Pitufa.at

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!

The weather here in the South Pacific matches the atmosphere in global politics. I’m sure those who voted against measures to save our planet’s climate and for reckless economical growth are happy now, thinking that the prices for their groceries will magically drop with a “strong man” leading the “great nation”. Well, the prices won’t drop. They have been rising all over the planet, which some lobbies probably making big money while blaming the wars in Europe and the Middle East (but that’s just my personal conspiracy theory based on common sense rather than fake news).
What people should be worried about is how they might be next in line to lose their houses, all their belongings and maybe even their lives in the next cyclone (or hurricane), flood or wildfire cause by drought. All of these events are getting more severe as the pollution caused by humans is heating up Mother Earth to a point she can no longer cope with.
We’re at a point where all people or rather all nations should forget their animosities and work together to make sure that we still have a future in which to worry about prices of groceries or arguments about politics or borders or religion or gender, etc.

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)

The trade winds are fairly reliable winds that blow basically around the globe in a wide belt north and south of the Equator. These winds have carried us around half the world from Europe to the Pacific and we’ve relied on them to take us westwards and quite often battled them when sailing eastwards. We were used to having stronger and more reliable trade winds between SE and NE during the winter months and more fickle, weaker winds during summer.
Here in the western Pacific we face a (for us) new pattern: during the summer the monsoon winds bring northwesterly wind directions!
For our passage from Vanuatu via the Solomons and on to Papua New Guinea this means that we have to make use of the SE wind to make it quickly up to PNG before the wind shift to predominantly NW in December. We will then slowly hop back from PNG via the Solomons towards Vanuatu on the NW monsoon. Check out https://www.pitufa.at/oceanwinds/ for more details!
Here’s what Christian’s interactive wind atlas shows for October:

And here’s February:

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?

Our loudspeakers in the cockpit started crackling and failing a few months ago. No problem, we got new ones in Austria and simply brought them back to the boat along with other roughly 59 kg of goodies for Pitufa… A few days ago while we were on passage, Christian ripped out the old ones and started cleaning and sanding the area while Pitufa was happily rolling in rough seas downwind. Of course we couldn’t just install the new, shiny loudspeakers now, but had to filler, primer and paint both corners of the cockpit–all the while keeping Smurfy’s helpful paws out of the way
Everything finished, Christian installed the new loudspeakers today, turned on the music and the new speakers were crackling like the old ones!! Turns out a dodgy cable was the culprit after all (the artful construction a bee had built in the old speaker probably didn’t help with the sound either…).
Anyway, now we can finally listen to metal in the cockpit again! Sing along with AC/DC’s version of the genesis: “Let there be light, let there be sound, let there be ROCK!”

Our little Smurf has been with us now for a month, went from a handful of cat to more than quite a handful, from clumsy, sleepy baby to gangly, raucous kid, from 1 pound to almost 3 pounds!
By now he’s an expert sailor, we have to keep him back as he’s getting a bit too adventurous for our taste

One handful at 8 weeks

More than two hands at 12 weeks…

Lifting the anchor

Climbing the mast underway

Knackered little sailor

When we inspected our Pitufa before the purchase, I thought the ugly ceiling lights would be the first things we’d toss. Somehow there were always more important jobs on the to-do list though. Now, only 16 years later, we’ve finally got round to replacing them

Pitufa’s steep ladder with 6 wide-apart rungs down our 160 cm high companionway is an insurmountable obstacle for a kitten. Impossible to climb up and potentially lethal when trying to jump down (despite a mount of cushions on the wooden floorboards).
We therefore went out to buy material for a cat tree–not so easy in Port Vila. At first we couldn’t find a tube with the right diameter (at least not 1.5 metres of it, we would have had to buy a whole 6 metre piece of PVC tube for constructions), but then I spotted a roll of foil at a hardware store with just the right tube on the inside, the friendly sales people found one that was already almost empty and gave it to us for free. Score! Then we bought 2 rolls (15 metres each) of jute cord. Christian got out the drill to make a few holes at the bottom of the tube to feed the line through and then he started rolling it round and round–in the end we had to go back to the shop as he ended up using incredible 75 metres for the 150 cm long tube (8 cm diameter).

We put it in place with cable ties to the ladder and Smurfy immediately started scratching his new toy–coaxing him up the tree with a toy was a matter of minutes and he immediately wanted to practice his climbing skills. Hurray!
Going downwards on a pole is a completely different kind of business though, cats want to jump, not climb and turning around first in order to climb properly in reverse is a complicated procedure. That’s probably why so many cats get stuck on trees: it’s fun to climb up and once up they only realise gazing down how high up they actually are…

It took us a week of patiently showing him with clawing fingers where to put his paws, then helping him swing his behind round on the pole and steadying him all the way down, placing his paws firmly on the pole again whenenver he wanted to jump from too high up. After a while he only needed help to get on the pole, then he would put his forepaws in place, but needed a reassuring hand to guide his hindlegs in position and finally he managed to grab the pole, swing his behind over and climb down all the way.

We couldn’t be prouder of our smart Smurfy!!
Fixing the line at the tube

Wrapping up 75 m…

Up is fun and easy

Down is scary

Grab the pole

And slowly down

That’s true for every kitten, but especially aboard, where understanding a few words in human language and actually obeying them can potentially save a few of a cat’s nine lives… We use the standard German word “NEIN” to tell him that something’s completely forbidden and taboo, which is handy as it’s not a word we use in any other context (when talking to each other we say “Na” in Austrian dialect or “no” when English-speaking friends are around) to keep it a magic word only used as a last resort against disobedient kittens…
Smurfy’s allowed to climb up shelves, play with everything that looks like a toy, sleep in bed with us, but he’s not allowed to set paws on the kitchen counter or on tables. Of course it’s tempting to dig into his food while I’m still preparing it, but a few dozen strict “NEIN”s (sometimes in combination with a tap on the nose or the pointing paw) have made him understand the meaning of this word very clearly.
We could then use “Nein” to keep him out of the newly installed potted plants in the cockpit (this time it took 2 days to convince him) and hopefully in the future to keep him from risky jumps on deck and e.g. falling overboard…

Smurfy announcing that he’s hungry

Watching greedily as his food is prepared

And finally dinner is served!