Pitufa.at

Wailangilala is home to a few hundred red-footed boobies, a few hundred noddies (most common in Fr Poly, but rare here), some white terns and–much to our suprise and delight–about 20 couples of brown boobies! Those ground-nesting birds have become a rare sight, even though according to our Wikipeda they are listed as “least concern”–makes you wonder when somebody bothered to count last… It’s wonderful to wake up a chorus of roaring boobies and chirping terns, we haven’t seen that many birds in a long time! We also found turtle tracks up the beach and the nests above the tide line.

The island is private, the previous owner only built 8 houses here, planned to have a resort, but never finished the building site and the island was left alone again (only a care-taker family lives here). On the weekend a real estate agent came by–the island is for sale and he wanted to see the property before listing it. A film crew will come soon to do a promotional video. He claimed that there are strict environmental stipulations about the use, but we are still very worried about this bird paradise. The island is a (comparative) bargain, we wished we could buy it for the birds…

The weather looks settled enough, so we’re sailing to some little islands north of the Lau group. Looking at sat images we hope for some pristine nature, but we’re also worried that we may find uninhabited islands that get exploited by neighbouring islands and are therefore in a bad state. We’re hoping for the best and will keep you posted! From now on you’ll see just the default image of the smurfette in FB posts that get automatically forwarded from our blog. The pic of the smurfette means we have no internet and can only communicate via SSB radio and pactor modem.

In so many places on earth forests are burned down to make space for cattle, agriculture, etc. Here on Vanua Balavu every second hill features only blackened tree stumps, the soil is getting washed away and erosion is clearly visible. We have talked to people and apparently there’s no plan behind the fires that are devastating the island–just carelessness and stupidity. We talked to the chief about erosion and the fact that with each rain soil gets washed away, so the island is less fertile and the reefs suffer. As we were buzzing back in the dinghy we noticed yet another column of smoke–a nearby hill was burning all night. Really sad.

We’d like to proudly announce Pitufino’s new hardware model!
Besides a few smaller changes (like the addition of a reset button or a status LED), the new model V1.1 features an alarm buzzer.
This brings the advantage that mobile devices can go into a sleep mode or offline and alarms are still reliably raised.
This further enables Pitufino to be used as a repeater (or an external alarm) for alarms sent over NMEA2000/SeatalkNG from Raymarine and Navico (Simrad,B&G,…) devices.

Available in our online shop now.

Our anchorage here on the East side of Vanua Balavu is very calm and protected from the current NW winds, but still we’re woken up at each morning at 5–it’s the noisy neighbours returning from their foraging in the forest. A big colony of fruitbats (flying foxes) live on the island next to us! They spend their days hanging upside down and supposedly resting, but the screeching and quarelling never stops–makes you wonder how they’re not too sleepy to fly out at night… Really cute, little animals!

Whenever we’re underway and the weather’s not acting according to the forecast, I complain about the grib files… So here’s what they look like: this is today’s American GFS model of the SW Pacific. While NZ is squashed between two nasty weather systems, Fiji (top middle) is having a little branch of the convergence zone that gives us oppressively hot and humid weather with thunderstorms and squalls…

Even though Vanua Balavu has a weekly flight, the shops only have basic supplies and there is no local veg market. We asked around and got plenty of fresh veg and fruit from friendly women here! Today we’ll make preserves

We met with Ursula Burkert for an interview in August and on Sunday it will be on air on Ö1, the Austrian station for classical music, news and culture
Here’s the link!

We are searching for new tenants for our garden flat in Graz, Austria. Send us an email if you’re interested or know someone how may be!

We are getting ready to leava Fulanga. We’ve had quite a hyperactive time here and would have needed 48 hour days to fit everything in:
- village life (spending time with our host family, Christian did some electric repairs, spreading info about sustainable fishing)
- nature (snorkeling and kayaking in different areas, each one prettier than the last)
- and of course boat projects (Christian serviced our winches and I sanded and painted the frame of the forecabin hatch)
Today we’ll sail northwards to Vanua Balavu, because it’s the next island with shops, 4G and protected anchorages. Along the way we’ll have to pay close attention to the course, because we’ll go through the dense island chain of the Lau group and will have to dodge several islands. The weather forecast looks great (Easterly winds around 15 knots), so we should make the 120 nm in less than 24 hours.