Tag: travel

  • Kamusta (hello) Philippines!

    Kamusta (hello) Philippines!

    Well, I wasn’t properly mentally prepared for our passage to the Philippines. Perhaps because we had spent 4 months motoring around Indonesia — there was never any wind and the seas were almost always flat calm. Or because a friend had said getting to Davao, Mindanao from Raja Ampat was relatively straight-forward, involving 3 overnight…

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  • Dada (goodbye) Indonesia … for now

    Dada (goodbye) Indonesia … for now

    In January we enjoyed more fabulous snorkeling in Yanggelo, Naffi-Nokor, and Dayang. Packhorse Riki heading into Waisai to fill diesel jugs and swap out the propane bottle. We got to eat out at a resort and a diving homestay. Tomu learned to play bridge! Bridge is my favorite card game, so I was thrilled to…

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  • December happenings

    December happenings

    My mom arrived Friday, December 6th to Sorong, after leaving Seattle on Monday afternoon! The kids are so happy to have their Po Po here visiting. She has been seamlessly incorporated into our daily life. We woke up one day at 4:15 am to go see the Red Bird of Paradise, which does a dance.…

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  • More visitors!

    More visitors!

    We made a quick trip to Sorong to pick up our friends Steph and Nic. We stocked up on butter, cheese, and chicken breast. The kids spent an afternoon playing on SV Tayrona while we ran errands and cleaned the boat. Sorong is notorious for theft, so we were happy to just stay there two…

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  • Triton Bay – Turtle Cove

    Triton Bay – Turtle Cove

    We spent about 10 days exploring different places in Triton Bay. We anchored just north of Triton Bay Divers, and I did a refresher dive course there. I did my PADI course in Savusavu, Fiji in 2012, the summer that Riki and I met, and I hadn’t dove since then. (Oh, and I got Bells…

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  • Kaimana and the hiu paus (whale sharks)

    Kaimana and the hiu paus (whale sharks)

    The kids decided to stay on board, so we took a handheld VHF radio, and headed into town to provision and visit the Quarantine office to get our green book (apparently a necessity to clear out of the country). We left them a card with how to say, Jangan datang! (Don’t come) or Mohon pergi!…

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  • Tual and Ngurbloat beach

    Tual and Ngurbloat beach

    This is the view of Tual from where we tied up our dinghy to the back of a coast guard boat. Then we climbed over two other boats and had to jump down onto a huge black fender and step up again to get to shore. After we cleared in on Wednesday and said goodbye…

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  • Passage to Indonesia

    Passage to Indonesia

    Our autopilot died about an hour after we left Thursday Island. Riki put the spare one in, and it worked, but it was super loud. It sounded like a pinball machine, and we nicknamed it Pinball Wizard (sure plays mean pinball!). We used the wind pilot when we were sailing, but often there was no…

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  • Reflections after (almost) one year living aboard

    Reflections after (almost) one year living aboard

    Luz (6) During the past year we flew to New Zealand, and then we sailed to Fiji, and then we sailed to Vanuatu, and we came to Australia on our longest passage, which was 9 days. We saw lots of cool animals. We saw a mama orca and a baby orca in NZ. We also…

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  • On the Eve of Indonesia

    On the Eve of Indonesia

    We have been in Horn Island, across from Thursday Island for 5 days now, preparing for the voyage to Indonesia. I’ve been provisioning and pre-cooking meals. Riki fixed our starboard winch and the manual bilge pump. We have been across to Thursday Island 3 times on the ferry: we took Jade to the doctor for…

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