Pitufa.at

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.

After the success we had in Matuku persuading the chiefs and headmen to install protected areas (Tabu) around the island to protect the reefs from overfishing and to ensure a sustainable use of the resources, we tackled the same issue here in Fulanga.
The problem’s the same like everywhere in Fiji (and the rest of the Pacific islands and probably elsewhere): the islands were able to sustain the population for a long time, but now with modern technology (spear guns since the 1990s, torches to go nightfishing, outboard engines to go longer distances and of course freezers to store and export fish) the numbers of fish are rapidly shrinking.
Just like in Matuku the people here are noticing the change themselves and are concerned–they are just now starting a Tabu committee and thinking of strategies to control the overexploitation. We volunteered to share info about our experiences in the Pacific, the different Tabu types in comparison (short term Rahui in Tahiti that doesn’t work at all, permanent Rahui in Rapa Iti that works very well), etc.

We got a projector from the school, a white sheet from a house, the guy from the Tabu committee brought kava (the only way to get the villagers to a gathering is the sound of pounding kava he said with a wink) and it worked–the assembly hall quickly filled up for our presentation. We try to present the main points quite simplified as many villagers don’t speak English well. The importance to keep the eco-system in balance, the role herbivores play in keeping the reef clean and the necessity to install protected zone and to limit the export. No reef no fish, no fish no reef…
The villagers were interested and the following discussion quite lively. They already have short-term tabu system: spearfishing is only allowed 6 months of the year inside the lagoon and the pass (always outside). We explained that such a system is not efficient as the fish don’t have enough time to grow and reproduce when they just leave them for 6 months. It would be much better and more sustainable for the future to have an area that is always protected, so fish can really mature in there to have a much higher reproduction rate and just fish off the “overflow” around the borders of the Tabu. It turns out that they are willing to install taboo areas, but worried that not everybody will respect them and especially that people from neighbouring islands will sneak into the pass at night to go fishing anyway… We hope it’ll work out somehow as the pass area here is really worth protecting. It’s among the top 3 reefs we’ve seen in the Pacific!

No worries, this is not a blog about Covid19. We haven’t seen another cruising boat in almost 2 months, so we’re as isolated as it gets and the daily lockdown is all about the vicious mosquitos here. Now that the weather is hot and calm they swarm out all over the lagoon–no place is safe.
The first evening we simply retreated to the aft cabin after sunset, thinking we’d be safe behind mosquito screens and shut doors. We killed about 10 in the evening and settled down for the night, but somehow the bloodsuckers made it in anyway–we had to turn on the lights twice to smash another dozen and when I went to the loo afterwards another dozen followed me back in… The next day we thought we were extra clever and closed the bathroom doors as well–using the light, little room as a decontamination chamber we slipped in there first (laptop for the evening entertainment, bottle of water and bar of chocolate in hand), smashed all those that wanted to come along and proceded to the aft cabin. By 2 in the morning the room was buzzing again–incredible.

We kept improving the method and expanded the counter measures to a three-phase lockdown. We close off the aft cabin and the bathroom at 5, but we can still sit in the cockpit and have dinner. At sunset we go (flee) inside, close the companionway and all hatches in the saloon, proceed through the decontamination chamber into the aft cabin and tape off the doors (they leave a tiny gap at the bottom). With the new system we can finally enjoy restful, undisturbed nights again