Ninigo

Longan Island anchorage - with sail approaching across the lagoon

Oscar the Pilot

Oscar's girls

A week out from Palau, the opportunity arose to stop off at Longan Island in the Ninigo atoll - famous for building and navigating traditional 2-masted, square-sailed outrigger canoes. Approaching the narrow Northern channel, a paddle canoe was sighted approaching, with the three occupants furiously paddling & waving. And so Oscar stepped aboard to pilot us through the reef, leaving his daughters in the canoe to be towed behind, loving every minute.

Oscar guided us to anchor off the East end of Longan Island, where, quite quickly (but with no unseemly rush), we were visited by other canoes & villagers, keen to say hello. And trade. T-shirts, soap & soap powder bought papaya, 'snake beans', coconuts and eggs. Fishing hooks & line traded for half-a-dozen crayfish (which we politely asked for in time for supper). Dinner at sunset was a feast!

Ninigo Trading

Visitors Book with canoes

Solomon also came aboard, apparently a self-designated island rep' & guide (perhaps the reason Oscar had been so keen to board first?), bringing with him an old Visitors Book filled with praise & info from previous cruisers. It made fascinating reading, which we did after supper with rum & fresh coconut juice. Sadly the latter (a natural laxative in such large quantities) didn't seem to agree with a couple of the crew, who spent the night purging!

Visits to the island itself revealed a clean, well-ordered village on a strip of sand barely 300 m wide and 1 m above sea level.  With over 40 students (Grades 3-8) the school, run by 4 teachers on a long-term detachment from Manus, seemed take a huge priority. The village was essentially a campus.

Ninigo Crays

Ninigo Supper

Coco-libra

They had built their own classrooms, desks & blackboards (albeit on sand floors) and were well equiped with government-supplied books (many courtesy of AusAid). Head teacher, Philip's most pressing need was for us to fix his lawn-mower!

The children were all working away busily at English & Maths - their first day back at school after the Easter hols (Longan Island is mostly Catholic, while nearby Pihun Island is Seventh Day Adventist). An example of what the Grade 3 class were working on from their Language in Context workbook: 'How to Build a Raft'. Very well thought out - practical and relevant, whilst still teaching written English.

We also watched Oscar & friends working on a new sailing canoe, the basics of which had been built on Pihun from a single carved tree with extra freeboard afforded by doweled planks. They were now adding bow & stern, as well as the outrigger itself. All done by eye with simple tools, but the fit could not be faulted. These men were expert craftsmen.

Sadly, we didn't have time for more than one night here. We had hoped to sail the local canoes, but we were becalmed. Given more time, we would also have visited Pihun. But time pressed, so we made our farewells and departed the way we had come, circling to the North of Ninigo Atoll, then overnight to the Hermit Islands, just 50 nm to the East.

Again, with fuel-saving in mind, and given we would be approaching in the early morning light, we elected to sail round the South of Hermit Atoll to the Eastern Channel through the reef. A S'ly setting tide and a succession of showers (more shampoo moments) made this slower than expected, but we still managed through the reef at 0900, and moored on a village buoy by 1045.

Orange-whips all round...

Canoe-building

Ninigo School Visit

Class Rules

Grade 3

Class Roster

Grade 5

Leg 4 Palau-Ninigo

Palau flag drop

After a very relaxing break, exploring the beautiful Rock Islands of Palau, the new team boarded, provisioned, CIQ'ed ($215!) and departed at midday on 16 Apr for our next (and longest) leg across the South Pacific.

Leaving the Eastern Passage, the engine went off and we enjoyed 12 hrs of 7-7.5 kts, and with an E'ly current to assist. We had obviously found the Equatorial Countercurrent - finally! The first Tuna was landed at sunset; all was starting well!

Asahi Sunset

Then followed 12 hrs of motoring, refreshing rain showers with squally winds, then glassy calms. And so it continued, with daily Tuna (and other monsters, impossible to land), occasional showers (always a shampoo moment), and amazing ocean sunsets & dawns. The E'ly current eventually disappeared and increasing calms renewed our efforts for efficient fuel usage, usually motor-sailing at 1700 RPM.



Neptune Rex

Until Day 6, when we had a visitor: King Neptune himself! He stepped aboard just after 'S' replaced 'N' on the chartplotter. Very strange - now we were all sailing on our heads! Or perhaps that was the 'shark's blood' that Neptune brought with him.



Trusty Shellbacks

He appeared glad to see us, in a gruff sort of way. Seemed a little peed-off though, that his Barber had taken the day off and he was forced to shave everyone himself (amongst other things), by way of welcome into the Ancient Order of the Deep - Trusty Shellbacks, one & all. Aaaarrrr. All the crew now enjoy Freedom of the Seas, as commanded by Neptune Rex.



Yellowfin Tuna

This was proved the next morning at dawn as the heavens opened and the seas boiled around us for hours, the air filled with birds, Tuna & Dolphins leaping in a feeding frenzy. We duly thanked Neptune for his bounty, and plucked a few Tuna aboard at our whim. "Stop now!", someone called. "We have enough!". We could have filled the boat to the gunwales, had we wanted.

Coral watch

"Land ho!" was heard at dawn of the seventh day - we had arrived at the remote atolls of NW Papua New Guinea, the Ninigo Islands, famous as home of some the last Pacific sailing navigators & builders of sailing outrigger canoes.

Read on...

Crew for Leg 4: Jim & Chris (A-watch), Dave & Colin (B-watch), Steve & Will (B-watch)

Shampoo Panoramic

Palau

Legs 3 & 4

OK, gotta admit, we've been too busy enjoying Palau and the amazing Rock Islands to upload anything for the blog. Will do so after arrival in Madang - ETA 28th April.

Meantime, we depart this morning, fully fuelled & watered - about 1100 nm to Madang and not a lot of wind in the forecast to assist, so we have about 400L onboard, ready for a spot of motor-sailing.

Will be taking lots of pics & vid, so check in again at the end of the month for updates.

Sue will be acting as Comms Centre, so again Q's can be directed through her.

Next stop the Equator (with crossing ceremony planned, of course), then PNG!

Leg 3 Surigao-Palau

Finally, into the Pacific!

A last run ashore...

After a couple of days with the new team, exploring the islands, caves & maelstrom between Surigao & Siargao, we jumped off from Dapa, picking our way out through the coral. Not totally successfully, with a slight, slow-speed scrape on the rudder. A quick check (OK), then we were off, helped by a 2 kt ebb tide through the Hinatuan Passage.

Prop-polishing

Seas were a bit lumpy to start with, as expected, until we got away from the coast and over the Philippines Trench. The patches worked their magic again, though, and no problems amongst the new team. With lines out, we were kept busy with 2 Spanish Mackeral and a Yellow-finned Tuna - all within half an hour of sunset. The novice fishermen well and truly blooded, getting quite slick at the routine of landing, dispatching, gutting, head-and-tailing, then into a ziplock & the fridge. Food for 2 days!

Spanish Mac

The charts showed amazing depths: we passed a spot of almost 35,000 ft at one stage! Very briefly (I'll flesh this out later from the Log), we then enjoyed a fair breeze for the next 3 days. Showers brought short squals: peaking below 35 kts, more usually 25 kts. Easily manageable on the beam, with a quick reef on main & Genoa, and allowing a shampoo & rinse all round!

Unfortunately the Tapedrive Genoa couldn't take the punishment, though, the luff having been repaired once already on Leg 1. It was dropped and replaced with the spare, which then proceded to shed its UV-strip as well! Fully reefed, it looked like we were decorated with bunting (must have looked strange on arrival Palau) but didn't weaken the sail at all, so we lived with it.


Day 5

Although being headed south of the rhumb line, we were content, hoping to duck south of the Equatorial Curren and into the Countercurrent. Not to be! The current against us built slowly but steadily, finally reaching 1.3 kts as we approach Palau from the SW in about Latitude 6N.

The approaches to Koror, Palau cannot be made at night - too tricky, and now officially dis-allowed. With this current, it was now obvious we would not be able to make it by sunset on Day 4. Having originally planned on the Eastern Approach, we now switched to Plan B: a slow sail up the west side of Palau (sheltered from the Pacific swell) to hold for a few hours, before using the Western Approach. A day and a night of showers kept us busier than we had hoped, but we cleaned ship, prep'ed for arrival and enjoyed a spot of wine to celebrate the bulk of the crossing behind us.

Waiting for dawn

Arrival was interesting, using GPS waypoint-waypoint routes from The Palau Guide (a valuable aquisition) to guide us through the reef & coral channels. The chartplotter was next to useless, due a huge offset, and the channel markers all neutered: just white posts everywhere, impossible to tell which was which.


Port Control answered on #16 and directed us the the Customs wharf in Malakal Harbour. After visits from the 5 departments (Immigration, Customs, Health, Transport & Hygene - all happy and smiling, charmed by Karas banter) and US$120 lighter we lowered the Q and motored round to pick up Dennis' temporary mooring off Sam's Tours / RBYC.

Malakal Harbour, Koror, Palau

A 5-day crossing, almost to the minute.
Distance covered: 520 nm straight line. However, our log showed 685 nm - the difference due both to our 'banana' south of the rhumbline, and that inexorable current against us.

Cathedral Cave

Now to relax, and explore Palau!

Crew on Leg 3: Jim, Colin & Anne (A-watch), John & Andrew (B-watch) and Dave K & Stefano (C-watch).

More pics and description of our antics amongst the amazing Rock Islands to follow...