Voyage Preparations

Preparations for our voyage to Papua New Guinea have begun. There's a lot of fixing, stitching, list writing, provisioning, buying of supplies and general tidying up of the boat. The chain on the front winch needed reconnecting to its handle. One of the storm jibs needed to be dried and repaired before being stowed away. 

It's a 1100 mile journey to Papua New Guinea as the crow flies. Very rarely with big ocean sailing can you sail in a straight line, so our course across the Coral Sea will probably be slightly longer. We'll have to sail south west with the wind then gybe North towards Alotau, so we're looking at more like 1400 miles, although it's hard to give a specific figure. 

A rough plan of our route to New Guinea. 

We leave Tuesday at noon. I'm glad we've had these few days here in Espiritu Santo as it's allowed me to settle and knock out some diving, as well as get to know the guys onboard. However, I don't really feel like we've started the adventure yet. I'm really excited about the voyage and learning how to sail, but also rather daunted by it. 1400 miles is a long way and I've done 0 miles of sailing on a boat this size. But I'm in safe and experienced hands, which is always good. Here's a rough look at what the route will look like. 

A fishing boat at Million Dollar Point, Santo. Notice the boat hull
resting on truck frames.  

My filming project #BigPacificSail is coming along well. I did my first interview with Menno the dive instructor this morning and I have one with Captain Clemens this evening some time. Tomorrow I do my final dive on the President Coolidge and have arranged to interview 83 year old Allan Powers, a local legend in these parts. He arrived in Santo during the 1970s and has run Allan Powers a Dive Tours since then. He stopped diving some time ago but it's estimated that he's dived the wreck of the President Coolidge 25,000 times! Yes and I do mean 25,000 not 250 or any variation there of. I look forward to bringing you that interview, I'm excited about it too! Footage of the wreck all also feature in the first episode. 

Upload looks unlikely before I hit the Philippines. Writing posts and a uploading picture takes long enough on an island, so it's very optimistic of me to promise anything to anybody. In the end its probably a good thing to focus on filming now and piece it all together later on.

That's all for now folks!


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