.
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