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Birgit

Author's details

Name: Birgit
Date registered: September 22, 2010
Jabber / Google Talk: admin

Latest posts

  1. Einkaufen in Honiara — June 9, 2025
  2. Shopping in Honiara — June 9, 2025
  3. Fotos von Simon’s Nature Reserve — May 30, 2025
  4. Photos of Simon’s Nature Reserve — May 30, 2025
  5. Support for Simon’s nature reserve — May 30, 2025

Most commented posts

  1. The Matuku Marine Reserve and how it came into being — 11 comments
  2. Donations for the Marine Reserve in Matuku — 10 comments
  3. Hilfsprojekte für Matuku — 7 comments
  4. Leeloo 2000–2021 — 6 comments
  5. Survived! — 6 comments

Author's posts listings

2025
09
Jun

Shopping in Honiara

by Birgit

We’ve just spent 3 days on Honiara’s dusty roads chasing parts for the mooring and solar installation and of course we’ve done some more provisioning for ourselves. Once again everything went fine, nothing got stolen and yesterday we sailed over to Simon’s bay again! We didn’t get much sleep in the loud and rolly anchorage in Honiara and this time Christian caught a big-city bug,… Continue reading »

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2025
30
May

Photos of Simon’s Nature Reserve

by Birgit

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2025
30
May

Support for Simon’s nature reserve

by Birgit

Google maps shows a place called “Simon’s Nature Reserve” in a bay on the Florida Islands just north of Honiara and intrigued by the name we anchored, not knowing what to expect. An eco lodge? A nature park with a guard? Turns out Simon is just a local man living in a hut ashore, but he has dedicated the past 20 years to protecting the… Continue reading »

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2025
26
May

Honiara, capital of the Solomons

by Birgit

Anchoring We were warned not to go to Honiara by sailboat as the anchorage has a bad reputation for bad holding, bouncy conditions and crime. Well, I suppose we got lucky: we found a good anchor spot off the breakwater cafe (a big thank you to Fred, the owner, who let us use their dock and helped with advice) and with a few days of… Continue reading »

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2025
15
May

Sailing towards Honiara

by Birgit

The only times we get north or northwest wind is when a cyclone or low passes south of us. With some patience we managed to sail all the way down from northern PNG riding those winds. This week a low south of Guadalcanal brought strong winds and floodings to Honiara–and brought us a weather window to sail down from New Georgia to the Florida Islands… Continue reading »

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2025
05
May

8 months of Smurfy aboard

by Birgit

Incredible, but true, our kitten’s already grown up. He’s still a bit crazy, but getting better (or so we tell ourselves). Unfortunately there’s no veterinary in the Solomon Islands, so we still haven’t been able to have him neutered. For now we just hope that he won’t start marking his territory anytime soon as he can smell neither competing rivals nor lady cats out here… Continue reading »

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2025
29
Apr

Convergence Zone weather sailing (motoring)

by Birgit

We have a shipment arriving in Honiara, the capital of the Solomons, mid May (new solar panels, a new anchor chain, etc. coming on a container ship), so we should slowly make our way southeast towards Honiara before the trade winds set in. No problem, we thought, even though there’s not much wind we’ll just do short hops with little puffs of wind, it’s only… Continue reading »

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2025
28
Apr

Squid egg spread

by Birgit

We often have groups of squid and cuttlefish hanging out around the boat. They are really interesting to watch communicating with each other with intricate changes of colour, swimming forwards, backwards and even sideways looking like aliens. We always wondered why they were so interested in the anchor chain, now we know: they are looking for a convenient substrate to attach their eggs! The poor… Continue reading »

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2025
19
Apr

Shopping in Gizo

by Birgit

We’ve just spent two days anchored off Gizo, one of the bigger towns of the Solomons, but it’s really just a village. The anchorage would be rough in trade wind conditions, but it was nicely calm and protected in NW winds (when we were there). Gizo has the mouldy charm of one of the less charming Caribbean islands with (corroded) corrogated iron everywhere, muddy streets… Continue reading »

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2025
12
Apr

Bleached, dying, dead

by Birgit

Have you ever cried into a diving mask? I did today when we were snorkeling on the reef off Vella Lavella (Solomon Islands). We had visited the village of Leona before and were thrilled to hear that they are thinking of the future and have been protecting their reef for 20 years(!) with no-fishing zones. Additionally they have now created a conservation area in the… Continue reading »

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2025
29
Mar

Logging in the Solomons

by Birgit

In Taro we saw a big freighter loading logs and asked the guys at customs and immigration about it: they said that logging was done on a big scale by Malayan companies. Asked about regulations for reforestation they just sadly smiled and shook their heads–theoretically maybe, but neither the logging companies nor the land owners actually replant trees. So lush rain forest is turned into… Continue reading »

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2025
27
Mar

Arrived in the Solomon Islands!

by Birgit

We’ve checked in at Taro Island–quick, simple and very pleasant! We contacted customs and immigration ahead (aleonard@customs.gov.sb, samson.korai@commerce.gov.sb), they sent a form each to fill in before arrival. Once we got there we wrote to them again, went to the police station where Alex and Samson checked us in, so no running around searching for offices… We paid 500 SBD fees and were glad to… Continue reading »

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2025
26
Mar

Found Nemo in Papua New Guinea!

by Birgit

Nowhere else have we encountered such huge numbers and such a variety of anemones and clown fish subspecies!

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2025
20
Mar

Sailing Towards the Horizon as pdf

by Birgit

Are you interested in reading my travelbook, but haven’t ordered one yet as you don’t want to support Amazon? I’ve now converted it into a pdf, scaled it down to a reasonable size (50 MB) and I’m happy to send it as a WeTransfer. The paperback costs 17 euros on Amazon (btw I only get 5 per book), but I thought I’d offer the pdf… Continue reading »

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2025
15
Mar

No NW monsoon over PNG

by Birgit

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… Continue reading »

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