Pitufa.at

Remember our plan to sail up from Vanuatu to the north of PNG using the SE trades in order to arrive before December when the wind collapses and then sail back from northern PNG to the Solomons using the NW monsoon that’s supposed to blow over PNG from December to March?
Well, that didn’t work out: the winds got very light (but predominantly east) in December and January, so we never made it to the Hermit and Ninigo Islands in the NW corner of PNG, but stayed in the Kavieng area instead. Since then we had mainly light NE to E in February and March. We had one brief episode of northerly winds and that was only because cyclone Alfred went down the Australian coast and influenced the wind patterns all the way up to PNG–we used those winds to hop from Kavieng eastwards.
We thought that we were seeing an effect of La Nina, but locals assure us that the Northwest wind that used to bring cooler weather and rain has not arrived for at least 2 years! The water tanks on many islands were nearly empty in February, another negative side effect of climate change that hits the people here…
So this is what the wind statistics show for March (see Pitufa’s wind atlas)

This is what we actually have

And that was when Alfred went down the eastern coast of Australia

What makes sailing east additionally difficult is a strong west-setting current