Oxygen is all tied up in the marina in Sorong after the delivery from Fiji. This was certainly an unusual passage! We left Fiji expecting those gentle trade winds that usually sweep across the Pacific, but instead, we were greeted with 30+ knots and rain or nearly flat calm. The normal strong winds of the Coral Sea vanished, replaced by an eerie stillness, and even the typically turbulent Torres Strait was surprisingly calm. These delays, caused by both excessive and insufficient wind, meant we faced headwinds for the next 1000 nautical miles after leaving Thursday Island behind. We could have managed this IF (and it's a big IF) we hadn't encountered a vicious counter-current that seemed determined to push us backwards, sideways or both. As if things weren't complicated enough, we had a problem with the genset (remember, we have electric motors, so the genset is crucial!). AND THEN, just to add insult to injury, the support for the mainsheet track started giving us troubl...
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The last few days have been quite the adventure, in fact its been pretty hectic! We've been battling torrential rain and squalls, along with one of my biggest annoyances – unlit fishing boats at night. I'm not sure if it's a blessing or a curse that they're big enough to show up on radar. On the one hand, at least we can see them, but on the other hand, hitting one would definitely ruin our day, where as a small one would just bounce off. This is an island 1/3rd of a mile away.
It's starting to feel very equatorial – lots of gray skies, squalls, and that hot, sticky humidity. We've got about 80 nautical miles to go before we reach a channel between two islands by Irian Jaya Barat, the western end of PNG. The plan is to navigate through there in daylight, which will leave us just 35 nautical miles from the marina in Sorong. So we will slow down later to arrive at the channel at first light. Yesterday was a bit of a mixed bag, with some slow sailing and some slow motoring. It's funny how the wind could spring up from 360 different directions but always seems to come from every direction except the one we want when it finally decides to show up! We ended up doing a few tacks yesterday because it was constantly shifting around. We've seen a bit of shipping traffic and the usual assortment of fishing boats. We can always tell when a fishing boat is nearby without even looking because suddenly there are flies buzzing around the saloon. I guess eve...
Well, it's fantastic to be leaving Tual behind and setting our sights on Sorong ! The journey is slow but steady, with the wind hovering around zero knts so let's just say it's "calm" today. It is great to be heading in exactly the right direction but a shame to be motoring, especially since we're totally reliant on the generator to keep those electric motors humming. It's a bit nerve-wracking, to be honest, as we keep a close eye on that recent repair and hope it holds out for a while longer. The thousand or so nautical miles from Port Moresby to Tual were a real test of our patience and a bit of a grind – mostly battling wind and current. So, I'm incredibly happy to be moving in the right direction now, and I am ready to call 4knts a decent speed! It's truly disheartening to be pushed further and further away from your destination by a strong current, watching that VMG (Velocity Made Good) dwindle down. Right now, we're navigating around a g...