New Ireland to Buka Island
|
pos 5:26.62S 154:40.20E
There’s always someone worse
off than
yourselves as we discover watching our two Aussie yachts trying
to battle their
way down at 3knots and hardly able to point to windward making
little progress
for their efforts but putting up with some rough conditions
pounding away About lunchtime we happened
to look at our
rod and discover we have caught something. How long it had been
hooked we’ve no
idea, but the poor Barracuda was DOA (Dead on arrival) when we
pulled it
aboard. Never mind, “The Butcher of Dawnbreaker” leapt onto the
sugarscoop
knife in one hand and chopping
board in
the other and set to his grisly work producing two sizeable
fillets from the
recently deceased. Well done Lars, beer o’clock was proclaimed. We decided to cut our
journey short and
pulled into Sulphur Creek, a narrow valley with a verdant rain
forest forming
an impenetrable jungle running down the steep mountainsides to
the water’s
edge. The
only way in should one be foolish enough to venture ashore was
via a small
steam that ran down the valley to the water’s edge the shore of
which shelved
deeply into the abyss. Ignoring the primeval noises
from within we
entered the water to find it had an oily translucence produced
by the fresh
water from the river trying to mix with the saline. After a wonderful dinner of
curried
Barracuda and a good Aussie, Shiraz, we had just set to a game
of Uno, when we
had a call from our friends on “Honeymoon” asking us to guide
them in. This is no
land for night time sailing with its many unmarked reefs. Way points were given and we
lit our deck
so they would have a marker when they made it to the entrance
which they did,
eventually arriving around 10 pm having taken some 24hours
longer than we did. 2015-07-09 Up around 7 we
motored over to
them to discuss their trip and our respective sailing plans for
the day.
Despite all, they and their two young children were in fine
humour. The more so
when we told them of our swimming and they told us they had been
advised by the
visiting natives that the place was full of crocodiles! Heading south we had
intended to go to the
southwest and the Trobriand Islands, but as usual the wind was
on the nose and the
prospect of 24hours bouncing up and down was rejected and a
sharp left turn put
the wind off the bow and gave us perfect sailing conditions. We
were soon doing
8knots in 13 to 15 knots of wind very little bounce and going
like a train. Even the Aussies were
impressed as we heard
them commenting on the radio the “Dawnbreaker” was last seen
“Going like the
clappers”. The wind and our speed stayed constant for most of
the day and into
the evening. The irony was that we would arrive about 2 in the
morning with no
light to see us through the reefs. We know how dodgy the charts
are, we found
them to be 500 metres out when moored in Rabaul bay! Too risky
when the channel
is only 300m to start with. Winding in the Genoa and
with the wind down
to 6-8kts our speed fell to 4 then eventually 2.5 before dawn.
With the sunrise
we gingerly made our way past the wrecked shipping that littered
the shores,
confirming the wisdom our caution. Despite this and a good look
out we got
caught when the bottom rose from 40metres to 2m in a distance of
15metres.
Fortunately we were carefully feeling our way in and hardly felt
the bump. The
clarity of the water was very impressive, though the lack of
sunlight due to
the cloud cover, made it difficult to spot colour changes to the
water that
usually indicate the reef. Luckily we were able to extricate
ourselves back
into deeper water and so continued to feel our way through the
island passages
to a suitable anchorage. Bob The Blog |