Pitufa.at

We wish you all a merry Christmas (or other festivity) and a happy, healthy, adventurous and exciting year 2025!
Thanks for reading and travelling along with us for another year
We send you slightly sweaty kisses from summery hot Papua New Guinea,
Birgit, Christian and Smurfy

Checking in in Kavieng is a pleasure: we had done our online-evisa (50 USD per person) and sent off an email with a prearrival notification beforehand, so when we arrived in Kavieng we simply anchored in front of the friendly Nusa Resort (they take separated rubbish, so make sure you keep burnables, recylable plastic and cans separate!!), took a taxi boat over to town and went to see Martin, the cumstom’s guy. Martin stamped our passports (visa valid for 2 months) and wished us fun exploring PNG–all within 5 minutes, with a big smile and no further fees…
Then we were free to explore the town: smiling faces everywhere (most of them with bright-red teeth due to the nasty habit of chewing betelnuts), better than expected shopping at the numerous supermarkets + hardware stores and great produce at the cheap veg and fruit market. We love PNG!
From the anchorage we just flagged down one of the many passing boats, turned out to be all-ladies

Got a sim

Checked out the many supermarkets


Got some essentials for Christian

Bought some things to give away at the second-hand shop

Did not buy betelnut…

But lots of fresh goodies at the market!

Before we even went sailing for the first time we were already inspired by Doris’ and Wolf’s stories and photos. After watching their presentations about the magical places they visited with their SY Nomad we were even more determined to go cruising… Of course I read Doris’ book then and loved it! In the meantime we have met Doris and Wolf out here in the South Pacific and were lucky to be on the same route with them for a while and found out that they are not just great sailors, but also lovely people to hang out with
“Frei wie der Wind” is still available on Amazon and so are the sequels “So wild wie das Meer” and “Hart wie das Eis”. All three are great reads and highly recommended–IF you speak German. Unfortunately there are no English versions…
They’ll also be doing another round of presentations in the new year, so if you’re in Austria, Germany or Switzerland at that time, check out the dates on their website and be ready to get whirled away by their highly professional and entertaining show to the sunny South Pacific, around the world or to the frosty Northwest-Passage!

A fellow sailor has written and illustrated a super-sweet book about an octopus and his adventures. It’s for very young readers from 2 to 7 years old. German only though… “Olli Oktopus findet eine Taucherbrille” is the first part of a series and available on Amazon!

During his third month aboard, Smurfy turned from a savage, but sweet kitten into a rebellious teenager with severe anger issues ignoring all boundaries and testing his limits daily. We tried all the usual tricks we had learned with our previous cats and also did some reading in cat psychology studies: never play with hands but toys, offer punching balls to get rid of aggression, make meeping/howling sounds when bitten/scratched, ignore him when he’s too aggressive, etc. Nothing worked and we used up a whole package of antiseptic cream on bites and scratches (the Western South Pacific is famous for skin infections…).
Then he started pooping in the garden (after using his toilet from day 1 as a kitten) and again I tried to explain, reason and plead, then proceeded to shouting and ended up hitting him (I never hit Leeloo in 21 years)–all to no avail. When I caught him with his bum still in a herb pot I grabbed him and threw him overboard. That finally did the trick: after quickly climbing back aboard and getting a shower he looked quite contrite and he’s much sweeter and gentler now. It seems he finally realised that he’s not the big alpha cat here aboard and that we’re nice to him not out of weakness, but because we love him. Of course he knows that nobody can resist his mischievous freckles and the sweetest, little dotted belly in the world

I was quite unhappy when I spotted some spider veins on my boobs last year (of all possible places…). I had them lasered, but they quickly reappeared, so that wasn’t a solution. Planning our journey to Europe last August, I had the idea of a cover-up tattoo, got in touch with an artist in Turkey and liked her sketches. On the way back we did a stop-over in Istanbul and I got my tattoo: a mixture of delicate, ink-drawn leaves in black and purple, water-colour-style semi-transparent flowers. I love them! Much better to show off purple flowers than purple veins

Falling over board and drowning is the biggest danger for a ship’s cat. Smurfy’s a reckless climber and we could not persuade him to be careful–he insisted on climbing on solar panels, balancing on the railing and other crazy stunts. We were eagerly waiting for him to finally fall in, so he would learn his lesson in a safe anchorage instead of on passage (where he has to wear a harness and leash now). In the meantime we let him climb up his cat ladder on the stern from the dinghy and even from a boogie board we take with us in the water (he curiously follows us down the steps when we go swimming anyway…). Now the big SPLASH has finally happened… He surfaced, swam determinedly and very fast to the stern (without a moment of confusion where to go) and raced up the ladder. It took maybe 4 seconds between SPLASH and being back aboard and having a freshwater shower…
So cats need neither life vests nor swimming lessons, but a sturdy ladder and training definitely pay off!

We love to linger in remote places, but of course you can’t just go shopping for fresh herbs, salad or veg on an uninhabited island… Therefore it’s great to grow some and we usually have basil, mint, spring onions, parsley and sometimes even bellpeppers, chilis, pak choy or tomatoes growing in pots underneath the sprayhood. They are placed on a non-skid mat and secured with bungee cords, so they can even stay there during rough passages! In the beginning we had them only outside in bay mode and put them below deck on passage, but that never worked as the plants died without light or the pots toppled over at some point. Only when we found a system to leave them in place all the time the garden started thriving.
We have pots without a drainage hole to avoid a mess, but that means it’s easy to drown the plants (has happened a few times). To guarantee a good harvest despite little soil I use fertiliser once a week and change the soil twice a year.
Today we harvested radishes–great as you can’t just use the roots, but also the greens.

Smurfy is growing up so fast! At barely 4 months he already weighs 2 kilos…

Smurfy's second month aboard

October brought lots of fun helping with sails, keeping us busy on passages (we had to put him in a harness at some point, not a popular move), coconuts, flying fishies and tons of playtime!

(22 photos)

Keeping a kitten aboard busy keeps us pretty busy! Smurfy’s happy to play along with anything we play with (or rather everything we handle…), and he can play “chase” the mouse for hours just running after a rope or a roll of toilet paper, but we also want him to practice his dexterity. The first box we makeshifted lasted only a week–Smurfy just smashed it in his eagerness to get at the ball inside. The second version is extra-reinforced and has already been on duty for a month! We simply cut differently sized holes into a box, glued reinforcement cardboard all around and fill it with different toys. Especially on passages he loves playing with it as the balls inside magically come to life and race around…
The first version didn’t stand a chance…

Double and triple reinforced box:

It took him a moment to figure out what he was supposed to do

But he quickly got it!

Smurfy has turned from a docile kitten to a raucous teenager within a few weeks. At least he’s still eager to help with every task Christian and I try to accomplish… How did we get anything done before we got our Smurfy?