Pitufa.at

Turtles are still hunted and eaten on most islands in the Pacific, the only exceptions are touristy places (where the locals are encouraged to protect them as an attraction for visitors) and around very developed areas, where environmental organisations have been raising awareness for the protection of endangered species. We try the same and often include turtles in the presentations we do at schools, explaining their role in the eco-system and how so many die in the nets of big fishing fleets and due to plastic pollution that it’s no longer sustainable for islanders to hunt them like its their tradition… The only places where we’ve met lots of turtles that are not even afraid of humans, has been in very remote, uninhabited places and around islands with strict seventh day adventist churches (as their religion prohibits the consumption of marine animals without scales…).
In Kapingamarangi we see even less turtles when going snorkeling than on the atolls of PNG, where we’ve just come from–only one small specimen so far. Yesterday, our friend Twinson, the policeman, came by with his boat after a fishing trip to offer us some tuna. I was horrified to see a small turtle lying on its back among the fish the three men had caught. I asked if the poor thing was still alive (yes, yes) and tried to explain that it was still very small, too small to be caught, but they just laughed and said it was good meat. So I asked if I could buy it from them, but Twinson refused with a smile, no money needed, I could have it for free. Again I tried to explain that we see so few turtles anymore and that it would be really good to protect them now to still have some for the future, but I don’t think they understood or agreed. Twinson gestured to the boy at the bow, who grabbed the turtle at its flipper and hauled it over the side. I was worried that it was too hurt or weak to swim (it had looked dead in the boat), but the little creature set off like shot from a cannon and was gone from sight within a second.
I hope it has learned its lesson, will give humans a wide berth from now on, and will grow to be a huge, wise, old turtle.
I didn’t take pictures yesterday, but here’s an unafraid specimen we met in the Line Islands

It’s never great when the water alarm in the bilge goes off with a high-pitched BEEEEP, but it’s especially disconcerting when you’re out on the ocean with still 60 nm to go to land… The first step is to lift the floorboard, take out the alarm and silence the deafening noise to be able to think again. The next step is nasty: put a finger into the sloshing brew and taste it–fuck, saltwater!
That’s when simple unease turns into dread.
Fortunately a hasty search for the dripping culprit revealed it was just the watermaker, so we turned it off, got out our cherished Stanley (the wet/dry vacuum cleaner) and Christian quickly got the bilge dry, while I was comforting Smurfy in the aft cabin–Smurfy is terrified of noisy Stanley. And all that on a pitching, rolling boat in light winds and confused seas.
Once we were at anchor, Christian dismounted the feed pump (with the helping paws of Smurfy), changed the pump head and the watermaker’s running again without any leaks!

Have you seen videos of people hypnotising chickens and even sharks by rolling them on their backs and stroking them from the collarbone down their belly? I thought that magic might knock out crocodiles as well, so I grabbed ours and behold: it worked!

Remember how we were hoping that Smurfy would be less aggressive with less testosterone in his system? Well, it seemed to work for a while, but then we started noticing that he’s been gaining weight since he was neutered, so we’re feeding him smaller portions. Guess what happens when he’s hungry and cranky? Yep, he gets aggressive…
This morning he was sitting next to his empty food bowl about an hour after he’d had breakfast when I was walking past. He jumped at me, sank his canines into my leg and ran off to hide before I could grab him… We call this kind of ambush “sneaky smurfy snake bite”. Worried about infection from sea water I put hydrocolloid plasters on the bites to seal them off, but then of course there remains the risk of infection from within–cats aren’t exactly famous for the dental hygiene. I suppose they could hunt the way Komodo dragons do, just give their prey a small bite and then leisurely wander after them until they topple over from the infection…
So maybe we should call him Smurfy dragon monster instead of Smurfy pukpuk monster. Pukpuk means saltwater crocodile in the Tok Pisin of Papua New Guinea

It seems like such a culture clash when locals in handmade canoes show up, smartphone in hand to take pictures of our boat. People who live in huts made of woven pandanus, coconut or bamboo with just a single solar light and charger still invest the little money they have into a smartphone… PNG never established a network of landline connections, instead they started putting up towers for cell phones once this technology was available, so having a mobile phone was vital to be connected to the outer world. People here love Facebook and video calls, so they want to have a smart phone
Very remote communities sometimes don’t have a cell tower, but just a WiFi hotspot–in these cases the people really need a smartphone in order to do their calls via WhatsApp or FB messenger. In places where this hotspot is broken (or never got finished), people race out when they see a sailboat, hoping that they have Starlink aboard: on a remote atoll we had half the village aboard reconnecting with family after many months without any means of communication!

We’ve never felt so popular before… Many people here have never seen a sailboat before and the normal reaction once we drop anchor is for half the village to rush out by boat or canoe to have a chat and take pictures of us. Yes, here the locals takes photos of the tourists, not the other way round Of course they are eager to trade, so we have more fruit and veg aboard than we can eat…

Everyone wants to come up to see the boat

And everyone wants to take pics and pose with us for more pics

Hoisting the flag of Bougainville

Of course we’re welcome to visit the villages in return!

This 19 kg yellow-fin tuna was the heaviest fish we ever caught. We use a simple handline for fishing and Christian pulled the big guy in within 5 minutes (no endless fighting and torturing like people with professional fishing gear seem to enjoy). Christian usually just grabs the swivel of the metal leader to hoist fish up to Pitufa’s high stern, but in this case we strapped a gaff hook to the rear end of our boat hook, otherwise we wouldn’t have been able to get him up… Fortunately tuna aren’t big fighters, so it was fairly easy to kill the big fish and let it bleed out.
Smurfy was watching us all the time, inspected the monster-fishy with fascination and was of course the first to get a piece–the only way to get his paws out of the bloody mess and continue cleaning and chopping up the fish.
Whenever we catch a bigger fish, Christian chops thick pieces (about 8 cm, just as long as the ceramic knife I use) still on the aft deck and I then take over in the galley, cutting off skin, bones and bloody bits. In this case it took me about 3 hours: I filled 12 jars to be processed in the pressure cooker and that still left us with 3 plastic boxes (2 kg each) full of sashimi-quality meat to finish between the three of us (Smurfy manages almost the same amount as we do) over the next 8 days (that’s as long as we trust fish in the fridge). About 2 kilos of red, bloody meat went to the stray cats of Taro
When I tell people that we eat fish for lunch and dinner for over a week, I usually don’t get the excited reaction I expect, but a mixture of pity and disgust. Maybe they think we just keep munching an endless repetition of burgers and fish and chips?!
So here’s the menu Christian and I had for our tuna festival. Smurfy thinks cooking ruins fish, so he got sashimi three times a day instead
1 dinner: seared tuna with wasabi mayonnaise and crackers
2 lunch: carpaccio (with capers, ginger, spring onions)
2 dinner: seared tuna steaks in a creamy carrot and spring onion sauce with rice
3 lunch: tuna burgers
3 dinner: sashimi with rice
4 lunch: spicy ceviche (raw fish with lemon juice and chilis, we added papaya, cucumber, spring onions and spinach greens)
4 dinner: hot Indian tandoori tuna and eggplant in roti flat-bread
5 lunch: tuna salad with cocktail-sauce
5 dinner: poisson cru with rice (French Poly national dish raw fish in coconut, we do a spicier version with ginger, chilis and veg)
6 lunch: tuna sandwiches
6 dinner: Thai curry with rice noodles
7 lunch: tuna dip with tacos
7 dinner: Japanese-style teriyaki tuna steaks with rice
8 lunch: tuna wraps
8 dinner: Indian tuna curry (palau masala) with spicy sweet potatoes + banana chutney