Sailing Papua New Guinea -- WEEK 6

Day 36 – November 27

We spent most of the day catching up on boat projects, reading and journal writing, cleaning and washing our laundry in salt water.  It may seem that there would be a lot of “free time” on a boat but in my experience so far I find that rarely do I have time to relax, let alone be bored.  Somehow we always seem to find a million and one things to do.

Day 37 – November 28

Rod invited all of us this morning to go diving with him for WWII wrecks - his passion.  Earlier in the week he had spotted something in the harbor that he wanted to check out.  We located the wreck with all the fancy equipment he had on board his boat and he sent all of us down with our scuba tanks to investigate it.  The wreck turned out to only be a local fishing boat but it was super exciting knowing that we were the first people to discover this wreck.  He tells us that he has uncovered hundreds of wrecks, some still with human remains from planes and ships that went down during WWII.  If we are around Rabaul next week he has invited us to help him dredge the silt off a WWII plane wreck he’s just discovered that supposedly had 6 soldiers on board.

Day 38 – November 29

Early in the morning Rod pulled up to our boat in his dinghy asking for help.  The night before a sailboat had gotten caught up in a reef and needed to be rescued.  The news Rod received was not much other than the boat was near some cliffs near Kokopo and might need to be salvaged (meaning it may have sunk).  Becky and I jumped at the chance of doing a “search and rescue” mission and within minutes were in Rod’s dinghy with all our scuba gear.  We set out on his main boat and an hour later found the French-Canadian Pierre sitting at the bow of his boat.  Turns out that his engine had stopped working and the anchor was wound around the reef.  Bec and I dove down to assess the situation, untangle his anchor from the reef and to make sure he was able to completely pull up his anchor so that Rod could tow him back to the dock at Rabaul.

The jellyfish here just love me!  I have so many itchy stings that it looks like I have contracted chicken pox.  I guess it makes up for the fact that the mosquitoes have been avoiding me and instead have been biting my crewmates.

Day 39 – November 30

During WWII when the Japanese troops called Rabaul home, they built over 300km of underground tunnels in Rabaul alone.  Since Rabaul was constantly being bombed this was how they stayed alive and protected their supplies.  Today, everywhere you go you see these tunnel entrance ways in the sides of mountains. 

Rod had asked Becky and I if we wanted to go exploring tunnels with him and the local volcanologist, who was looking for fault lines in the tunnels.  We jumped at the chance but have to admit were a bit nervous when before leaving Rod grabbed a handgun and shoved it into Becky’s backpack.  For safety reasons he told us.  Sometimes there are “rascals” or criminals living in the tunnels and it’s better to be safe than sorry. 

We drove high into the mountains in search of one particular town and after asking many locals for directions we finally arrived.  Local village boys took us on an excursion to all the “caves” they knew of in the area.  It was quite a trek through jungle to get to these tunnels.  I was constantly watching in front of me to make sure that I did not accidentally run into the big spider webs with even bigger spiders that I had been seeing everywhere.

The village boys took us to several tunnels... some were just entrance ways that were caved in and went nowhere but others, after you crawled through the tiny entrance, you could stand up in and they went on and on for a kilometer or two.  We arrived to one deep in the jungle - the entrance way covered completely with jungle.  The village boys chopped down the vines and leaves and we all climbed down (or rather slid down) into the entrance.

Inside we found a maze of tunnels, about 7 feet in height.  With our torches we went exploring and along with several interesting insects (cross between a scorpion and a spider) and bats, we actually found empty Japanese beer bottles.

Becky and I arrived back to Rabaul extremely dirty and very happy.  We jumped into the bay with all our clothes on and swam out to SEAWANHAKA since we were so dirty.  What an amazing day!

Day 40 – December 1

In the morning we pulled over to the dock to top off our water tanks and Rod filled up our scuba tanks with the air compressor onboard his boat.  After waiting 2 hours for the wind to shift to a favorable direction, we left the dock and sailed over to the base of the active volcano, anchoring there for the night in the rust colored sulfur water.

Day 41 – December 2

We tried to leave the bay by tacking our way out but because of light and unfavorable winds it took us over 2 hours to cross a distance that with good wind should have taken 10 minutes!  Since we didn’t have enough daylight or wind to make it to our planned destination of the Duke of York Islands we anchored on the other side of the active volcano at Escape Bay. 

Becky and I swam ashore and explored this ash covered barren landscape.  We walked through deep crevices at least 15 feet high, finding trucks buried up to their steering wheels by the volcanic ash.  Discovering that the top layer of ash covering the land was silky smooth and would stick to our skin we had the great idea to cover our bodies completely in this gray ash.  Becky came up with the slogan “Tired of being white?  Why be white when you can be gray”.  This had us laughing so hard.

For the next 30 minutes we entertained ourselves by throwing rocks against the ash covered land, watching the top layer crumble, creating huge ash clouds that would engulf us.  Such simple pleasures!

Day 42 – December 3

With good wind in the morning we set sail for the Duke of York Islands and along the way stopped at what Rod called “8 meter bommie” to scuba dive.  The water temperature on the boat gauge read 91 degrees!