In 2025 we sailed about 2800 nautical miles, visited over 50 islands and more islets than I could count on the charts, found wonderful gems of pristine nature and corners of the world that are so seldom visited by tourists that we felt like true explorers!
At the beginning of 2025 we were becalmed for weeks and instead of motoring west, we stayed around New Hanover and explored there (northern Papua New Guinea). Hardly any sailboats ever visit this area–despite the proximity to the town of Kavieng, which is a popular port of entry. Then we did a tour up to Musau, where we stocked up on vegetable preserves with locals who just wouldn’t stop trading until our gift box was empty… We saw more turtles, rays and sharks than in any nature reserve around here–thanks to the strict dietary restrictions of the 7th Day Adventists who live there 
We used a few puffs of breeze from the North to island-hop back eastwards along the north side of PNG, then on to the Solomons, where we stayed for half a year, exploring islands, followed by an endless waiting time for a shipment from Australia. After we had finished our project for Simon’s Nature Reserve we wanted to head out again, but we had to return to get treatment for my serious staph infection and then we got delayed once more waiting for the visiting veterinary to finally have our tiger’s testosterone supply cut off.
Sailing northwards we visited the eastern atolls of PNG with their friendly villages (some Polynesian, others Melanesian), fabulous underwater world and seabird colonies. We decided to ignore the negative reputation of Bougainville and were rewarded with stunning landscapes and a wonderfully hospitable welcome in bays where no sailboat had anchored before. Now we are half-way through our trip through Micronesia, with its wide-strewn chain of half-sunken atolls with tiny, isolated villages and some uninhabited wildlife refuges and we’re eager to see more of those fascinating places in 2026!
2025 was a good year for us, but a challenging one for the planet with humanity making huge steps backwards in basically all aspects of life. The goals and achievements people fought for in the 20th century and early 21st century towards peace, tolerance, equal rights and protection of nature are now in peril or already overturned. Fake news and false information (helped by AI) confuse and frighten people. We’re trying to be optimistic and our wish for 2026 is that common sense will prevail over the current cave-man mentality driven by short-sighted greed for profit and power that will ultimately ruin everything and everybody if we don’t resist.
The world needs some serious “unfucking”, so let’s sing along with the Prophet’s of Rage and hope for the best 
Here’s the official video, if that’s blocked because of the word “fuck” in the title, you can watch an audio-only version here
