Australis

The End of Illness

2012-02-10T05:34:00.001+07:00

I skimmed the The End of Illness (David B. Agus) while waiting at a Brisbane Queenstreet bookstore that has taken up the slack for the massive Borders Books that shuttered recently. I was looking for health wisdom. One statistic was quite new to me--that sitting at a desk all day after a strenuous morning workout can be as damaging to your health as smoking (statistically speaking). However, I had to put down the book and discount that tidbit of "insight" after I surveyed the chapter on "Rotten Eggs" which describes what Agus calls his egg theory. After explaining how subtle environmental factors for a chicken egg can profoundly affect it's state, Agus proceeds to exaggerate the link between embryonic environment and its affect on development of the human brain. Agus falls into the banal statistical trap of assuming correlation and causation are equivalent. According to Agus, a child born within 18 months of another child to the same mother develops autism with 3 fold greater likelihood. He assigns the cause to the change in the uterine environment for the embryo due to recent childbirth and the brother/sister recently living there. However, a much more plausible argument is that closely spaced births and the environmental effect of being a little brother/sister to a mother juggling two breast-feeding children have a much more profound influence on mental development. Subtle changes in a mother's behavior have been associated with autism since the 70's. And mothers of 2 children close in age may adjust their care for the second child, using what they learned with the first, and perhaps rationing breast milk in different ways than they would if they only had one child suckling every 2 hours. The manufactured nature of baby formula (perhaps with trace heavy metals and volatile organic chemicals) might also have an effect on neural development. Not to mention that the mother will likely be more confident with the second child, with so recent a memory of the birth and care of a child. And confidence can have unexpected affects on the actual development of a child, I'm sure. The parents may become more aloof, less responsive to familiar personality quirks of their baby. Tehy may even devalue those unique personality trates that make their second baby who he is, simply because they've seen something similar recently. The baby cuteness instincts may not work as well the second time around, if recent in parents' memory. Parental emotional connection to a child must certainly affect their brain development, much more strongly than the recent presence of another child in the womb. Just being the second child (younger brother/sister), close in age, surely has a profound impact on development due to the natural rivalry. Unfortunately, a younger brother is shackled with the jealousy and lack of power that an older brother might have -- like a prisoner and a gate keeper. The older sibling has physical and mental power but a lack of recognition (parents often go to great lengths to assure both children that they have equal "rank")--and power without status is the hallmark of a sociopath. That leads to another commonly accepted concept that should be debunked--autism and aspergers being a "spectrum" disorder separate from narcisism, sociopathology, etc. Spectrum really isn't the right term for a mental illness. Mental illness is multidimensional not a linear quantity or scale or spectrum--complex system metrics would be more applicable.

Tradehill Referral Code

2012-01-09T11:22:00.001+07:00

Nearly everyone on the bitcoin exchange at TradeHill got there by clicking on an account <A href="https://www.tradehill.com/?r=TH=R125701">sign-up</A> link. Otherwise, trying to sign up without a referral code sends you to the "by invitation only" page. Tradehill charges me 0.6% each time I buy or sell bitcoins in any currency. You'll only pay 0.54% if you use this link to get yourself the 10% commission discount.

Building bitcoin-qt from source on Ubuntu 11.10 Oneiric

2012-01-02T10:49:00.001+07:00

These are the steps that worked for me on Ubuntu 11.10 Oneiric to build
bitcoin-qt (the "official" bitcoin GUI).

git clone https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin
cd bitcoin
sudo aptitude install bitcoind qt4-qmake libqt4-dev build-essential
libboost-dev libboost-system-dev libboost-filesystem-dev
libboost-program-options-dev libboost-thread-dev libssl-dev
libdb4.8++-dev libminiupnpc-dev
qmake USE_DBUS=1 USE_UPNP=0
make
# then to run the executable gui
bitcoin-qt

Solar Panel "Breakthrough"

2011-12-24T09:48:00.002+07:00

A friend forwarded a oil/energy investment/political article by "Dr." Kent Moors titled "A Trade War May Scuttle This Huge Solar Breakthrough". Typical blogger hype, but I was intrigued to checked it out, reading the referenced NREL paper, "Peak External Photocurrent Quantum Efficiency Exceeding 100 percent via MEG in a Quantum Dot Solar Cell" and looking up quantum dots and excitons on wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_dot#Photovoltaic_devices
Conventional solar panels already acheive 100% MEG, so 114% represents a minor improvement in quantum efficiency. Only when it reaches 700% MEG (the theoretical maximum, according to wikipedia) will it make any real difference for solar panels. And even then it will only bring up the total efficiency of a panel from about 30% (where we are now) to about 35%, which would have a negligible impact on the total cost per kWhr of electricity. So this "doctor" that wrote the article is just hyping it because he's got nothing else to talk about in his newsletter today. Same for me, I guess...

A Trade War May Scuttle This Huge
Solar Breakthrough
by Dr. Kent Moors

Great Jobs Site for Software Developers -- Stack Overflow Careers 2.0

2011-11-08T04:21:00.001+07:00

I only have 2 invites left. So if you use one, try to get your profile "completeness" up above 100 (out of 210), so Stack Overflow will give me more invites to hand out to eager software developers. If you don't know what Stack Overflow is, or aren't looking for a job, leave these invites for someone else.
http://bit.ly/sUxwGK

ML-Class Insight into Neural Networks

2011-11-06T15:01:00.000+07:00

Dr. Ng's lectures and exercises for the Stanford Machine Learning Class have opened my eyes to the essence of neural networks. They really are nothing new. A 3-layer network (with 1 hidden layer) is just a linear regression of a linear regression. But there's a subtly to switching outputs and regression coefficients during training, but other than that, the algorithms for neural netw are 100% identical those for logistic regression. What made it clear for me was the cut and paste we could do from the logistic regression code into the programming exercise for neural nets. I'll admit I was a bit disappointed when Dr. Ng started the class with lectures teaching basic linear regression and describing them using fancy terms like "logistic regression machine learning." However, I stand corrected. It was genius of Dr. Ng to set up the course this way. Using both logistic regression and a 3-layer neural net on the same, intuitive, problem--OCR (handwritten numerical digit recognition)--made this comparison of the two algorithms obvious. I'm looking forward to seeing how he deals with scale, translation, and ambiguous scribbles in upcoming image processing and OCR exercises. Now if only he could anticipate and share these insights at the beginning of a lecture series to get us excited about working through the math, that would turn this course into one hum-dinger of a class.

FedEx Contributing to the Greater Bad

2011-11-01T10:42:00.001+07:00

FedEx and UPS have equally neanderthal business practices when it comes to international customs clearance paperwork and fees. By neanderthal, I mean evolutionarily ill-adapted and short-sighted. FedEx and UPS both invariably require payment of brokerage fees and customs duties when those fees are not required. Rather than informing their customers at the shipper site how to label and declare packages to reduce customs duties they initiate the process that causes these unnecessary fees. And by not charging the shipper for the total cost of getting the package through customs (including any duties and broker fees) they can charge it to the naive recipient at the time that the package arrives at their doorstep. Since the recipient may be a vacationer in a hotel or a cruiser in an anchorage, and he's gone to great lengths to make the shipment happen as quickly as possible, they usually just swallow their pride and the fees in order to get the critical part or banking card or whatever. In my case, the total shipping costs, customs duties, and brokerage fees exceeded the cost of the already overpriced refrigerator part that I ordered, a $300 shaft seal, much smaller than a deck of cards, that typically cost less than $30 when the fridge was new.

FedEx and UPS pricing seems to be based on the extortion principle--never set your ransom so high as to incite revenge or law enforcement involvment. And always set it just within the means of your "customer." By making the total cost impact 50 to 150% of the shipped item cost, they can be pretty sure that a desperate customer will pay the exorbitant fees. The worst part is, that most of that money, caused by FedEx "total bad" goes to corrupt political bureaucracies and FedEx call center employee salaries rather than the pockets of the selfish executives that put those policies in place. And FedEx guessed wrong with me. My sense of fairness has inspired me to share my displeasure at their extortion as widely as possible. If I can just make the negative publicity cost them a few customers that will be enough to right the wrong and turn this into a "total good", nudging business and cultural evolution to produce a more well-adapted global shipping business. Fortunately the solution is easy for anyone wanting to avoid FedEx and UPS extortion for packages from the US... ship through the USPS. Though packages typically take more than two weeks when shipped by USPS, they arrive without hassle or phone calls at your doorstep (or marina mailbox), and without any hidden fees or duties to be paid. I wonder if DHL offers similar "total-good" service if you are willing to jump through the hoops required to set up a business account with them. In the end, this "Priority Express" package from FedEx is going to take more than a week to come to me around the world, and it's still hung up in their bureaucracy right now. So USPS would have been faster. Now if I can just convince the major marine parts distributors to accept a "non-preferred" shipper as my preferred delivery option, then we'd be in business. But that's a corporate collusion and market manipulation topic for another post.

So whenever possible use usps.com and avoid fedex.com.

Ubuntu 11.10 Oneiric Tweaks

2011-10-30T13:42:00.000+07:00

Today's Ubuntu tweaks were to get my desktop background shuffling script to run at startup.

For example to get firefox to launch at startup use 

  sudo cp /usr/share/applications/firefox.desktop /etc/xdg/autostart

(thanks http://www.liberiangeek.net/2011/09/automatically-startup-applications-for-all-users-in-ubuntu-11-10/)
  
So I created a desktop file in /etc/xdg/autostart:

[Desktop Entry]
Name=Background Image Shuffler
Comment=Periodically change the desktop background image
#Icon=
Exec=python /home/hobs/bin/looping_shuffle_background_photo.py
  #Terminal=true
#NoDisplay=true
Type=Application
Categories=
OnlyShowIn=GNOME;
X-GNOME-Autostart-Delay=90
X-Ubuntu-Gettext-Domain=looping_shuffle_background_photo

Also I liked this gnome tweaking suggestion
  
sudo apt-get install gnome-tweak-tool

(thanks http://www.webupd8.org/2011/10/things-to-tweak-after-installing-ubuntu.html)

Craig's List in Malaysia

2011-10-27T11:54:00.000+07:00

Craig's List is everywhere, even in Borneo. So we listed our boat as "real-estate" there.

http://malaysia.craigslist.org/reo/2671113694.html

Now that we're starting to get a diversity of listings at brokerages, want-ads, and cruising forums, it will be interesting to compare the response rate at each. Still not much traffic at our own site:

http://totalgood.com/australis/

Google Does Evil

2011-10-27T07:14:00.000+07:00

This was the last straw for me. I'm now officially a google hater. It killed me when us techie lemmings killed Palm by "upgrading" to iPhones, Windows Smartphones, and Android. Palm was the most elegant, efficient OS I've ever used (and I've passionately explored nearly every imaginable OS from the beginning--Amiga, TRS-80 "CoCo", Apple IIe, Mac, Sun, Linux, DOS, Windows CE, Windows 3.1/XP/Vista/etc.

I used to look longingly at my wife's treo and admiringly at the ease with which she retrieved the most obscure bit of information from her little "brain" (Palm Treo, not her massively intelligent real brain). I used to be that guy, the guy you could ask about anyone in a 10,000 multinational corporation, and I could tell you in 1 minute everything I knew about them, and some things only the corporate network could tell you. I'd sync up my palm daily (or more) with lots of offline text data gleaned from corporate servers and my own random thoughts.

I was sure the king of search would do a good job of "find" on Android, but it opted for the greater evil--using the search button to route everyone through their services instead of efficiently finding your own contacts. I used to be able to find people based on partial birthdays, telephone numbers, badge numbers, you name it. Now I have to remember their name--not any nicknames, or memory crutches like "bald" or "wears glasses", but their full name. Not even their first name will do, because "John" turns up 100's of people I've met in my life and recorded some detail about.

I will spend my last bit of spare coding brainpower supporting open-source alternatives to Google desktop and similar knowledge indexing. I don't give a damn for the cloud. I just want my brain back.

Building MySQL Workbench from Source for Ubuntu 11.10 Oneiric

2011-10-26T21:35:00.007+07:00

If you use MySQL Workbench for web app development as much as I do, you'll be disapointed to learn that it breaks in Ubuntu 11.10 Oneiric. MWB just hung on the splash screen for more than 10 minutes on startup despite several aptitude update/upgrade and reboots. Only way out was pkill mysql-workbench.

According to the folks at MySQL, this is a verified bug for Ubuntu 11.10 and there's a MWB source code patch for the latest version (MySQL Workbench 5.2.35).

Here's the full procedure to download, patch, build, and install a working MWB on the latest Ubuntu.


# MWB version number to build and install
FILEVER='5.2.35'
FILEPRE='mysql-workbench-gpl-'
FILESUF='-src'
FILENAME="${FILEPRE}${FILEVER}${FILESUF}"
PATCHNAME="mwb_$FILEVER_on_ubuntu_oneiric_11.10.patch"

# install the Ubuntu prerequisites (dependencies)
# I'm sure there's a cleaner way, but this is everything:
sudo apt-get install autoconf automake build-essential g++ libboost-dev libctemplate-dev libglade2-dev libglu1-mesa-dev libgnome-keyring-dev libgnome2-dev libgtkmm-2.4-dev liblua5.1-0-dev liblua5.1-dev libmysqlclient15-dev libpcre3-dev libsigc++-2.0-dev libsqlite3-dev libtool libxml2-dev libzip-dev lua5.1 python-dev python-pexpect uuid-dev

# change to whatever directory your do your source builds in
cd ~/src

# get the source code directly from mysql.com
wget -nd --progress -c -v "http://dev.mysql.com/get/Downloads/MySQLGUITools/${FILENAME}.tar.gz/from/http://mysql.mirrors.pair.com/" -O "${FILENAME}.tar.gz"

# extract the downloaded tgz compressed source code package
tar -zxvf "${FILENAME}.tar.gz" 

# get into that newly created source directory
cd "$FILENAME"

# get the patch file to fix the build-time and run-time freezes
wget http://bugs.mysql.com/file.php?id=17639 -O "$PATCHNAME"

# apply the patch
patch --verbose -p0 < "$PATCHNAME"


# automatically build a makefile based on your OS and settings
./autogen.sh

# you may get a warning like this ...
#   aclocal.m4:16: warning: this file was generated for autoconf 2.61.
#   You have another version of autoconf.  It may work, but is not guaranteed to.
# but it didn't cause me any trouble

# the build will take about an hour on a slow laptop,
# so make sure you're plugged in and have something to read
# -j2 limits the number of separate jobs/tasks spawned to only 2
make -j2

# install it
sudo make install

Don't mistakenly apply this patch to older MWB versions (like 5.1.19). Here's the entire procedure for downloading, patching, building, and installing MySQL Workbench on Ubuntu 11.10.

And if you get tired bug patching src making, and want to escape from it all, we're "declaring victory" on the dream life and selling our boat to return to the real world.

That $15 hex-shaped cylinder waterproof MP3...

2011-10-25T08:48:00.002+07:00

That $15 hex-shaped cylinder waterproof MP3 player (and eBook reader!) is a bargain. It doesn't seem to have a name besides "Waterpoof MP3 Player", made in China." cVEU-L15 might be the model number or serial number. It worked great as an 8 GB usb stick, but it would never power on to play music. So I dug into the guts...

1. Unscrew the cap with the headset jack.
2. Remove the plastic inserts
3. Pull the battery free from it's glued position atop a large microchip

At this point I measured 0 V at the battery, with and without the 5V USB charger supplying power to the headphone jack.

4. Unwrap the mylar tape from the battery terminals
5. Unfold the battery terminal circuit board from the battery

This unfolded a bit of aluminum foil causing the battery to short itself. Now I measured 2V at the battery and 5 V at the power supply from the USB. Unfortunately, I brushed the + and - probes into each other during this measurement and sparked the small chip (diode?) near the incoming 5V. So I'll never be able to charge again. But at least I can see if the rest of the thing works by plugging in a new 3.6 V battery pack (3 AAA NiMH ?).

View or comment on Hobson Lane's post »

We Aren't the Only Ones

2011-10-20T10:09:00.001+07:00

The container ship in the distance ran aground on the reef just before we arrived at the harbor in Apia Samoa. Tugs were pulling furiously with cables stretched across the harbor entrance preventing us from entering until dusk. It turns out this was the supply ship on its way to make the rounds in Tonga to supply isolated villages that hadn't seen a ship for years due to a ferry acident in Tonga. So the islanders on Niutaputapu had to wait another year for. Unfortunately, three weeks after this photo was taken a Tsunami leveled the villages in Niutaputapu, Tonga. We were in Port Villa, Vanuatu, by that time and the tsunami warning reached us in time to motor out into deep water before the 4 cm Tsunami ripple reached the harbor. Vanuatu was protected from the brunt of the Tsunami that devastated Niutaputapu by the ocean geography.

Boat Project -- Grunert AR-50 Shaft Seal

2011-10-19T14:57:00.000+07:00

bolts are 5.0" apart
pulley/flywheel is 8.5" OD
shaft is about 2.65" above the bottom surface of the compressor

The old Blissfield application manual lists compressor measurements that seem to match the Blissfield models CA, CB, CD, or CE compressor to our Grunert AR-50 1/2 HP system. Ours has 8 "head" bolts on top around the edge and 2 in the center above the presume pair of cylinders. Which appears to need the "BMK 510-6" blissfield shaft seal and bearing. It appears that the Edd Helms Marine website sells the seal kit for conversion from R12 to R134a, hopefully this includes the shaft seal because I ordered it today. It seems that even R134a is being phased out this year and people will have to switch to CO2. R134a is compatible with Polyol Ester Oil (ester oil). Need to make sure the new dryer is not a solid bauxite type or it will release acid into the compressor when it gets saturated with moisture and ester oil. Molecular sieves are the preferred type for R134a.

Coral Spawn

2011-10-18T17:39:00.001+07:00

This is what coral spawn looks like. We'd been at sea for more than a week, sailing from Vanuatu to Australia when we came across this slimy orange slick that stretched from horizon to horizon. We tried to maneuver around clumps, thinking it was a chemical or oil spill, but eventually gave up and plowed through. We even went as far as to gather samples for submital to whatever environmental police there might be, but fortunately never filed a complaint. Once we arrived in Bundaberg, we learned that it was coral spawning season, and we were sailing over the top of the Great Barrier Reef after all.

Artificial Intelligence Class Errata

2011-10-15T13:51:00.001+07:00

I've run across a few minor errata in the lecture material and homework questions for the Stanford Artificial Intelligence class so far. Pretty impressive quality considering the volume and sophistication of the content. I'll save the homework question errata until after the answers are released, but here are some of the others:

Unit 02-16 01:08/01:14 -- Uniform Cost Search 4
Total cost is computed by Peter Norvig as 460 when it is really 450

??? this may not be an error, just a misunderstanding on my part ???
Unit 02-20 2/3rds way -- Search Comparison 2
Peter Norvig claims storage for depth first search is proportional to N, but isn't it smaller. Why isn't "lowest cost first" also proportional to N. I think it's 1.5N for LCF, from 1+(b-1)/2)*N, where b is the branching factor or average number of branches per node. Norvig claims that storage for BF or UC Search is proportional to 2^N but should be more precise/general and say that it's b^N where b is the branching factor.

Unit 02-28 00:24/00:51 -- A* Search 5
Peter Norvig writes "h(s) < true cost" and writes/says in natural language "h never overestimate" when the mathematical notation should probably say <= (less than or equal). A cost estimate that is equal to the true, actual cost seems like it should be admissible, but this would only happen for a discrete cost function. If equal cost is intended to not be admissible then the natural language description should change instead of the mathematical notation to "h always underestimate."

Machine Learning Class Errata

2011-10-15T13:47:00.000+07:00

There a re a few minor errors in the material for the Stanford Machine Learning Class (ml-class.com)...

Homework 1 (ex1.pdf), Section 2.2.1 -- Update Equations, p. 6, formula at top of page
IS: summation parentheses exclude x_j(i)
SHOULD BE: the summation symbol should have parentheses that include the x_j(i) term in the sum, though the (i) superscript index makes it clear that this is the intent

Homework 1 (ex1.pdf), Section 3.1 -- Feature Normalization, p. 10, second bullet at bottom of page
IS: scale (divide) the feature values by the inverse of their respective "standard deviations."
SHOULD BE: scale (multiply) the feature values by the inverse of their respective "standard deviations."

Class Material Lecture 4 (Lecture4.pdf) -- p. 16/31, right hand side
and
Video 04.4 Linear Regression With Multiple Variables -- Gradient Descent In Practice II, Learning Rate.mp4, 05:00/08:58
IS: The axes of the plot are mislabeled. Dr. Ng is plotting in pink and talking about the relationship between J(theta) and the parameters x, *not*, the number of iterations.
SHOULD BE: To be consistent Dr. Ng should probably show the plot J vs iterations so that we can recognize the signature if we ever see it in our debugging. He could overlay the plot of J vs x to explain the source of the problem (alpha too big) too.

Stanford AI Class 1w, 10 -- AI as Uncertainty Management

2011-10-11T08:50:00.000+07:00

Sources of uncertainty that AI can help overcome to produce effective decisions:

    1. sensor limits (Norvig means "limitations" not limits)
        a. resolution
        b. precision or measurement error (random noise, deterministic errors, cross coupling with other observables like temperature)
        c. dynamic range or range limits (min and max measurable values)
    2. adversaries (you can never be 100% certain what your oponent might do)
    3. stochastic problems or enironments
    4. laziness
    5. ignorance (people and their AI agents don't attempt to know everything)

Sensor limits (#1 above) are *not* a source of uncertainty. I'm a controls engineer, and we deal with sensor and actuator limits all the time with non-AI systems, as they are totally predictable and relatively easy to compensate for.

Adversaries (#2 above) are only a source of uncertainty if they act stochastically or even deterministically but chaotically -- where there internal decision system is so complex that you couldn't predict their future actions even with perfect and infinite recordings of their environment and past history of actions. Read more about Chaos if your are curious. The classic example is that even if you had a perfect and infinite supercomputer capable of modeling all of the "billiard ball" molecules of air throughout the globe, a small perturbation of any portion of those billiard balls (like a butterfly flapping it's wings in Africa) can have dramatic and unpredicatable affects on the weateher around the world (say a hurricane in North America). Nonetheless, Norvig is ignoring some extremely logical and predictable adversaries that can be treated as entirely deterministic and they will not add any uncertainty to the AI problem. The field of mathematics called "Game Theory" deals with this category of adversarial AI problems nicely, providing "closed form" solutions for the best actions (most rational action) for an AI system competing in an adversarial but deterministic world.

Stochastic environments (#3) are clearly a source of uncertainty, but I don't quite see how "ignorance" fits in (#5). I guess we'll have to gain some of Norvig's vast experience before we can appreciate what he means here.

Stanford AI Class Unit 1w, 4 -- Terminology

2011-10-11T08:24:00.001+07:00

I'm not a big fan of the AI Class style so far. The pen on paper animation I guess is a tried and proven teaching technique, but I was hoping that a course centered around software my use video t its full potential with animations, etc. But the basic "whiteboard" teaching approach is probably good for the target audience -- students that are used to learning in a classroom with chalkboard or white-board teaching. The first quiz was to classify the AI problem of playing a game of checkers in the 4 "dimensions" that Norvig seems emphasizes

    1. fully observable or partially observable
    2. continuous or discrete
    3. adversarial or benign
    4. deterministic or stochastic

Norvig makes the answers to this quiz clear in his video lecture, but there's room for introducing some subtleties, if Norvig had time. The mechanical action of actually playing chess brings in the oposite features to some degree. For instance, the AI agent should abstract the game of chess into a discrete form or state to facilitate processing on that state. But if the AI agent or robot is only given a camera as a sensor, then it would be discretizing or digitizing a continuous environment (image) and then atempting to discretize it further by identifying all the checker pieces and the boundaries of the squares and where they are located. Those pieces that are left halfway (either by the robot or the human opponent), might require some sophisticated AI to categorize. And if a new oponent from China or Japan started placing checker pieces on the intersections rather than the squares, well then, that could send the AI robot into a fit of confusion. You can think about how a physical game of chess might differ in 2 other categories as well. Can you see that there is a stochastic element to the physical moving of pieces? Can you see that a smoky room or a low aspect angle on the robot's camera could make the game partially observable? I can't think of a legitimate way to make the game of checkers benign, but the AI agent might have to deal with supportive training opponents that actually are attempting to help the AI agent win a few games to get it's learning engine going.

So it looks like this course is going to provide a lot of opportunity for side discussions and thinking -- if you have time on your hands like I do.

AI Class Exercises

2011-10-04T14:19:00.001+07:00

Here's my thumb-typed answers to the Exercise questions at the end of Chapter 2 of Artificial Intelligence -- A Modern Approach. ai-class.com hasn't officially kicked off the Stanford AI class yet, but I'm enjoying getting a had start... there's a 1st for everything.
Q1: Show that rational agent action should depend on the time step index if it's performance metric is limited to a number of initial time steps.
A1: As the agent approaches the end of its performance window it may be rational to attempt more risky actions if the performance measure would increase within the remaining window but the negative consequences of failure might be spread into the future beyond the performance window. Likewise, a rational agent should attempt all learning actions early in the time window if those actions and learned behaviors have reward profiles that would take a while to affect the performance metric, as long as the cost doesn't outweigh the benefit over the course of the agent "lifetime."
Q2.2a: show that the agent in fig 2.3 is rational under the assumptions on p. 37
A2.2a: There are 4 posible values for the binary 2D percepts in the agent function table. There are 3 possible actions, 2 alternative actions besides the 1 implemented by the agent for each percept vector. The alternatice always reduce performance or keep it the same. Percept -> Alternative Actions: A-C -> S or L delays cleaning of B (1 point worse performance), and if B is already clean performance is the same. A-D -> R or L delays cleaning of A and always reduces performance. B-C->R or S is mirror of A-C->S/L. Likewise for the last "alternative" action.
Q2.2b: If cost of motion is 1, describe a rational agent. Does it need internal state?
A2.2b: same, see above cost of motion is outweighed by potential lost reward (oportunity cost) of 999 points for the unvisited square if move cost is saved, unless the likelihood of dirty is less than .1%, but this task environment factor is unspecified
Q2.2c: if clean squares can get dirty and geography unknown, does it need state then, what should it learn? If not why?
A2.2d: yes. Must learn statistics of dirtiness and any dirtiness statistics dynamics and the geography, even if dirtiness statistics are 0% and constant. The geography uncertainty penalizes poor moves due to a random L/R movement too heavily. Only if dirtiness is 100% would the always sucker be optimal and rational without state or learning and only if he knew it to be 100%.
Q2.3a: partial state sensing agent is always irrational
A2.3a: false. rationality depends on what the agent can observe not what the task environment designer could have made observable. The vacuum suffer that doesn't know its geography or position can still act rationally with what it does sense.
Q2.3b: in some task environments its impossible for a pure reflex agent to behave rationally
A2.3b: true. Vacuum cleaner with unknown geography. Though this sounds identical to question 2.3a which I answered oppositely, it isn't. Sensors are defined as part of the task environment, but state memory and reflex vs non-reflex are part of agent design and fair game for rationality examination.
Q2.3c: for some task environments all agents are rational
A2.3c: true. E.g. the always clean and no movement penalty vacuuming problem. (Presuming the environment is fully known apriori).
Q2.3d: inputs to agent program and agent function are the same
A2.3d: false. An agent program doesn't get percept history, it must record it internally as a state if it needs to use/act on it.
Q2.3e: every agent function is implementable in a machine+program, only purely in theory not in practice--you can imagine an infinite table of percepts and actions, and a hyperdimensional quantum computer and program that implements that infinity, but an implementation might not fit within the known universe.
Q2.3f: in a deterministic task environment there exists a purely random agent that is rational
A2.3f: true. E.g. agent that must buy and sell a finite dollar value of stock shares once a day with no trading cost perfmance penalty, but must maximize returns and minimize returns volatility.
Q2.3g: the same agent can be ration in 2 different task environments
A2.3g: true. E.g. the suck-or-move agent is the best for most variations of the task environment discussed, and an optimal general agent would be rational in a nearly infinite variety of task environments.
Q2.3h: every agent is rational in an unobservable environment.
A2.3h: false. In the random redirtying but unobservable vacuuming environment, agents that don't suck or move would be irrational.
Q2.3i: a perfectly rational poker agent never loses.
A2.3i: false, but if losing is considered a full sequence game is the determiner of win/lose and not an individual hand, and if the game is infinitely long and the bankroll is infinitely deep, then true. But then even a nonrational agent never loses. Only if "never" becomes finite does a finite agent in a finite environment have a chance of "never" losing. Never is an infinity, so infinite environments and resources can also be assumed unless the question is qualified/clarified.
Q2.4 characterize in PEAS and chqaracteristics of sect 2.3.2:
Q2.4a playing soccer
A:
P--score greater than oponent
E--players, ball, goals, field, crowd (noise interference
    PartialO
    MultiA
    Random--holes/rocks in field
    Seq
    Dyn
    Cont
    MostlyKnwn--crowd psychology unknown, some spin aerodynamics not fully known
A--7 DOF legs, 7DOF arms for fending/balance, voice for com, interferece, distraction, and crowd inciting, 6DOF head
S--ears, eyes, smell (detect players behind you), propriceptive sense, accelerometer/gyro (inner ear)
Q2.4b Titan moon sub
P--new knowledge/data returned to earth
E--emersed in liquid, life forms?, weather, radiation, geothermal temp swings, currents, ice, great distance
    SA PO R D Seq C PartiallyKnwn
A--propeller, rf emitter, claws?, tracks?, Arms?, tazer?, nuclear radiation?, pumps with filters/samplers
S -- cameras, thermom, spectrometer, microscope, microphone,
Q2.4c shopping for used ai books online
Q2.4d playing tennis
Q2.4e practicing tennis against wall
Q2.4f high jump
Q2.4g knitting
Q2.4e bidding at live auction
Q2.5 define
agent -- ai element that inerracts with world using sensors + actuators
agent function -- ideal infinite table of percepts paired with actions
agent program -- algorithm implmented in a machine to accomplish ai
rationality -- degree to which agent does the best it could know to do
autonomy -- degree of independence from human input
reflex agent -- agent that makes one decision for each isolated percept
model-based agent -- agent designed using ba model of the env
goal-b a -- a that targets a single percept state or a threshold percept
utility b a -- a that uses a nonbinary measure of performance
learning a -- a that adjusts parameters within its program over time

-- AI–aMA p. 61 [81/1152]

Cool Omni-Tread

2011-10-04T13:13:00.002+07:00

I didn't think it would be possible to combine tank treads with actuated caster wheels (omni-wheels). I was impressed with this demo. See how they get the mechanical power into the treads without obstructing forward or sideways rotation? See how the axles have to come in from the back and the front? Conventional outward axels would work with omni-ball wheels, but not treads. And treads are so much more capable. I'm not sure they even need to use slick plastic (nylon or teflon) treads like they have. And they certainly don't need to limit themselves to slick hard surfaces (like most omni-bots do). I bet it would do well on carpet, gravel, grass, and inclines--it just needs some grippy/sticky rubber knobby offroad treads.

Stanford Machine Learning Course

2011-10-02T14:27:00.005+07:00

I watched the first Stanford Machine Learning video lecture this afternoon. The pace and professionalism were impressive. Dr. Ng is well-motivated and clearly focused on the subject matter--he never even introduced himself or the course! He does a great job of motivating you with stories of ML applications like web search, OCR for mail sorting, and robotics, including a video of a helicopter doing cartwheels a flopping itself upside down for a while. However, I felt like Dr. Ng was stretching a bit when he said "we couldn't figure out how to write a control algorithm for this helicopter so we implemented a learning algorithm." It is VERY impressive that they were able to implement an ML system for flying a helicopter--especially considering how "learning" mistakes could have ended the experiment prematurely. The grad students must've spent a lot of time in the lab rebuilding trashed RC helicopters. Its random acrobatics clearly show the "unintended consequences" and "control space exploration" that often emerge from an ML system. However, Dr. Ng and his students had trouble finding a conventional control law for helicopters he'd have been smart to check with the professors at my alma-mater, Georgia Tech, where students were implementing autonomous helicopter flying algorithms back in the 90's. They were even doing precision retrieval and placement of payloads, autonomously. And a friend at UC Bolder was doing work with quadracopters and other popeller-driven craft to autonomously plan and execute optimal navigation around obstacles and constraints. These were not ML algorithms, just plain old optimal control. But Dr. Ng accomplished his goal, he got my attention and I'm excited about the class. His enthusiasm for Machine Learning and robotics is contagious.

Stanford's Free Courses in Artificial Intelligence

2011-10-02T13:48:00.005+07:00

I'm taking the free Stanford remote-learning classes "Machine Learning" (ml-class.org) or "Introduction to Artificial Intelligence" (ai-class.com). I'm taking the classes while living on a boat in Borneo, so a meat-space study group isn't going to be possible. So I'm going to put my thoughts out there and see what comes back.

I think it's really phenomenal that the academic world is embracing an "open knowledge" policy. The MIT open courseware effort (http://ocw.mit.edu) is a lot more mature and ambitious, but seems to have stalled out. MIT professors obviously have little time to publish their lectures and quizzes. The MIT lectures that I was interested in were often incomplete. But MIT administrators did take the lead and open the floodgates to allow professors to publish their papers and lectures online. That's a start. But the Stanford faculty seems to be a bit more enthusiastic about supervision of complete, high-quality courses online. And it's quite generous to provide these classes completely free. This bodes well for US competitiveness in years to come as our youth get access to Stanford-quality educations, whether or not they can afford Stanford-magnitude tuition.

Racial Discrimination in Science

2011-08-25T09:46:00.001+07:00

I was a little disappointed when I read the <A HREF=http://www.economist.com/node/21526320>Economist Magazine article</A> on <A HREF=http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/summary/333/6045/1015>Dr Donna Ginther's report</A> on racial discrimination. At first I was disappointed in our academic and science community for allowing racism to infect the ivory tower. But as I read deeper, the fault for snap-judgment and prejudice may actually lie with the authors of the study and the various news articles surrounding it. Dr Ginther reported results that were not complete, in my mind. And the authors of news reports certainly didn't do their due diligence on those results. I don't see any mention of normalization of the data for external factors like the education level, reputation, socio-economic status, and historical research performance of the applicants and applications that were the subject of the study. Fortunately The Economist did point out that the NIH is pursing a less biased and more scientific experiment to provide some real backing to the initial results of Dr. Girther. They aren't waiting around for irrefutable experimental evidence before implementing corrective action. The NIH is already tweaking the proposal review process and panel selection.

It's the cronyism and cliquishness of the whole research grant process that should be targeted. That sort of discrimination (which includes an element of racism in it) is unquestionably a part of the process and should be fixed. And it's not just at the NIH. Other large research funding sources, like DARPA and the NSF, are also subject to human social biases, including racism. Fixing the problem will not only help the ivory towers achieve a more diverse and multi-color appearance, but the quality of the research those institutions support should be much improved as well. I look forward to the scientific breakthroughs that will come from mavericks on the fringes of the science community that will now be able to test their ideas with grant funding from NIH and other national institutions. Maybe the US academic community can regain our prominence in the world community while improving our moral standing as well.

Finally

2011-08-04T20:39:00.000+07:00

We've finally come to the end of the line and put Australis up for sale. Pass the word.

Last Gasp

2011-03-20T18:00:00.001+07:00

We were heading south coming from the northern-most tip of Borneo towards our final destination, Kota Kinabalu. In a bay within sight of the cloud-shrouded peak of Mt Kinabalu we were treated to a spectacular sunset. And two fishermen joined us in the bay as they rowed out towards the ocean in their tiny canoe. Our compact digital camera decided to give up the ghost after 3 years of salt spray and rough rides in the dingy. It took a fingernail and a bit of force to pry open the automatic lens cover and capture this memory. We putted the dingy quietly back to Australis in awe at the spectacular end to our private "sundowners" on a deserted beach in Borneo.

The Rising Cost and Deteriorating Quality of a College Education

2011-02-20T10:13:00.003+07:00

My mother sent me an e-mail regarding "Now College is the Break", a WSJ article on the deterioration of student discipline at universities. She's worried about her grandchildren. If you have children approaching college age, you might take heart in my response below.

Sorry, Mom, but the snowball you tossed set off an avalanche of thought. I didn't have time to write a shorter response...

Don't distress when you see sensationalized reports on "youth these days." I too hate to think that all those brain cells are wasted on lazy debauchery, but the reality is, play is the best educator of all. A lot of the great inventions of the 20th century and early 21st came out of that wild college scene--google, facebook. The facebook movie is worth seeing, but it is not hopeful about the characters like Zuckerberg that the ivy league churns out.

And there's an investment/service opportunity for more serious education options outside of the normal accreditation and reputation process. There's very little competition among universities for producing smart workers, just producing successful, networked, happy, confident graduates. The WSJ perpetuates this emphasis on reputation and social development with their annual review of universities. It often de-emphasizes the up-and-comers that lack a track-record of wealthy alums. But hey, with capitalism, that's just an opportunity for investment and hiring, for business leaders perceptive enough to ferret out hidden value.

At Thanksgiving, <Relative John Doe, a hedge fund manager> worried me with our discussion of the accelerating cost of education. Like I always do after talking to him, I bought stock. I bought a lot of Devry. It's doing really well (up 50%) as a cheap alternative to universities for the regular joe (and immigrant) that just wants to get a degree, learn a skill, and not drink with buddies. And the frat we founded at Vandy to give us an excuse to hang out together has done really well with it's bylaws that emphasize philanthropy, non-discrimination, and non-drinking (no thanks to me). More restrained drinking policies are spreading to the other frats at Vandy (from what I can tell). I actually think the current graduates are no more wild and undisciplined than your generation of graduates were, like Dad's Vandy class--I don't recall any motor vehicles ending up in the bell towers of major universities recently. And just like the disassemblers of that car learned a lot about buildings and mechanics, the MIT graduates that pull their annual pranks by hacking into the university computer systems learn a lot about computer security, networking, and forming a cohesive, effective, secretive team. Even the "rave" and "toga" party organizers learn a lot about advertising, promotion, and social media. I learned a lot about building security, motivational speaking, and the nature of large organizations of people (university administrations) while leading expeditions to explore the network of off-limit steam tunnels at Vanderbilt while the rest of the world slept. Sure we slept in and skipped class the next morning, but there are very few classes that I took that have had as much of an impact on me as that night, or for that matter, any of the other crazy nights that we did something "wrong."

And for the disciplined, without means, it's still possible to work your way through college or get a scholarships that makes it virtually free to your parents. UGA and GT are free to residents that qualify. Many of the best CA schools are similarly subsidized by progressive state governments that haven't privatized their future. It's the wealthy playboys at the top 1% of America (like us) that give universities a bad reputation and percolate to the top of corporate America to perpetuate the cycle with annual alumni donations. The struggling immigrants and blue-collar prodigy are often extremely productive during their college years if they are driven enough to make it that far.

After seeing so many amazing, bright, home-schooled kids on our trip, I've begun to see education institutions in a different light. Your kids will get an education , with or without a wholesome college environment, even if they went backpacking/sailing/bumming for a few years. The main thing a college gives them that they can't get elsewhere is a social network of future leaders, and a diploma that carries a bit of weight. They've already learned whatever values and discipline they are going to absorb before they go off to college. I read that human personality (shyness, nerdiness, gregariousness, discipline, anxiety, openness, etc) tend to solidify before puberty, largely based on interactions with parents. That's why you can all relax. You have great kids and no college is going to turn them into a monster. Most of my friends had wild times in college, but they are the same as when I knew them as kids.

The Thinker

2011-02-18T10:52:00.001+07:00

During the lunch break, Monkeys trooped through the Sepilok national park, near Sandakan, Malaysia (Borneo). We'd just finished watching the orangutan feeding. A staff member had to pull an orangutan away from a tourist and take him back into the jungle. But now, all the staff were on break, and the tour bus had taken most of the visitors away. So the other monkeys had free reign to raid the trash cans and pull everything apart that wasn't strapped down. A combined troop of Gray Macaques and Proboscis monkeys marched through the parking lot like they owned the place. One harassed a large peaceful male orangutan still feeding from the fruit tub, but the tiny macaque backed down when the orangutan gave him a dirty look. One juvenile monkey even attempted to disassemble the square light on the top of a taxi parked in the parking lot while the rest of his troop played catch with the security guard trying to shoo them away from the trash can. The guys in this photo seem to be reading the sign about proper behavior in a national park before they go on their rampage.

Diversity

2011-02-18T10:10:00.001+07:00

Every day we discover some new benefit of diversity. And today, for me, that appreciation for diversity extended beyond racial diversity to genetic and "disease" diversity. Recently, doctors discovered a "feature" of hereditary dwarfism, Laron syndrome -- http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=defective-growth-gene-in-dwarfism . I had previously considered dwarfism to be an unfortunate mutation, something to be cured or minimized. Some may have thought of it as merely a deformity.
As a teenager, I looked at some of my own physical and mental imperfections and felt angry at life for having botched my genes, a Radiohead "creep" not worthy of a mate and a family of my own. Of course we all get over that as we grow old and find affirmation among people like us. I imagine the struggle is even more difficult for those dealing with dwarfism. But now they may have new source of pride.
Aparently some of the genes associated with dwarfism stunt the growth of cancer as well as the growth of healthy organs and structures . So if we continue to pollute the planet and consume toxic chemicals that increase mutation and increase cancer and disease, eventually people with hereditary dwarfism, like the remote mountain villages of Ecuador where a third of all people with these genes live, may be the lucky few to inherit the Earth. They may become the Darwinian "fittest" and leave us tall folk in the dust.
So I've learned anew today to appreciate diversity as valuable. From that crazy aunt in your own gene pool to the unattractive neighbor that bugs you whenever you mow the lawn, consider that they may hold the genetic keys to the future of the human race. And even if they don't, they contribute to the variety and stimulation of human social life.
Obviously, this appreciation for diversity should extend to our protection of ecosystems of lesser organisms as well. Don't get excited about wiping out polio, or small pox, or bird & swine flu, or other scourges of human kind. These microscopic organisms that nearly conquered us may hold genetic knowledge invaluable to us in our quest to conquer the universe. Be careful in your harvesting of tuna or old-growth trees. You never know when that species you wiped out might just be the bit of gene knowledge we needed to continue to advance our civilization beyond the energy and food limitations of this planet.

Malaysian Economics

2011-01-29T12:29:00.002+07:00

We're lucky to be in Sandakan, Malaysia (Borneo) during the off-season--after western New Years, and before the end of Chinese New Years. We're the only customers at the cheap and cheerful restaurants and cafe's around here, so we get to suck down free WiFi and instant mochas without any hassels.
Lady Sylvia from Darwin was anchored here when we arrived, the first cruiser we'd seen in more than a month. So when they motored over to offer a grand tour of the waterfront we didn't hesitate. They introduced us to Miu and his friend's restaurant under the red and white awning on the waterfront near the Navy dock. You just pull your dingy up to the rocks and he or one of his staff will come out and help you tie up to a tree or rock and keep an eye on your dingy all day (small Yamaha outboards are like Rollex watches around here). Now that we've been patronizing his restaurant for a week now, we get to dig into his family, religion, and finances to learn a bit about the Malaysian culture and economy. So here are a few tidbits.
Like in Tawau, just around the corner, Chinese immigrants are treated as second-class citizens by the democratic Muslim government. Miu seems is Daoist, and our Chinese friends in Tawau were mostly secular Christian. As for most business-owners in developing countries, religion seems to take a back seat to business, it's often a means of assimilating into the local community or forming business contacts among your compatriots. And Malaysia learned government administration from Western governments in the early 20th century, picking up cronyism and discrimination from their English occupiers as a matter of course. Miu's boss, the owner of the restaurant, was refused a restaurant operation license by the government, claiming that his kitchen was too small. The restaurants to either side of him lease space from the same large "Swiss Hotel" building and had no problem with liquor and restaurant licensing--they are owned by Malaysians involved in the government. Miu and his friend soldier on, nonetheless, hiring Malaysian staff and petitioning the government while keeping the doors open and customers happy with excellent cheap food.
It's also Malaysian policy that all governmental jobs must be staffed with Malaysians rather than anyone of foreign ancestry (even 3rd and 4th generation immigrants). Chinese immigrants are forced to marry into a Malaysian family if they want any chance at getting their kids summer jobs and bank loans, etc. Once they do, all their immediate family become full 1st-class citizens. In a country where the government is the dominant economic force, you can't be left out of the action and hope to thrive.
The government used to receive a dominant portion of its revenue by selling off land and trees to foreign developers and loggers. Miu is frustrated with how his government has managed the forestry industry. He runs the finances and accounting for a wood-working tool shop (and lumber yard?) in town when he's not managing the waterfront restaurant. Any business with revenue of more than 100,000 Ringit ($30K USD) must pay sales taxes. The government gave away all the old-growth timber to foreign logging companies under their "sustainable forestry" plan decades ago. We have never seen any logs in the logging pen near the anchorage, but there's certainly plenty of mud and refuse flowing by us in the heavy rains that wash away the soil and plastic trash from the hills nearby. The hills bare of old growth jungle trees as far as we can tell. So the only remaining natural resource to keep the government afloat is the oil revenue, putting Malaysia in conflict with their neighbors, Indonesia, Brunei, and the Philippines. They patrol their borders continuously, stationing soldiers on desolate sandbars to watch their counterparts on the opposite shores of another island or coastline. Oil rigs are separated by only 10 miles or so on every international border, each side sucking oil as quickly as possible from shared rock formations deep below the surface tension of military and fishing trawlers spying on each other with binoculars and telephoto cameras. Fishermen seem to venture out in the middle of the night to set long-lines near the border when no-one is looking. The guy who caught our keep probably wishes he'd loaded for bigger game. We dragged his 5 km long line, hooks, floats, bait and all through the night and into Tawau before we discovered it and hauled it up on deck to give away to a fisherman a week later.
This territorial and "take-charge" attitude of the Malaysian government and their citizens has benefits for us cruisers. A large Malaysian Air Force transport plane buzzed low over our heads as we approach Malaysian waters, snapping away with their telephoto lenses from an observation port near the jump door towards the rear of the plane as we snapped back.

Once here for a few weeks we learned that the Malaysian military had recently pulled off a daring, expensive rescue operation for several Malaysian sailors on a commercial ship hijacked near Somalia. Finally, a government doing it's job to protect sailors. The US Coast Guard and Navy told a former US Marine planning a Red Sea passage that they wouldn't let him follow US convoys through the Red Sea. They don't even respond to non-military emergency radio distress calls from US citizens. "Unless shots are fired and you can hold them off for 24 hours yourself, we aren't going to come rescue you." The pirates were captured within hours of the hijacking and are on trial here in Malaysia, where drug traffickers, even Australian citizens, are routinely executed for their crimes. I'm not in favor of the death penalty, but pirates expecting to win the ransom lottery by shooting up cruising boats will think twice if they are flying the Malaysian flag. It doesn't change our plans to call it quits before pirate waters, but it's nice to know that our friends planning the passage will have a chance if they fly a Malaysian courtesy flag a little higher.
We were surprised that all the restaurants can have a dozen staff members standing around staring blankly at you while you drink you, the only customer, sip your coffee. He says that his restaurant is running at a loss for January, but they turned a profit in December, despite just opening their doors to the Holiday tourist traffic. Aparently there are a lot of European and Australian tourists that visit this area of the world.
Another interesting cultural tidbit is the inclusive nature of the local Daoist religion. Posters of Jesus, Muhammed, Budha, and many other religious figures are prominently displayed in the Daoist temple where Miu went to participate in the ritual performances to send the gods on a week-long holiday before the start of Chinese New Years. The gods will return in full force on Chinese New Years for the weeks-long celebration when all non-Muslim-run businesses (most restaurants and grocery stores) will shut down.

Feast at Hotel Emmas

2011-01-12T20:24:00.000+07:00

The buffet and "steam boat" at Hotel Emma's was the perfect introduction to Malaysian food. Our waiter, Arnold spoke English well enough to explain all the exotic ingredients like Jack Fruit, banana leaf wrapped around cassava paste, chocolate gelatine, mud crab, ruby snapper, jelly balls, thai greens, lemon grass, and more than two dozen sauces. And we got this guided tour of Malaysian food and a full belly (all-you-can eat) for only 30 Ringit each ($9 USD). We always cleaned our plate and our steam boat pot, but if you don't they have a sign that encourages you not to "waste food" with a 10 Ringit per 100 g surcharge for any food left on your plate. I can't imagine them ever enforcing that rule, though we did learn that they do insist that you pay your tab. On our first visit to Hotel Emmas we'd asked at the desk and at the restaurant if they took credit card, but we almost had to wash dishes when their credit card machines didn't seem to be able to process any of the cards we threw at them one by one. Even the ATM had trouble with our cards saying only "Transaction Canceled" (for MasterCard debit cards) or "Zero Balance" (for MasterCard cash advances). But eventually our waiter, Arnold, escorted us to an ATM that worked and we could put away our dishwashing gloves.

Christmas Eve Eve, Landfall in Bitung, Indonesia

2011-01-03T03:54:00.001+07:00

Indonesia, the land of pirates, terrorists, con artists, and people you just can't trust, or so we were led to believe by all the guidebooks and sensational news reports. After 17 days at sea, we motored hard into the wind for the last 24 hours to arrive mid-afternoon on Christmas eve eve. We figured Christmas eve would be a public holiday since Christmas fell on a Saturday this year, and we needed to do the paperwork Cha Cha with government officials. Businesses were already closing up shop as we desperately sought the Port Captain an other officials that could grant us legal visitor status before close of business. We really wanted to enjoy Christmas on land.
We didn't know where to start with the official process of clearing into the country, and we had heard that it was a multi-day affair of under the table bribes and lengthy paperwork for yachts arriving in Indonesia. After dropping anchor, we made our way to a wharf and tied the dinghy up among the brightly colored fishing boats with the help of a very friendly fisherman. He even let us lock our dingy to a long bamboo pole he was in the midst of sawing into sections for some sort of net or cage construction. After walking about two miles, we came upon the shipping terminal and went into the main office. It took some animated explanation, with Hobs breaking into a full-body pantomime, but the two men in uniform that attended to us eventually understood that we had just arrived on a "ship" and needed to find Immigration. "It is very far. You must catch a taxi" they told us. We explained that we had no local currency yet to pay for a taxi, so we would try and walk. One of the men led us back out to the main road while explaining to us the complicated route and significant distance to our destination. He hailed a taxi before we could explain. He told the driver where to take us, paid our fare, and waved goodbye as we disappeared into the flood of blaring moped horns and grinning pedestrians.
The drive was unnerving. The driver laid on his horn almost the entire way, swerving and weaving, barely missing motorcycles and pedestrians and negotiating busy intersections without stopping. In the middle of a busy pedestrian market he slowed down to about 10 mph to do a one handed money exchange with a vendor in the median, lighting the purchased cigarette before reaching the next intersection and speeding up. With our heart rates elevated, we were practically shoved out the door onto a peaceful tree-lined street next to two casually-dressed men. "What are you looking for?" the men asked. At this point we were in such a rush that we tried to brush them off. The Immigration building was in sight so Hobs yelled over his shoulder "Immigration" as we rushed past. "We are Immigration" they calmly and helpfully replied. We thought they were pulling our legs (Indonesians are notorious pranksters) but we took a chance and explained how we had just arrived on a yacht, our visas had expired before we'd been able to make landfall, and we were hoping to "clear in" before offices closed in an hour. We expected them to burst into laughter at this seemingly impossible goal. They hurriedly moved us to a nearby unmarked van and instructed us to climb in the back. With a bit of Indonesian chatter among themselves, they took off at high-speed with us in the back of the van, and immediately started making a series of short phone calls to several people. For all we knew, we had just been taken hostage. But, after two years of being in new countries and not understanding what was going on half the time, we have learned to let things play out before getting stressed. They pulled the van up at a bank and told us that we had to pay US$25 each to the bank for two new visas. The bank had already closed. "Hang on, let me talk to my brother" said one of the men. In a moment, the door opened and a security guard took us into a back area of the bank. The "brother" obliged and issued us a receipt for $25 dollars.
Again, we took off in the van, still in the dark. They asked us for directions to the boat and we did our best to remember the blur of streets and landmarks (including an Eiffel tower!) that had marked our route from the boat to Immigration. We found the fishing wharf and our dingy, and before long another van pulled up full of men from Customs, shortly followed by a man on a motorbike, supposedly from Quarantine, but also dressed like he was about to go watch a baseball game. They told us that Hobs should take the men to our boat while they took me in the van back to their office. Again, we weren't sure if this was all legitimate, but took a chance on them. Sure enough, they took me to a different Immigration office down at the wharf and issued official-looking but hand-written visas in our passports.
We were apprehensive about losing our basil plant that we had successfully smuggled from Australia through Papua New Guinea, but the quarantine man was more interested in taking happy snaps with his mobile phone of him standing on the boat with his arm around Hobson's shoulder and a proud grin on his face. Miraculously, we had cleared in through all three departments before 4pm. However, when I was sitting with our fisherman friend on his boat waiting for Hobs to deliver the Quarantine officer back from Australis, I noticed a panicked look on Hobson's face. "The boat is drifting" he yelled as he approached the wharf at full throttle and practically threw the Zip-Lock bag of quarantine paperwork at the officer that he hastily "helped" out of the dingy. Sure enough, the storm that had just blown through had pulled our anchor free and the boat was making its way out the pass towards sea. We weren't sure if we had enough petrol in the outboard or if we would be able to go fast enough in the leaky half-full dingy, but our 4HP Yamaha gave us everything it had and after five minutes at full throttle we were climbing over the rail and diving for the ignition as the boat slowly drifted towards an anchored cargo ship towering above us. The funny thing is, while I had waited at the wharf for Hobs, a fisherman invited me onboard his trawler to take shelter from the "barat" (storm) that was whipping through the harbor. We sat there chatting on his brightly painted wooden boat strung with red lanterns, him in Indonesian and me in English, not understanding a word each other said. But then he started pointing to our boat saying "barat, barat" with sweeping motions of his hand towards the sea. I interpreted this as "the cargo ship is going to head out to sea as soon as the storm passes." Stupid white girl!
We moved the boat to a nearby island. Tucked up into a sheltered little bay in front of a quaint fishing village we enjoyed our first full night of sleep in 17 days. The next day, we caught a water taxi back to the mainland in search of modern conveniences. There is an Internet cafe that charges 30 cents per hour, 100 times less than the cost in Papua New Guinea! At one Internet cafe; a patron asked where I was going while Hobs worked at the only available connection. I told him "Shopping for food, supermarket." The young man quickly replied, "Ah, me too," and proceeded to escort me 1 km down the road to the store. And as I piled veggies and perishables into a basket, he continued to tag along, helping me find what I needed. As quickly as he had volunteered to help, he disappeared saying, "I go now," and shaking my hand with that soft grip typical of an Indonesian handshake. At the register, I was nervous as my overloaded basket resulted in large numbers in local currency flashing on the screen, the total was more than $150,000.00 Indonesian Rp... equivalent to only $15 USD. Restaurant meals have typically totaled to US $5 for the two of us. Unfortunately, we are now quite certain that we dined on rat soup for lunch at one of our restaurant splurges. Using sign language and animal sounds with the staff, but we did establish that the soup meat was definitely not chicken. It looked and tasted unfamiliar and we had read that rat is a common source of protein in this town and commonly served in restaurants. But the "special" soup was all they were serving at the odd hour of the afternoon when we walked by.
In the afternoon we wandered through some of the narrow residential alleyways. It was raining and we were jumping from one dry patch of dirt to the next while dodging gutters of gushing water. The roofs of the houses either side of the road were so close together you could easily reach out and touch them with either hand, Hobs had to duck under 220V power lines, and the alleyways were only wide enough for a single moped or pedestrian. The residents had their doors and windows open offering an intimate view into their rainy afternoon lifestyle. After making our way deep into the warren of alleyways, a man called out from his open doorway saying that we shouldn't be out in the rain and should come inside for a cup of tea. So we did. Our host, Goodman, turned out to be a guide at the national wildlife park that we planned to visit in a few days. The home belonged to his relatives whom he was staying with while waiting for his son to arrive from Irian Jaya for Christmas. We sat around with the ten or more family members in the small living room with a bare concrete floor and bare mud and concrete walls while children and teenagers gawked and giggled from the doorway and pane-less windows. Outside the front door was a hole carved out of the stone roadbed. It had filled up with rushing rainwater and the community had gathered with their shampoo and toothpaste to clean up. During the hour that we sat with them, we made plans to visit our new friend's village by boat and spend the night in his home there to see the early morning risers in the wildlife park, including makaks, nocturnal marsupial monkeys called tarsier, and jungle birds that lay eggs in holes in the ground.
Indonesia is a welcoming, colorful place. Everything, whether it is a house, boat, monument, van, or fence post, is painted in multiple bright colors that make you smile. And there isn't a stranger anywhere. Nearly every passerby waves, says hello or "how are you" to practice their English, while smiling broadly. Some even asked to take photos of us with their mobile phone camera. Many strangers went out of their way to help us in our brief visits to Bitung for restocking and paperwork. It made us feel guilty for the lack of welcome that we often give visitors to Australia and America. It is beautiful in so many ways. We already feel we don't want to leave. This has been another confirmation that it pays to look past the tourist brochures and warnings from other travelers.
Tomorrow is Christmas Day. Indonesian Christians enjoyed a holiday for Christmas Eve today while their Muslim office mates went to work. The two religions seem to coexist in harmony here. The Muslim immigration officer yesterday introduced me to his best friend, a Christian. As you walk down the street, churches sit alongside mosques. In the early morning, you can hear the Muslim prayers being broadcast over loud speakers while the church bells compete for an audience. Tonight we are enjoying fireworks displays in a 360 deg panorama of booms and bright flashes. We are sad that we are not home for Christmas, but this is turning out to be a special place. For the first time since leaving Australia, we feel like we are surrounded by friends.
P.S. On the following Christmas morning we were woken by a phone call from our new friend, Goodman, wishing us a merry Christmas and letting us know that he is now back in his village, Batupiti, waiting for us to come and visit. He'd helped us purchase $10 prepaid SIM card and was helping us get some use out of it already. Christmas carols are blasting from the little village here on Lembeh Island where we are anchored.

Christmas Eve Eve Arrival in Bitung

2010-12-25T12:50:00.000+07:00

Indonesia, the land of pirates, terrorists, con artists, and people you just can't trust, or so we were led to believe by all the guidebooks and sensational news reports. After 17 days at sea, we motored hard into the wind for the last 24 hours to arrive mid-afternoon on Christmas eve eve. We figured Christmas eve would be a public holiday since Christmas fell on a Saturday this year, and we needed to do the paperwork Cha Cha with government officials. Businesses were already closing up shop as we desperately sought the Port Captain an other officials that could grant us legal visitor status before close of business. We really wanted to enjoy Christmas on land.

We didn't know where to start with the official process of clearing into the country, and we had heard that it was a multi-day affair of under the table bribes and lengthy paperwork for yachts arriving in Indonesia. After dropping anchor, we made our way to a wharf and tied the dinghy up among the brightly colored fishing boats with the help of a very friendly fisherman. He even let us lock our dingy to a long bamboo pole he was in the midst of sawing into sections for some sort of net or cage construction. After walking about two miles, we came upon the shipping terminal and went into the main office. It took some animated explanation, with Hobs breaking into a full-body pantomime, but the two men in uniform that attended to us eventually understood that we had just arrived on a "ship" and needed to find Immigration. "It is very far. You must catch a taxi" they told us. We explained that we had no local currency yet to pay for a taxi, so we would try and walk. One of the men led us back out to the main road while explaining to us the complicated route and significant distance to our destination. He hailed a taxi before we could explain. He told the driver where to take us, paid our fare, and waved goodbye as we disappeared into the flood of blaring moped horns and grinning pedestrians.

The drive was unnerving. The driver laid on his horn almost the entire way, swerving and weaving, barely missing motorcycles and pedestrians and negotiating busy intersections without stopping. In the middle of a busy pedestrian market he slowed down to about 10 mph to do a one handed money exchange with a vendor in the median, lighting the purchased cigarette before reaching the next intersection and speeding up. With our heart rates elevated, we were practically shoved out the door onto a peaceful tree-lined street next to two casually-dressed men. "What are you looking for?" the men asked. At this point we were in such a rush that we tried to brush them off. The Immigration building was in sight so Hobs yelled over his shoulder "Immigration" as we rushed past. "We are Immigration" they calmly and helpfully replied. We thought they were pulling our legs (Indonesians are notorious pranksters) but we took a chance and explained how we had just arrived on a yacht, our visas had expired before we'd been able to make landfall, and we were hoping to "clear in" before offices closed in an hour. We expected them to burst into laughter at this seemingly impossible goal. They hurriedly moved us to a nearby unmarked van and instructed us to climb in the back. With a bit of Indonesian chatter among themselves, they took off at high-speed with us in the back of the van, and immediately started making a series of short phone calls to several people. For all we knew, we had just been taken hostage. But, after two years of being in new countries and not understanding what was going on half the time, we have learned to let things play out before getting stressed. They pulled the van up at a bank and told us that we had to pay US$25 each to the bank for two new visas. The bank had already closed. "Hang on, let me talk to my brother" said one of the men. In a moment, the door opened and a security guard took us into a back area of the bank. The "brother" obliged and issued us a receipt for $25 dollars.

Again, we took off in the van, still in the dark. They asked us for directions to the boat and we did our best to remember the blur of streets and landmarks (including an Eiffel tower!) that had marked our route from the boat to Immigration. We found the fishing wharf and our dingy, and before long another van pulled up full of men from Customs, shortly followed by a man on a motorbike, supposedly from Quarantine, but also dressed like he was about to go watch a baseball game. They told us that Hobs should take the men to our boat while they took me in the van back to their office. Again, we weren't sure if this was all legitimate, but took a chance on them. Sure enough, they took me to a different Immigration office down at the wharf and issued official-looking but hand-written visas in our passports.

We were apprehensive about losing our basil plant that we had successfully smuggled from Australia through Papua New Guinea, but the quarantine man was more interested in taking happy snaps with his mobile phone of him standing on the boat with his arm around Hobson's shoulder and a proud grin on his face. Miraculously, we had cleared in through all three departments before 4pm. However, when I was sitting with our fisherman friend on his boat waiting for Hobs to deliver the Quarantine officer back from Australis, I noticed a panicked look on Hobson's face. "The boat is drifting" he yelled as he approached the wharf at full throttle and practically threw the Zip-Lock bag of quarantine paperwork at the officer that he hastily "helped" out of the dingy. Sure enough, the storm that had just blown through had pulled our anchor free and the boat was making its way out the pass towards sea. We weren't sure if we had enough petrol in the outboard or if we would be able to go fast enough in the leaky half-full dingy, but our 4HP Yamaha gave us everything it had and after five minutes at full throttle we were climbing over the rail and diving for the ignition as the boat slowly drifted towards an anchored cargo ship towering above us. The funny thing is, while I had waited at the wharf for Hobs, a fisherman invited me onboard his trawler to take shelter from the "barat" (storm) that was whipping through the harbor. We sat there chatting on his brightly painted wooden boat strung with red lanterns, him in Indonesian and me in English, not understanding a word each other said. But then he started pointing to our boat saying "barat, barat" with sweeping motions of his hand towards the sea. I interpreted this as "the cargo ship is going to head out to sea as soon as the storm passes." Stupid white girl!

We moved the boat to a nearby island. Tucked up into a sheltered little bay in front of a quaint fishing village we enjoyed our first full night of sleep in 17 days. The next day, we caught a water taxi back to the mainland in search of modern conveniences. There is an Internet cafe that charges 30 cents per hour, 100 times less than the cost in Papua New Guinea! At one Internet cafe; a patron asked where I was going while Hobs worked at the only available connection. I told him "Shopping for food, supermarket." The young man quickly replied, "Ah, me too," and proceeded to escort me 1 km down the road to the store. And as I piled veggies and perishables into a basket, he continued to tag along, helping me find what I needed. As quickly as he had volunteered to help, he disappeared saying, "I go now," and shaking my hand with that soft grip typical of an Indonesian handshake. At the register, I was nervous as my overloaded basket resulted in large numbers in local currency flashing on the screen, the total was more than $150,000.00 Indonesian Rp... equivalent to only $15 USD. Restaurant meals have typically totaled to US $5 for the two of us. Unfortunately, we are now quite certain that we dined on rat soup for lunch at one of our restaurant splurges. Using sign language and animal sounds with the staff, but we did establish that the soup meat was definitely not chicken. It looked and tasted unfamiliar and we had read that rat is a common source of protein in this town and commonly served in restaurants. But the "special" soup was all they were serving at the odd hour of the afternoon when we walked by.

In the afternoon we wandered through some of the narrow residential alleyways. It was raining and we were jumping from one dry patch of dirt to the next while dodging gutters of gushing water. The roofs of the houses either side of the road were so close together you could easily reach out and touch them with either hand, Hobs had to duck under 220V power lines, and the alleyways were only wide enough for a single moped or pedestrian. The residents had their doors and windows open offering an intimate view into their rainy afternoon lifestyle. After making our way deep into the warren of alleyways, a man called out from his open doorway saying that we shouldn't be out in the rain and should come inside for a cup of tea. So we did. Our host, Goodman, turned out to be a guide at the national wildlife park that we planned to visit in a few days. The home belonged to his relatives whom he was staying with while waiting for his son to arrive from Irian Jaya for Christmas. We sat around with the ten or more family members in the small living room with a bare concrete floor and bare mud and concrete walls while children and teenagers gawked and giggled from the doorway and pane-less windows. Outside the front door was a hole carved out of the stone roadbed. It had filled up with rushing rainwater and the community had gathered with their shampoo and toothpaste to clean up. During the hour that we sat with them, we made plans to visit our new friend's village by boat and spend the night in his home there to see the early morning risers in the wildlife park, including macaques, nocturnal marsupial monkeys called tarsier, and jungle birds that lay eggs in holes in the ground.

Indonesia is a welcoming, colorful place. Everything, whether it is a house, boat, monument, van, or fence post, is painted in multiple bright colors that make you smile. And there isn't a stranger anywhere. Nearly every passerby waves, says hello or "how are you" to practice their English, while smiling broadly. Some even asked to take photos of us with their mobile phone camera. Many strangers went out of their way to help us in our brief visits to Bitung for restocking and paperwork. It made us feel guilty for the lack of welcome that we often give visitors to Australia and America. It is beautiful in so many ways. We already feel we don't want to leave. This has been another confirmation that it pays to look past the tourist brochures and warnings from other travelers.

Tomorrow is Christmas Day. Indonesian Christians enjoyed a holiday for Christmas Eve today while their Muslim office mates went to work. The two religions seem to coexist in harmony here. The Muslim immigration officer yesterday introduced me to his best friend, a Christian. As you walk down the street, churches sit alongside mosques. In the early morning, you can hear the Muslim prayers being broadcast over loud speakers while the church bells compete for an audience. Tonight we are enjoying fireworks displays in a 360 deg panorama of booms and bright flashes. We are sad that we are not home for Christmas, but this is turning out to be a special place. For the first time since leaving Australia, we feel like we are surrounded by friends.

P.S. On the following Christmas morning we were woken by a phone call from our new friend, Goodman, wishing us a merry Christmas and letting us know that he is now back in his village, Batupiti, waiting for us to come and visit. He'd helped us purchase $10 prepaid SIM card and was helping us get some use out of it already. Christmas carols are blasting from the little village here on Lembeh Island where we are anchored.

Cruel Species Well-Suited for a Cruel World

2010-12-09T03:33:00.000+07:00

I can't get the image of those huge sad brown eyes out of my mind. We were walking back to the "boat shed beach" where all the banana boats come ashore in Lorengau to bring their produce and fish to the market. Lorengau is the "big smoke" on Manus island. Locals and cruisers alike have consistently remarked on how educated the population of Manus is. So when we saw a grandmother carrying a furry brown object with a strap over her shoulder, we thought at first that it was some new fashionable handbag. The bags that most people carry, especially the men, are usually made of palm fronds or strips from the Pandanus plant, with tassles hanging all the way to the ground. But then the mink purse squirmed and turned his big brown eyes towards us. We were walking to the front of the old lady to get a closer look. It wasn't a purse, or a pet, but dinner. The lady was carrying a ring-tail possum trussed up with vines around his feet, tail and mouth. It looked like a tiny, furry human baby about to be burned over the fire as punishment for witchcraft or at a cannibalistic feast. In the islands the locals don't have power or refrigeration so they have to keep their dinner alive until the last minute. You could see the despair in the possum's eyes as he glanced pleadingly from person to person, searching for a sympathetic face. The lady sat down on the concrete curb and dropped her dinner on the road just as if it were a purse or backpack. She had obviously detached herself from it as a living thing and certainly didn't feel any of the parental, baby-care instincts that were welling up inside Larissa and I.
For the next two days at sea we anxiously sailed through a midnight gale, and then strong rains that lasted all day. And we kept returning to the scene of that furry animal in our minds, trying sort out what the possum felt and what his captor or buyer felt. As we rehashed the experience, Larissa revealed that they are an endangered species in Australia. Their curling tail, like a monkey's, is unique among possums. We must not have crossed the Wallace line yet, so we're still seeing the possum and parrots of Australia and the south pacific islands rather than Southeast Asia monkeys and tree-climbing kangaroos.
The grandmother probably paid dearly for the possum. They must be extremely rare on an island where every living thing is hunted by a swelling population skilled in exploiting every natural resource within their reach, after thousands of years of hunting tradition in these jungle islands. It's really no different than the live chickens sold in Asian markets and even some ethnic neighborhoods in Los Angeles. And it's certainly a bit more civilized than the cannibalism that was certainly practiced on this island by that grandmother's grandmother. We urban monkeys just aren't used to being so close to the cruelty of life on this planet. We let corporations plastic-wrap and flash-freeze the cruelty for us. And even us country boys aren't accustomed to the cruelty of another culture on the other side of the world. In the south, our brothers and fathers brought home deer, squirrel, and even possum for dinner, and even us nerdy types killed and cleaned our share of fish and crab. Despite eating squirrel for dinner, we sometimes raised pet squirrels and ferrets whenever a hurricane or the Christmas season pet store boom turned nature on its head. I'm sure a squirrel and the eyes of a buck are no less sad and "knowing" than those of a condemned ring-tail possum or monkey, but it sure feels different. I guess it always felt this way, I just got used to ignoring those "higher" feelings in favor of the primal pleasure of a rich meat stew. It's a cruel world, especially for these islanders that regularly lose their limbs or lives to tropical ulcers, regularly sacrifice their lives in childbirth, or at sea chasing fish. And we even learned recently that a man we met on Kavieng barely survived being crushed to death by a falling coconut... and his family, his wontok (tribe) laughed hysterically as they dragged his limp body off of the beach and into a clearing, leaving him there for his empoloyer at the surf camp to ferry him to a hospital by boat, where he recovered. It's just considered your duty to die contributing to the tribe. If you are foraging on the reef and get a cut on your leg that never heals and you die a painful death of gangrene and gradual organ shutdown from staff infection. If you fishing canoe goes missing for days on end, you must fend for yourself or die. The chief won't send anyone to look for you. There's no PNG search and rescue force. We even met an Australian carpenter, Greg, on Kavieng with a similar story of the hard life in paradise. He comes here for 6 months each year to build bungalows for the Kavieng surf camp that he'd visited one year on vacation. Several years ago he lost his right leg to a blister on his heel from an ill-fitting and over-used pair of diving flippers. With ulcers blooming on my own heel and knees, I listened with rapt attention to Greg's story, and the next day walked a few kilometers to the local pharmacy on my sore foot to stock up on the Australian med kit for tropical ulcers: Cephalexin (Keflex trade name), Bactriban (antibiotic ointment), and Detall (Pinesol disinfectant wash for your skin). It was nice not to need a prescription to get whatever you needed. In the tropical heat and bathwater sea, Greg's ulcer spread to to his Achilles tendon within a week, before he even thought to start popping antibiotics or go see a doctor. Apparently, once an infection gets inside a bone or tendon, where there's no fluid circulation, removal of the infected tissue is the only cure. Greg now shares the ex-pat islander moto with everyone he meets, "When in pain, get on a plane." But he continues to return each year to this hard life in an easy climate, like a pirate running around on a peg leg as nimbly as the rest of us. He even plans to move here permanently. He's trying to stay away from his previous life running his family's abalone trawler business in the Bass Straight. It wasn't the danger and misery of life at sea in a stormy part of the world that sent him to the islands. What convinced him to "retire" was sitting in the protection of the wheel house of his trawler watching the underwater video from his dredges. It was too painful watching the 10 ft wide dredging bucket with hardened steel claws ripping up everything living and unliving, scraping a permanent scar into the ocean floor.
On Hawei island (pronounced "Hawaii" by the locals, with a smirk), just off of Manus Island, David's brother had talked to me about how "all this talk about the environment doesn't work. It all starts with money. If you don't have money you don't have anything." David and his family are fishermen. They live on an isolated island several miles offshore from Lorengau town on the barrier reef that surrounds Manus Island. They're close enough to the mainland to use cell phones, but far enough away not to have any power or land lines from Manus. When David arrived for our water taxi ride into down on his banana boat, he was early. "Sorry, we're not ready to go yet. Timothy won't be here until 8 o'clock to watch the boat." "Why don't you just call him?" "Do you have his contact number?" And David's whole family whips out their cell phones. It's weird being able to use a cell phone again, and even weirder to have the islanders reminding you how to use it.

Rascals

2010-11-01T03:33:00.000+07:00

We'd just read in the guidebooks that Rabaul has "rascals," the violent PNG gangs that prey on locals and foreigners alike. And Steve relayed the depressing story of how Gordon had left several large lines hanging from his transom overnight, only to find them gone in the morning. And they were anchored in Egem Atol, a remote, seldom-visited island. So we were hesitant to anchor too close to shore when we arrived near Rabaul last night. It looked very civilized. There were even cars driving along the coastal road, the first we've seen in a month or more. But we were wary. As we set the anchor and stowed equipment we were alarmed a bit to notice the commotion on the beach that our arrival had caused. A group of about 20 young men were energetically hooping and hollering at us from a half mile away, dragging a large log down the beach and into the water. Before long the entire gang was piled onto the log and paddling furiously with their arms out towards us, throwing as much water into the air as they were pushing behind them.
As they got closer we sat on the back deck and waved back at them with smiles. To our relief the smiles returned looked genuine. They were just energetic fans of cruising yachts. So we finished locking all the bits and pieces of equipment that we can't sail without and Riss put the dingy in the water. We planned to meet them before they reached to boat to discourage them climbing aboard. We tentatively spoke with them about 100 ft from the boat. They quickly exploded in celebration, raucously chatted away with one another and did backflips off the log. They'd made it! They were just trying to touch the boat, and they were almost there. So we accompanied them to the boat, inviting the younger ones aboard our dingy. They all touched it, and two of the teenagers did climb aboard the swim platform, mostly to just get a rest from the long swim. We hung out there for a 15 minutes or so as one of the older boys dove below to look at our prop and keel or show off his ability to swim under a big yacht (no mask or snorkel, just curiosity and energy). When we explained that we needed to go ashore and would take some of them with us, Mark, the leader assured us they'd come with us too. And they all did. We even helped tow the giant log paddling in the dingy. Our new friends turned out to be children of military and police fathers, staying at the barracks nearby. And we found some fishermen on the beach that were willing to watch our dingy for us. The fishermen were the rascal types with gangster clothing and scowls to greet us. But having made our new friends just down the beach probably protected us a bit, and the fishermen offered to watch our dingy as we went ashore. We locked it to a tree, but couldn't secure the paddles from the curious children who were likely to rummage around inside. Nonetheless, when we came back after a walk through an abandoned, seedy part of town with a liquor store named The Spirit of Rabaul and a night club named only Entertainment. Several business had security guards patrolling form behind iron bars and fencing. All were closed, except for a small take-away restaurant run by a Chinese woman. Riss bought a Cherry Soda. It helped turn her teeth and braces red during the warry walk back through the "entertainment" district, so she fit in with the natives and their Beetlenut stained mouths.
We'll try to find the less seedy parts of town today and see if we can check in with port authorities. We're stuck here for a week waiting for a friend. I hope we can keep the locals happy that long. Thursday is supposed to be the bad night for rascals when they get their paychecks and spend it all on beer. Maybe we'll put to sea and stay out on an outer island for that.

Nem Blong Em

2010-10-31T06:53:00.000+07:00

Tiny spinner dolphins played in our bow during their breaks from corralling a silvery sparkle of fish dancing out of the water. We were approaching the entrance to Put Put Harbor (Rugen Harbor), notorious for its narrow, steep, pass and the right angle turn through the jungle mountains at the entrance. It can be hard to spot when approaching from the south with the prevailing current pushing you along at 5 knots. But our Garmin chart plotter was off by only a few hundred feet so we had not trouble navigating through the 100 ft wide pass between docks over the reef to starboard with kids playing in the surf near the point and jungle cliffs sloping down to the reef on the port side. There is a large, manicured, western-style building complex right on the northern bank, visible as soon as you line up with the entrance. This is where the German saw mill used to be located. Apparently it is now used for balsa wood processing. And some of the complex that we saw may be the 7th Day Adventist church.
Supposedly the logging company used to maintain a red and green marker, arranged "Red Right Returning" in the US convention, and opposite to convention of the rest of PNG and the world. But when we arrived, there were no markers to be found, except the single leading white triangle pointing the way into the entrance, set on a pole on top of a reef at the back of the right angle turn in the harbor.
It was almost 5 o'clock when we pulled our anchor deep into the mud in 40 ft of water near the mangroves, just south of a concrete wharf and just east of the unmarked, but charted, coral head. The teenagers on the wharf were carefully putting their clean, polo shirts and shorts back on after having spent the Saturday afternoon doing back flips ("spins") off the jetty into the shallow water in their underwear. Larissa insisted we put the dingy in the water and paddle around the small "weather proof" bay here on New Britain Island (04 deg 33.909' S, 152 deg 21.357' E) to search for ruins, like the old German steam engine at the lumber mill. So we drifted down wind and out with the tide towards the wharf as we pondered the friendliness of the natives, and whether to paddle on to the opposite shore where the lumber mill used to be. Eventually the boys waved to us so we paddled over, asking permission to anchor in their harbor and exchanged the other formalities like learning where everyone was from. It turns out all the boys were from different islands. They'd applied to go to school here and needed good grades to get in. We also learned that it was Chris's 19th birthday and they were planning to celebrate with "table food." Arthur, Chris, and the other teenagers were attending the local "Secondary School" run by the Catholic missionaries that also ran the copra (coconut) plantation. When asked what kind of music they liked (Arthur was carrying a portable music player) they all said in unison "gospel." Arthur explained, "the school doesn't like us to play pop music." We nodded and explained our understanding that it was Saturday so they didn't have to go to school today. One of them mumbled something about it being the "Sabbath." Clearly they have learned the Catholic and 7th Day Adventist vocabulary. These were smart boys, devoted and well-trained by the missionary teachers at a school that is apparently quit famous throughout PNG.
The boys explained the local businesses around, like cocoa bean (chocolate) plantation owned and run by a Brazilian company. It seems that nearly all of the limited number of businesses in the outer islands of PNG are run by foreign institutions, usually religious missionaries. Unfortunately the only foreign investment flowing from the United States seems to be focused on the one natural resource that is plentiful on these rocky, jungly islands... human souls. Other foreign companies are happy to help extract the more concrete resources of the area--gold from Australian mines (Woodlark Isl), fish for Taiwanese long-liners paying villages to hide from regulators in their harbors (Louisiades Archipelago), German lumber mills (Put Put Harbor) clear cutting old growth ebony decades ago, Brazilian cocoa (Put Put Harbor), coconuts at the Indian copra plantations (Panapompom Isl), and military communication for Japanese trans-pacific telegraph repeaters and airfields (Woodlark Isl) before WWII. If we'd had time in the mosquito-free hours of the day to walk up to their school (1.5 km up the road) and the plantations, we would have enjoyed learning more about how business runs in PNG and what drives or drives away foreign investment. Presumably the locals and mainlanders (Port Moresby) don't have the market knowledge, technology, or the capital to develop family-run farms and processing mills. Chris and Arthur wanted to be "businessmen" when they graduated from secondary school. When pressed, Chris admitted that he'd like to be an accountant. "Being and accountant is good work." "Won't you have to work in Port Moresby?" "Yes." So as the sun sank below the mountains fringing the harbor, we let the boys return to their walk up the hill to the school and paddled off to the other side where the lumber mill seemed to be hidden among the jungle trees. We explored up a little creek mouth until our way was blocked by a coral stone dam at one tributary, and a low wooden footbridge across the other branch. This must be the path they walk to get to the 7th Day Adventist church or lumber mill from this shore of the harbor. We were hesitant to bring the dingy too close to the lumber mill buildings as they looked like they had been occupied by local squatters and a Misima-style "dunny" seemed to be hanging out over the water at the small village with dozens of children running around and following our progress up the shore. Four of the young girls were energetic enough scramble over the rock dam and up the creek to catch us, but we couldn't get them to speak a word other than Hello. We asked them their names and the name of their village, and told them ours, but still not a peep. Sometimes we'd get the beginning of a sentence "Where..." and then a giggling duck behind the older girl to hide. Eventually a lady that appeared to be in charge walked over the dam and invited us to bring our dingy to her home to "talk story" with them. We waded the dingy over sharp coral rocks to the building that looked like the overhanging, open sewer, outhouse and tied to the tree to keep it from touching the shore. The children quickly assembled themselves along the edge of the porch of the hut that we'd thought was an outhouse. The matriarch encouraged them with pidgin, "Yu askem nem blong em." Eventually giving up and turning to us to ask us to "talk story" instead. She explained to us that the village was named Samira, and Larissa noticed that her cheek was tattooed with an arching vertical stripe (I thought it was a scar at first). Apparently the women in each village have a unique tattoo to mark their home village. Men seem to only have tattoos on the rest of their bodies, not their face. Since it's a matriarchal society on many islands, these must be like jewelry for a western woman, indicating her home village and thus the extent and value of her wealth (land). The pidgin word "Blong" seems to have origins in this uniquely island way of understanding "being" and "owning." Blong is used for everything from "named" and "owned" to "is" or "is from." Who you are in PNG is wrapped defined by where you are from and your name, your village... where you "belong" in PNG society. It's such a part of you that your tattoo it on the most visible part of your body.
I'm sure the locals would gladly tattoo a cross on their forehead or cheek, if the church didn't disapprove of such "mutilations."
The well-dressed, clean lady from Samira village tried to encourage the children to ask us our name. After a dozen proddings and 10 minutes of us "talking story" about Los Angeles beaches, and movies, Hollywood governors, and Indonesian presidents, eventually a young girl was able to get out the full phrase "What is your name" without giggling and hiding in shyness or reverting to pidgin like "Nem blong em". The matriarch then also translated their pidgin to explain that they wanted lollies to do a "singsing" for us. She relayed our reply that we didn't have any lollies, only popcorn and asked if they would like some popcorn tomorrow morning instead, and they all yelled out in chorus "yes please." She orchestrated the performance like a school teacher. She must run the local elementary school just up the road behind the village. In the end they enthusiastically belted out a couple verses of "Father Abraham," but looked on quizzically as I joined in once I deciphered their odd pronunciation and tune and chimed in on the choruses, raising my "right hand, left hand, right foot, left foot." Apparently they don't know what any of the words mean. That's impressive that they can mimic the sounds of English words for a song so lengthy, without understanding a lick of it. Anything to impress the local missionaries and religious school teachers.
Because the children had trouble with English, and the man on the porch seemed to content to smile and nod and encourage the kids with a word or two here and there, we spent most of the evening talking to the woman. We learned that she had "good friends" on a sailboat from "Sweden" that had stayed here. "Many years ago." "How long did they stay?" "Two, three, or four days, ... maybe a week." In the typical PNG way, I think she was trying to shame or encourage us into staying with her "long time" ourselves. She even remembered the names of the couple from Sweden. Impressive memory. Western contact is obviously still very important to villagers, even this close to civilization. We are now only a short road trip away from Rabaul which is "Big Smoke" for sure, with it's active volcano that destroyed half the city. It's only another short hop from there to Kavieng, a popular destination for tourists. And Larissa's pretty sure she saw or heard a car rumbling along the road somewhere at the edge of the harbor among the jungle trees.
Twilight was fading and the insects were starting to bite, so we retreated to our bit of civilization in the middle of the harbor. We'll have to make it an early morning to get the kids their well-earned popcorn before they have to scamper off to Sunday service in their bright clean clothes. No matter how squalid the village, nearly everyone maintains at least one very nice set of clothes. There is nearly always laundry drying on a line. New Guineans take pride in their appearance, especially on Sundays or in talking to scruffy unkempt cruisers that they, like Africans, must consider to be "dirty" in comparison to the missionaries and priests they normally encounter.

War Zone

2010-10-30T04:21:00.000+07:00

The border between Indonesia and PNG is still a war zone. Indonesia (at the urging of US mining corporations) committed genocide and displaced more refugees in confiscating West PNG mountain land than in any other conflict any where else in the world. PNG has no effective military, but obviously there are formerly cannibalistic natives in the jungles that are violently opposed to this and wreak havoc on the Indonesian military near the border. We were initially refused a cruising permit for Jayapura near the boarder. And we hadn't heard anything about all this, ... until preparing to come here and doing the paperwork chacha to get cruising permits in Indonesia and PNG...

Another Unique Place

2010-10-30T04:06:00.000+07:00

English Cove and Irish Cove were another trial for us, but not nearly the trial they were for the first westerners to arrive here. http://maps.google.com/maps?q=-4.771233,152.857217(Time:21%3A1+GMT%2C+Oct+29%2C+2010%20Latitude:-4.771233%20Longitude:152.857217)
Our engine died at the narrow coral-lined entrance, the worse nightmare of a sailor. We had a bit of sail up as a precaution and were able to sail clear of the bay without trouble. It took about 30 minutes to bleed the fuel filter and trace the latest air leak to the Raycor fuel filter bowl drain valve. Tighetening it only made it worse, so we had to use the electric fuel pump to keep it full of fuel while we motored into the anchorage. Riss finally noticed the champagne bubbles near the drain valve whenever the electric pump was off, confirming the diagnosis. We made it through the narrow pass, Larissa trying to process my panicy order not to ever let the engine idle and then asking her to idle up to some scary looking coral bombies and a shallow shelf of coral. Two women in an outrigger canoe seemed to understand my question about sand bottom and assured us there was none anywere around, contradicting the guidebook. So we dragged the anchor around across the hard rocky bottom in a figure eight pattern, with the boat alternately pushing and pulling on the anchor chain in forward and reverse, trying to keep the keel and prop away from the tensioning anchor chain. Eventually we somehow snagged something (or tied the anchor chain in a knot around a low rock). So we shut down the engine and I jumped into the water in the late afternoon sun, shadowed by the steep jungle and granite cliffs on 3 sides. Islanders peered on curiously from their canoes paddling out to us for the typical"trade" and to "admire your boat" welcome.
The English and Irish familes who first arrived here were expecting a thriving city with their newly purchased plot of land destined to grow in value in this tropical paradise. Instead they were abandoned on the thin beach of this jungle island and left to die over the next few years trying to eek out a survival on coconuts and fish, wasting away from malaria. The developer was eventually imprissoned for 6 years, but should have gotten much worse.
As the flies, gnats, and islanders swarmed our boat, we wondered how the Englishmen dealt with these troubles of the troupics. In the 1800's when the settlement was attempted, these islanders would have still been canibals. The single men in canoes refuse to smile and even scowl at you despite the typical greetings in English. We joked about being eaten ourselves as they paddled away one by one, seemingly angry at our existence.
One more pleast islander, originally from the Solomon Islands, or Boaganville Island, greeted us and explained that the village was offshore at the small islet near the entrance to the bay. As we passed it on the way in, it seemed to have more flat land and a beach suitable for canoe landing. A large tree branch was smoldering as it balanced across his canoe, the smoking branch tips only inches from the water's surface. "What's that for?" ... "Why the burning tree in your canoe?" ... "Why?" Why and how are questions that are difficult for islanders to understand in English, but eventually he got it and replied "For smoke. For pipe," as he puffed away on an English tobacco pipe. He'd asked us for "smoke" during the introductions and we'd gotten him to settle for some fish hooks, in exchange for a Papaya, scored lengthwise. We could never get him to understand our questions of the "why" for that lengthwise scoring of the papaya skin. It seemed obvious to him and he didn't ahve an explanation.
We did eventually learn how they hunt wild pigs around here. "With stones" an islander said. Now we used to admire the Marquesans who can take down a wild boar in the sttep rocky mountains with nothing but three large knives on their belt. And we admired the Peruvian cousins on a 20 ft catamaran and their innovative goat-hunting technique involving a fishing spear gun. But this was the most brutish and difficult way to obtain "the other white meat" that we'd heard of.

Connecting Cruisers to Civilization

2010-10-29T04:26:00.000+07:00

Our friends Steve and Selena on Westward II and Gordon and Anita on Dragonfly took a chance on scantily charted, unprotected anchorage on Ginetu island. The calm weather allowed them to venture in deeply into the reef among coral heads and find a picturesque, peaceful anchorage with the cleanest, clearest water they've ever seen. The coral was vibrant and diverse. The beaches were clean, inviting, and easily landed by dingy. Unfortunately, the fish and lobster population was virtually nonexistent. After several diving trips, both Gordon and Steve gave up on the chance of ever seeing any decent sized fish or lobster. Either the island has been overfished by islanders and/or the rumored Taiwan long liners, or some other environmental disaster has destroyed the local fish and lobster population. It is exposed to the SE trade winds, and the surf might make it inhospitable, but other much more turbulent reefs have been fertile spear fishing grounds. So something else must be at play. There is no sign of settlement on the islands and in significant storms they would be uninhabitable, so long term hunting by islanders is unlikely the cause as well. This would be a great mystery for environmentalists and researchers to solve in collaboration with adventurous cruisers willing to investigate less-visited islands. I'd like to one day set up a website to broker contact between cruisers and the various governmental and private sector organizations that could benefit from access to data from remote locations. Marine mapmakers could benefit from the wealth of sounding data compiled and shared by cruisers. Climatologists environmentalists could benefit from all the weather and wildlife information that cruisers are constantly sharing with one another. Here's a partial list of some of the connections a sailing rally organizer or a cleverly designed website (http://www.noonsite.com, http://ssca.org, or http://liferclub.com) might facilitate.
1) Academic Institutions
a) Research into environment (trash content and current flow, biology of islands, sociology of island cultures, psychology (remote peoples are a unique group of test subjects for understanding modern technology implications, technology testing, medicine/epidemiology sampling or monitoring, satellite communication, astronomy (events only visible from remote places), climatology research, navigation/maritime/mapping research, electronic device user interface testing for "universality" global intuitive)
b) Logistics for researchers trying to maintain or communicate with partners/facilities/contacts in remote places
2) Governments
a) Regulation & treaty monitoring (nuclear weapons proliferation, hazardous waste disposal, environment, fisheries, global warming, etc)
b) Foreign policy research
c) National Defense Monitoring/Research
d) Public and international relations
e) Aid agency research and monitoring and logistics
f) Search and rescue logistics and communication and relationship maintenance
3) Individuals
a) Communication with family members (inbound or outbound)
b) Transportation of goods or money to family members (inbound or outbound)
4) Religious Organizations
a) Missionaries
b) Research
5) Corporations
a) sponsorship to piggyback on any publicity or fame in the trip
b) promotion of their brand to the remote places to get in on the ground floor in a developing economy
c) product testing in hash/remote locations (communication equipment, sailing/marine equipment, navigation equipment, cell phone coverage mapping, air cooled diesel generators, solar panels in tropics, water collection/purification systems, pesticides/seeds and agricultural technology, manual tools, cordless tool robustness testing, gasoline powered tools, outboard motors operating and being maintained in harsh environment with unskilled operators)

Adventures in PNG

2010-10-22T05:18:00.000+07:00

Never a dull day in New Guinea. A boat we sailed here with, Ultimate, radioed during the daily check-in saying they'd just been hit by a water spout. Their radio was faint and filled with static, unlike previous check-ins, so the story may not be all exaggeration. Fortunately they were motoring and all sails were down, so their boat is fine and everyone is all right. "It just howled for a little while."
We followed another boat, Westward II, to Woodlark island. Steve used to work in the mines up here, so he knows of a few nice spots. The anchorage we're staying in for the next two days is near a grass airstrip that he flew into 20 years ago and first got inspired to go sailing. There was a lone American yacht anchored in the bay. The owner couple was sitting on the coconut-lined beach drinking a bottle of wine watching the sunset and told him how they had been waiting 8 weeks for a part from the states.
Today started with a discussion of pirates and with the local pastor. Apparently the preacher has many talents. He was the first to see the three boats arrive in the anchorage and paddle out to us in a canoe. He proceeded to reassure us that this end of the island was completely safe. "No rascals here." We find that the preachers in every village say this. Rascals are violent gangs of pirates, young men in banana boats (40 HP skiffs that run between islands carrying passengers, urgent cargo, or chasing fish & human prey). Apparently, at this island they stopped robbing and murdering outsiders decades ago and now just prey on the local trading boats (25 ft, diesel powered cabin cruisers). No trading boats will come to Woodlark island at night anymore. So far Woodlark has been just like the Louisiades, only a bit more civilized. Instead of trading T-shirts and fish hooks for seafood and bush greens, we are trading CDs, DVDs, and books for things like corn, tomatoes, and giant cucumber. The canoes will wait politely, hanging onto the edge of your boat or dingy until you come on deck before asking if you want to trade for their carvings or produce.
The preacher that explained the security situation is also an adept fisherman. He took Steve and Gordon out to the reef where the waves break in 2 ft of water over jagged coral and rock. Lobsters (crayfish) hide just inshore of the crashing surf in the deeper holes and cracks of the rocks. The last time Gordon and Steve were taken on a crayfish hunt at night, they declined to jump into the pitch black darkness and roaring surf with the New Guinean guides who were coming up bloodied carrying lobsters in each hand after minutes underwater with nothing but a flashlight. Even in full daylight, Steve and Gordon decided against the hazards of body surfing over coral to dive into cracks for lobsters, which have fierce claws and razor sharp spines on the side of their powerful tails. Father Matthew didn't hesitate in this daylight trip, though. They gave him a mask and Hawaiian sling, but Matthew preferred his homemade contraption of sharpened steel rebarb with a cleft in the side that made a barb and a small wooden handle. He'd dive down for minutes at a time before coming up with a lobster while Steve and Gordon hung onto the rocks for dear life just over the coral ledge from the raging white water. Fortunately I'm nursing tropical ulcers that turn to gangrene if you get them wet, so I had an excuse to stay out of the water. The really amazing bit of diving that the preacher did was the spearing of fish, underwater, after the bicycle tube rubber on his home-made spear broke. He'd just jab at fish lobster while swimming underwater in pursuit. He didn't even have fins or snorkel, just a mask and this rusty bit of sharpened rebarb.
And the third "adventure" for the day was a deadly sea snake climbing up onto the swim platform of Dragonfly to sun himself. Sea snakes have the deadliest venom of all snakes in the world, but only one or two people have ever died of a sea snake bite, because of the way the venom is injected from ridges deep in the mouth, too deep for anything but a human finger. Apparently Daddy Long Leg spiders have the same deadly reputation--though their venom is stronger than that of any other spider, but their jaws are too small to bite a human. It seems that most of PNG has been like that, a lot of bark, but little bite... so far. Tomorrow's adventure is a ride up to the gold mines. Father Matthew has offered to sit on one of the boats to maintain security while we are away for the day.

(no subject)

2010-10-07T00:58:00.000+07:00

As usual we were nearly the last to arrive in Misima. We anchored in the only plot of 7 ft deep water available, near the public outhouse and muddy mangroves marked with the cautionary note "crocodiles" in our guidebook. We had to satisfy ourselves with short scope despite the poor holding of the muddy bottom due to the tree stump poking out of the water to our starboard stern and the mud flats all around behind us. We had to get ready for our rafting partners right behind us. "Out There" rafted up easily on our starboad, bow to stern, and "Mico" was soon secure to our port side, bow to stern as well. With our dingy we ferried the bow anchors of "Mico" and "Out There" into the shallows behind us to act as stern anchors for the raft, to prevent us swinging into our neighbors, who were close on all sides. Everyone felt secure. Sun shade cloth went up on all boats as we prepared for a relaxing afternoon on deck cooling off in the light breeze and waiting for quarantine and immigration officials to board for inspection. When a cooling sprinkle of rain began to build into a shower I dragged out the rain catcher and collected 50 gallons of water or more over the next 30 minutes. Mico and Out There prepared to catch water from their decks as well, plugging haus holes with rags.
Then the mahem began. A call went out on the radio in a female voice tinged with a thick Eastern European accent, "A wooden dingy is loose in the anchorage. Help please." Then moments later. "All dinghies to the wooden dingy in the middle of the harbor." The Bosnian wife of Peter on "Medusa" was doing her best to relay the emergency call as her husband worked on deck to fend off pending doom. Yelling and screaming from shore and the boats in the anchorage accompanied the call. In less than 20 seconds, nearly all 23 dinghies were deployed and racing to the middle of the anchorage to confront a derelict wooden ship that was dragging its inadequate anchor through the anchorage. As the rain pelted us shirtless dimdims, we acted as tugs to protect our first-world homes from this quintessentially 3rd world phenonemon--a half sinking, motorless, sail-less, wooden battering ram barreling through a harbor. Surprisingly, the crew of the wooden derelict ship were still aboard and appeared to be calmly going about their normal anchoring and re-anchoring with tide shifts. At one point several climbed down the sides using their the tractor tire fenders as a ladder to get into the banana boat (skiff) that was acting as their inadequate tender and tug. Others were on deck alternately raising and then relowering the hook-shaped rebarb iron (reef pick) they were using as an anchor. Some cruisers attempted to climb aboard but found it hard to reach the top of the rail from the waterline, so only the youngest crew from "Engarde" accomplished the climb. They found a deck that had been stripped of planking, leaving 3 ft gaps between stringers. It was all they could do to help untie tow lines hurridly knoted to the sides of the ship as one of the cruisers was screaming at the top of his lungs for help, as he watched his inflatable tug being pushed towards sharp bamboo along the warf. They were also able to help the crew of the ship in hoisting the anchor which had hooked the anchor chain of one of the boats in the anchorage and was too heavy for the two "permanent" ship crew trying to hoist it hand over hand.
The brief yells of celebration from dingy drivers and the shore-side audience was short lived. Once we arrived back at our raft of 3 boats it was becoming clear that we were in water that was too shallow for the fin keel of "Out There" and the anchor of Australis was inadequate to keep us all in place in the building, gusting wind and rain. So we all cranked our engines and motored to relieve pressure on the bow anchor. I yelling out requests through the rain to my two trimaran pontoons asking them each alternately to go into reverse to twist the raft as needed while we maintained some forward pressure by keeping our engine in gear forward. As one squall settled down and we got a chance to assess things, we were panicked to find a fender and line bobbing just below the surface underneath our rudder. I began to don scuba gear to inspect as Larissa tried with all her might to pull the line and discover its source. Unsurprisingly it turned out to be merely the bow anchor of "Out There" that had floated free of its muddy hold as the tide rose and lifted the fender which was acting as an oversized marking buoy. We held position in another blow, but soon lifted Mico's anchor as well and went through the negotiations with our neighbors as to who would like to break free and who wanted to stick it out together. Out There got out first, chosing to protect its fragile keel in deeper water. And as we set our second anchor with the help of a dingy from our neighbors it became clear that the web of swinging boats with dragging bow and stern anchors might not easily untangle. So Mico volunteered to cut lose and let us fend for ourselves. As we maneuvered and reanchored we hailed our neighbors about their comfort level with our presence and anchoring security. In the end we elected to leave the anchorage entirely to relieve our neighbors and ourselves of the one danger we could control, collision with other boats. We headed straight for the pass to get out of the harbor. The winds built and the volume of panicked yelling between boats was increasing with the howling of the wind through the mangroves and the pounding surf at the harbor entrance. The gray of twilight was quickly replaced by the pitch blackness of a squall at night while we motored out into 10 ft seas, with waves breaking on the reef 30 ft to either side. But as we passed "Vision" we were relieved to hear them yell out to us the name of a safe anchorage on the uncharted back side of Misima Island. Later the captain hailed us on VHF and provided the precise GPS coordinates of an anchorage where we we able to blindly drop anchor in the middle of the night only a few boat lengths from reef, beach, and cliffs on three sides. But as we were approaching the windward point to get around to the lee side of the island we could hear that the drama in the anchorage was continuing. Mico and Out There had lost their engines to weed clogging the strainers. All the boats were swinging around wildly, careening into each other in the high winds and tangling anchors. Mico had attempted to follow us out the pass when their engine overheated. They were rescued by the quick reaction of the dingy tug fleet to yet another panicked VHF call. One boat registered 48 knot gusts in Misima harbor as we motored out the pass. It was turning into a wild night.
I tried for an hour to raise a tiny bit of sail, spewing my lunch on the deck, but failed in utter exhaustion in the end. We needed a backup for our engine in this lee shore rounding. We were only making 0.6 knots directly into wind and current at 1800 rpm, running just below 205 deg F, the temperature at which we get concerned about overheating. While I was on deck struggling with sail, sometimes a mainsail batten would get loose and a fold of unraised sail would catch wind, blowing us off course and downwind towards the roaring surf at the reef. Fortunately the engine proved more reliable than my sail handling and we chugged on for 4 more hours, only to die just as we tried to idle it while dropping anchor by brail in the pitch black night. It would be another 24 hours before we found and solved that problem. The calm seas of the leeward side of the island and the precise guidance from Vision were all that saved us from sure disaster during our midnight anchoring. In the morning we saw how our two first attempts at anchoring had been among coral heads precariously close to shallow water. Friends on "Pampero" were not so lucky. They succeeded at getting sail up just before the strongest winds hit. Their main was shredded almost instantly. We have yet to hear whether they were able to continue on towards the Solomon Islands or whether they had to begin a return to Australia or mainland PNG. They are not part of the Louisiades Rally, so we don't hear from them on the morning radio "sched."
By Monday we were able to work our way back into the cesspool mahem of Misima to accomplish our immigration and quarantine check-in. The gift exchange in Misima restocked our cupboards with fresh fruit and lightened our cargo of gifts--clothing, stationary, flashlights, cookware.
Eventually we did hear from Pampero on the "Sheila Net", safe and sound in a harbor to the north.
For those of us left in the anchorage on Monday morning, as the rising sun streaked through the storm clouds, we anxiously watched as the wooden ship in Misima Harbor threw off her mooring lines and was "underway" again to find a new place to anchor among the mangroves in the tight quarters of the harbor. The crew were using the same outboard-powered banana boat as her only propulsion and the same chainless bent rebarb anchor as her only ground tackle.
In a daze, I made 3 trips back and forth from the muddy trash-lined shore in our wet kayak to retrieve passports, australian dollars, US and australian debit and credit cards, and advice from fellow cruisers. I eventually found the right location (Westpac bank "branch" in a trailor with iron bars on all openings) and combination of paperwork + plastic (passport plus Visa or Master Card branded credit or debit card) and the right words (not "FPOS" or "ATM" or "purchase" but just "change money") that would allow us to purchase the local currency, Kina. This helped us pay off our debts to the diesel drum operator at the junk yard near the wharf. He'd calmly pointed out that he couldn't accept Australian dollars since he did not know the exchange rate, and Monday's paper would not be delivered until noon on the plane from Port Moresby. We were hurrying to vacate the airport flight path by 10 am. Of course the exchange rate listed in the bundled stack of unread newspapers from last week which lined the bench inside his workshop were of insufficient timeliness to be of use. When I was able to return 2 hours later with the requisite Kina, and our debts were paid off, the well-spoken attendant apologized profusely for having short-changed us on Sunday when filling two of our 25 L fuel cans that Larissa had trustingly ferried back and forth from him, only to discover later that they were barely 3/4 full. After my shade-tree fuel depot exchange, surrounded closely by five locals in the small dark, dusty, greasy shed by the warf, I hurried out into the sunlight towards the Korean grocery store. Along main street, locals were loitering or squatting on the concrete sidewalk, wallowing in the pink ooze of beetle nut spittle. With the change from my diesel purchase I was able to purchase the few consumables available in town--eggs, cooking oil, flour, Tang, popcorn, and onions. I'd already purchased the last loaf of bread at the bakery earlier in the morning.
Once back aboard I soaked my feet and sandals in bleach, wiping my legs all the way up to my thighs to cleanse wounds and insect bites that would otherwise develop into tropical ulcers at a terrifying pace.
Precisely at 10 am, with the Monday flight into Misima scheduled to buzz our masts in one hour, boats in the flight path hurriedly raised anchor and headed out the pass. Mon Ami was the first to make the dash for the sea, but they ran aground with a crunching bang on the reef near the starboard marker of the harbor entrance. They were beginning their 4 day passage in their brand new, sleek catamaran back to civilization and work commitments in Australia. We watched with relief as they backed off the reef successfully and suffered only surface damage to their fiberglass hull, and continuing on without incident.
Several monohulls motored off into the gray morning ahead of us, chatting away on VHF about the struggle upwind to deliver their passengers, local women and children, back to their homes on the North side of the island.
We were relieved to sail out of that pass without the burden and responsibility of passengers on deck and the easy cross-wind heading towards the emerald waters of the lagoon south of Misima. Later that afternoon we motored into the calm, pristine, coral and white sand lagoon called Kamutal Island, only 25 miles from Misima. Within hours we were welcomed by Jimmy, the industrious islander that has created a one-hut "yacht club" here. His brother is even hard at work carving us a wooden paddle to replace a dingy oar that we lost in the gale two nights ago. Unfortunately, Jimmy's brother Joseph is an enthusasitc participant in the cash economy, turning down heavy box loads of stainless hardware, hammers, and chissels in favor of 60 Kina ($25 AUS), or a sack of sugar (a staple nearly as liquid as Kina). Lacking adequate sugar stocks for Larissa's coffee habit, we were forced to purchase what Kina we could find from Chris aboard Lady Bubbly. Chris is a loyal patron of the Kamatal Yacht Club, sailing hear from Cairns nearly every year. He explained why the locals are so eager for cash to pay school fees and purchase the equipment they need to live--the sea cucumber harvesting season has been closed for 3 years. This was a lucrative cash crop for the islanders who previously were shipping them off as as delicacy to Japan by the ton. Unfortunately for the environment and the locals, the sea cucumber population quickly collapsed, forcing the closure of this one source of cash for the locals. A gold mine on Misima island still brings in a trickle of cash, and some families from Broker island are able to catch enough fish and sail them by canoe to Misima quickly enough to fetch a reasonable price. But, as Mark said Sunday night during an algebra lesson in the salon of Australis at 10 pm--"Things are hard right now. Father doesn't sell many fish." He'd tracked down Australis and the rally boats in Misima, with the ziplock bag of algebra worksheets still in hand after the passage in a sailing canoe in rough weather days before. He collapsed snoring as soon as I concluded our lesson. We tucked his seemingly clean but lice-infested body into a bed in the cockpit. He didn't seem to sleep well, having woken with confused look in the arms of a dimdim and then having been reluctantly shuffled out to the enclosed cockpit. The next morning, I couldn't tell whether it was disappointment at not being adopted into our "crew" permanently, or the return of his normal frown after weeks of manipulative smiling and nodding to solicit handouts from dimdims. For whatever reason, Mark was distant and melancholy as he stared towards shore through the "glass" of our cockpit windows and ate a banana with me in the cockpit. He was all smiles and solicitous assistance once onshore. He mentioned that he'd forgotten his knife aboard our boat and I retrieved. On my return trip I offered to pay him to watch our kayak while I walked into town "... to use those computers and the Internet we talked about to get the bank to give me Kina." But Mark and his barechested younger brother didn't even get up off the rocky ground to help me launch the kayak as I paid him and repeated my refrain about using his brain instead of his muscles to "make business" or catch more fish, and not to use the money we'd given him to pay for his grandmother's funeral feast or concrete on her gravestone. "Larissa and I don't like graves. We like to see concrete used for water tanks and homes, not graves and churches." We'd obviously not given him enough, either for school fees or for the gravestone, but I wonder if that is all that lie behind the frown and downturned, angry eyes. It seemed like some confusing mix of disappointment, jealousy, greed, desperation, and resentment. I wonder if we'll see him again some day in the same red polo shirt that he's worn for the past week and a half while chasing us around these remote islands.

TotalGood in PNG

2010-09-30T05:33:00.003+07:00

In every bay we can't get the anchor down before several dug-out canoes paddle out to us to trade fruit, lobsters, bush greens, and wood carvings for clothing, "soccer boots", and tools. And it's been exciting to see Guy's fleet of boats doing so much to help everyone. The doctors on "Happy J" and "Engarde" saved a local girl's life yesterday. They did surgery to remove a stingray barb and gave injections of antibiotics to bring down the horribly putrid infection. The jerry can of "zoom" we brought (PNG name for outboard fuel) was used to ferry her on a banana boat "ambulance" to the nearest hospital in Misima after the surgery. The hospital doesn't have a doctor and only has limited supplies, so the surgeon sent along all the necessary drugs and needles with her to present to the nurses when she wakes up from the anesthesia. Each boat is carrying several boxes of medical supplies for that hospital when the fleet gets to Misima in a couple days.

Snorkeling unspoiled reefs and exploring pristine beaches has its hazards in the tropics. Even us "dimdims" (PNG name for white people, because we do such stupid stuff) have gotten horrible tropical ulcers (red swollen infections that grow within a matter of hours) from coral scrapes and insect bites on the legs. Without antibiotics we'd have to med-evac a lot of the cruisers back to Australia to avoid losing limbs. Even the young healthy guys get them. An Australian guy got a fishing lure deep in his foot and couldn't get it out with his own bolt cutters, etc. So his wife tracked down the rally boats and got the doctors to do surgery on him.

We are now in Blue Lagoon surrounded by several beautiful beaches and spectacular coral reefs:
http://maps.google.com/maps?q=-11.136583,152.764633(Time:21%3A33+GMT%2C+Sep+29%2C+2010%20Latitude:-11.136583%20Longitude:152.764633)

Send Spot

2010-09-30T05:33:00.001+07:00

Send Spot:10.9S,152.9E|2,6|WIND,PRMSL,WAVES

Bagaman Muster

2010-09-29T14:50:00.000+07:00

Guy Chester arranged a full day program at Bagaman. After the "singsings" by women, children, and men and a humorous spear dance by the children, we were lulled into a sense of security. Then the bongos started drumming the spear dance beat again and 4 men wandered out of the jungle painted head to toe in carbon black with white war paint. It was clear this spear dance would be different. It wasn't as emotionally intimidating as a Maori Huka dance, but it was scary and dangerous. In the middle of a sequence of coriagraphed stalking and spear thrusting, the men broke rank and charged individuals in the audience yelling a war call, thrusting their spear in the dirt at your feet and slashing it around in the dirt and coral rubble. When I was "speared" the carbon black from the attacker's arm rubbed off on my leg as he thrust his spear into the dirt beside and behind me, slashing about at the feet of the second row behind me. I was more worried about the tropical ulcers that his organic war paint might encourage in my "dimdim" skin than getting cut by the sharp spear blade, but it all ended well with a finale of clapping and laughing.
Surprisingly, in addition to displaying and selling their carvings (spears, bowls, model canoes) inlaid with nautilus shell (beeswax as the glue), they had developed another more modern art form. The dancers and singers had all been wearing T-shirts emblazoned with 2010 Lousiades Rally, Bagaman Muster" and a picture of a sailing canoe. We assumed that guy had brought these to the locals as part of the package of gifts he unloads at every port. But it turns out they were printing the T-shirts themselves a the back of the parade grounds. For 5 Kina ($2.50 AUS), cruisers were taking off their T-shirts and having them silk-screened with professional ink and a beautiful design. It's amazing they can make a profit considering the distances and difficulty in shipping the ink, silk screen, sponge brushes, and plastic sheet required for the process.
All in all it was a fun day of interaction with the islanders and a beneficial exchange for both sides. The village got new water collection roofing material, soccer shoes for the local team, and a significant amount of hard cash. The cruisers motored away with unadulterated carved artwork, high quality T-shirts, and a greater appreciation for the industriousness of the local islanders as well as their violent cannibalistic history.

Exciting Days in Panapompom

2010-09-23T15:49:00.000+07:00

The Louisiades Rally boats all anchored together near Panapompom Island in PNG:
http://maps.google.com/maps?q=-10.788717,152.386050(Time:07%3A50+GMT%2C+Sep+23%2C+2010%20Latitude:-10.788717%20Longitude:152.386050)
Over the past two days Guy Chester arranged a sailing canoe regatta with 3 divisions of boat sizes and swimming and running races for both the islanders and cruisers ("dimdims" in the local language). We dimdims earned our dim reputation as we clumsily piloted the outrigger canoes (or "salau") and jibing the unusual gaff rigged sails in demonstration sails. Fortunately the locals took back control of their canoes for the race. The next day we all hosted the locals and their families aboard our yachts for a fun race out to the lagoon entrance and back. Australis came in last as usual, shredding our token spinnaker (a sarong from Tahiti). But by the end of the race our 11 "crew" for the day were able to sail her faster and truer than we could.
Today's excitement for the one "off day" of the rally began as L was peering out a porthole at our neighbors that seemed to be underway to leave the anchorage. But as she brushed her teeth the catamaran turned towards our bow and barreled into us as we raced on deck. We cranked our engine, fending off, and yelling to the ghostly quiet catamaran to go into reverse. I leaped aboard and ran towards the cockpit to see where the crew were. Fortunately, crew appeared from below, startled by the collision and quickly put the cat in reverse before our rigs and anchors became tangled. They'd inadvertently left their engine in gear as they reved the engine to charge their batteries while testing a new watermaker deep down in one of the hulls. As usual, Australis bullied her way through the incident, snapping a stanchion off the wayward catamaran with her beefy bowsprit. A bent lifeline turnbuckle was our only damage. An afternoon visit aboard the catamaran to get to know our neighbors some more, and plans were in place to repair the damage to the cat and revive their watermaker. Peace has returned to this corner of paradise.

We Made It!

2010-09-21T06:28:00.001+07:00

After a long upwind slog we finally made it to the Louisiades in Papua New Guinea. It's definitely the most idyllic, unspoiled tropical island group we've seen so far. The islanders don't eat lobsters and instead trade them with cruisers for T-shirts and "soccer boots." So we had our fill within an hour of dropping anchor. We were the last boat to arrive at Panacea island, so we had the undivided attention of all the islanders that have canoes to paddle out to us. Surprisingly the treat they enjoy the most is a glass of clean water. If you chill it they are over the moon with delight. Coca Cola is "bitter" and ginger snaps are too "hot." Though the kids did learn the Australian word "lolly" (candy) after a day of visiting boats. So they quickly developed a sweet tooth.
We gave one 14-year-old a crash course in algebra and physics before we had to leave with the fleet for another island. He wants to join the ranks of the famously daring and skillful PNG pilots that swoop down into short runways surrounded by mountains on the various islands. He's saving up money for the Misima boarding school fees next year.
Panapompom, where we are now, held a canoe sailing regatta yesterday, organized by Guy Chester, the sailing rally founder. The islanders use gaff-rigged, double-ended wooden (hollowed log) outrigger canoes for all commercial transportation on the outer islands. To tack or jibe the boat they just move the front of the sail around to the other end of the boat, and sail the whole thing backwards. Blue tarp is the modern sail cloth of choice. Today we're trying our hand at sailing their canoes and then taking all the islanders out for a race in the lagoon on the cruising yachts. There's a Japanese zero that crash landed here. It is remarkably in tact despite the coral growing all around it. Supposedly you can sit in the seat and operate the switches and control stick. We'll snorkel it tonight.

Australian Penchant for Procedure Could Leave You Stranded

2010-09-07T19:37:00.000+07:00

We were not able to register our EPIRB with AMSA (Australian Seach and Rescue) because of a bureaucratic technicality. AMSA will not recieve direct notice of our distress signal should we ever have to activate our EPIRB.

It's not that our 2 year old EPIRB uses an unmonitored frequency, or doesn't have the required positioning accuracy for a GPS, or wouldn't be perfectly adequate for saving our lives in an emergency. And not because it's battery will only last 24 hours. Not that it's a personal locator beacon rather than a ship's EPIRB. The reason turned out to be that Australia doesn't listen to any device broadcasting the "country code" P in morse code on the beacon frequency. And that's exactly what any US manufactured PLB EPIRB does! Or at least our ACR ResQFix PLB-300 does. I just hope the US Coast Guard our our emergency contacts in the states make some calls to AMSA if our beacon goes off near Australia. Otherwise we might be left stranded. AMSA refuses to listen to our beacon or even let us register it. All because a morse code "P" and is contrary to Australian standards. Though I'm sure an Australian country code is hunky dory. This exact model is sold in Australia, so it must be coded to output the Australian country code or no country code at all.

We're fortunate enough to be participating in the Louisiades Rally, so AMSA is scheduled to brief us in person and verify all of our EPIRB registrations along with other safety equipment before allowing us to receive their endorsement to sail to PNG. So maybe they'll pull some strings and consider allowing us to register with 25 other boats helping us plead our case. We'll see.

Here's the exact language from AMSA:

United States Coded PLBs
We are aware that the United States requires all PLBs for use in the US to transmit the letter "P" in Morse over the homing frequency of 121.5 MHz. This is not permitted under Australian Standards nor by the ACMA's miscellaneous Devices Class Licence that references these Standards and therefore these distress beacons should not be used in Australia.

For more details see "http://beacons.amsa.gov.au/beacon-models.html"

It's no wonder more and more international cruisers are choosing New Zealand over Australia for their cyclone season shelter. It's little things like this, plus predatory parking and speeding regulations in all the major cities, exorbitant customs and AQIS clearance fees and visa fees, atrocious mail service (and you think we have it bad). Maybe it's just Queensland and not the rest of Australia. We know at least one boat that concluded their circumnavigation adventure here in frustration at the expense and hassle of living here waiting for the right season to leave... and they were both permanent residents! Just think how unwelcome an American boat owner feels. Our disenfranchised cruising friends had returned to the place they spent their adult working life only to find it had grown into something they didn't like anymore!

Another piece of safety equipment you'll want to avoid south of the equator is flare guns. They are illegal in many countries, like PNG and Australia. They're considered to be a weapon. Turns out Australia also bans cross-bows (like some spear fishing guns) and any knife a customs officer considers to be a weapon. So you could have your coconut-cracking machete confiscated if they don't like the look of you or your boat. So not only will you be stranded without AMSA responding to your EPRIB, but you won't have a pistol flare to aim your parachute flares well enough to get you noticed by passing ships, and if you end up on a desert island you'll starve for not being able to spearfish or open coconuts (if you happen to carry coconut or fish harvesting devices that look like weapons). I'm proud to be an American... where at least I can carry an flare gun...

Nara Inlet Mystery

2010-09-05T15:36:00.000+07:00

The aboriginal caves and middens in Nara Inlet were intriguing. So we took lots of notes and photos to research later. When we found there weren't any web-published analyses of the meaning of the cave paintings, we created a wikipedia article to capture what we could gather. Here are some of the photos. What do you think the paintings mean?

Easy Cure for Sports Betting Corruption

2010-08-30T11:02:00.001+07:00

The recent scandal involving the Pakistani Cricket players fixing games just highlights a problem that will only get worse as a sport becomes more popular and global. But there is an easy answer. It only requires honest politicians who don't benefit from the sports industry, and the special interest groups that promote them.

The global reach of a sport separates the players from the bookies and fans they are bilking. My growing away from sports was a gradual process. I gave up on pro football first, then basketball, then college football, then college basketball, and finally giving up even on attending or watching many popular high school sports. The "Hulk Hogan" syndrome has progressed through all of those sports as I've retired from them. The Undercover Economist and Superfreakonomics books explain how this happens and why we shouldn't get too wrapped up in the predetermined outcomes of many games. Surprisingly, even Sumo wrestling is considered to be extremely corrupt, with the Yakuza (Japanese Mafia) making a killing while the general public loses their shirt.

All that is required to fix the problem is to allow betting on all sports and natural disasters with 2 regulations:
1) All bets and payoffs must be registered electronically
2) Anyone taking a cut of the bets will be motivated to comb through the statistics of the bets to maintain the systems integrity

The bet registration system could be as simple as an e-mail list server. This would be enough to get bookies and corrupt players worried that their corruption would be noticed. Alternatively, the system could be more sophisticated, allowing registration of bets and recording of payoffs to be made by e-mail. SMS, twitter, voice, whatever. And a markup language could be developed to minimize the bandwidth required to identify the parties in the bet, the monetary amount of the bet, and the fine print of the legal terms of the bet and the conditions by which it pays off. Authentication could be achieved with the same authentication used for SMS banking, e-mail signatures, etc. That technology could easily evolve without affecting the expense of operating and maintaining the registration database.

Governments and academics should love the registration system because it allows them to tap into a new, expanding revenue stream and gather endless statistics on the health (mental and financial) of their citizens. Governments with big brother laws could spy on their citizens all they like. Citizens of governments with strong privacy protection could be assured of their protection by a variety of means, including segregating bets according to the citizenship of the submitter and storing all information associated with them on a server located within the country of origin. With the proliferation of shared server farms, this would be logistically quite simple.

Of course whoever maintains the registration system should take a cut per transaction (justified by the portion of the maintenance costs that are proportional to the number of transactions) and as a percentage of the payoff amount (justified by the increased enforcement cost for larger bets). The system could be privately run, like an eBay for bettors. There could be several competitors around the world. Governments could get into the act for "under-served" populations. Of course some international treaties and regulations would have to be put in place to keep shoddy operations from setting up shop in corrupt Caribbean environments.

And the simplest way to weed out dirty bets is to simply not accept any bets placed that hinge on the single intentional action of one player, as was the case in most past sports fraud scandals, including the recent problems in Pakistan. The idea is that a person could bet on the fact that the Saints will go to the Superbowl in 2010, but you couldn't have that Archie Manning would throw the ball out of bounds on the final play of the season in 1995. Archie was never a dirty player, but he might have been tempted to intentionally make a single bad play, if the stakes were high enough. The saints would never collude to throw a Superbowl game, so you can be sure such a bet would be safe.

I'm sure others will l have ideas for even better betting standards to reduce the motivation for fraud. Standard bank fraud detection software could aid in automatically identifying suspicious betting and payoff patterns. So you could bet on the fact that the Saints will go to the Superbowl in 2010, but you can't bet Archie Manning will throw the ball out of bounds on the final play of the season in 1995.

2010-08-26T15:29:00.000+07:00

Up the cable car and down on the train for L's birthday. We learned a lot of "bush tucker" tricks from the aborigine ranger that gave us a tour at the first rainforest platform. There are berries that can put your enemies to sleep, leaves to boil that make a pain killer and antiseptic, green ant nests to soak in water to cure a headache or fever, "lawyer cane" for making tent poles with, waitawhile vines to provide water, candlenuts to extract oil for your lamps from, and of course plenty of food, if you know the season.

Northern Lights on a Southern Boat

2010-08-23T14:46:00.000+07:00

We should have known that a Northern Lights Generator would never work out on a boat named Australis. The Northern Lights engine is actually a IHI Shibaura tractor engine (E673-C). We were going to have to ship a replacement from Taiwan. Americans (NL) get the Japanese to do their manufacturing (IHI Shibaura), and the Japanese do their manufacturing in China (Taiwan). NL just marinizes them in Seattle, stamps the Lugger name on them, and marries them with the electrical half (probably imported as well). Incidentally, the history of this name game, and a little bit about engine model number decyphering can be found on the online version of a passagemaker magazine article.

We went with the expensive NL brand, hoping we'd never have to do this again, throwing out a working 20 yr old Kubota generator. Unfortunately, the NL engineering quality hasn't rubbed off on their dealers/installers. That was the source of our problem, in the end, a poor installation that allowed salt water to splash back into the cylinders and slowly kill it after 400 hours of run time and a few months of sit time now and then in rolly conditions.

The exhaust hose was too long from the muffler up to the peak of the riser loop (chimney)--two feet taller and 3 feet longer than recommended by NL. And the small plastic Vetus muffler couldn't handle the volume of water in the hose after shutdown.

The Northern Lights dealer that modified my existing exhaust setup for the install was CC Marine, in Marina Del Rey, CA, owned by Carl Meentzen. With us half way around the world, all the pictures and phone calls in the world won't convince him that he made a mistake, so make sure you check up on him for this design flaw if you ever have him install a genset for you.

The "warranty" service from Northern Lights was non-existent, and the only advice the service manager at their headquarters could offer was to parrot back my diagnosis of the lengthy exhaust hose. They were just telling me what I wanted to hear and whatever would get me to stop bugging them about warranty support for their dealers and customers.

Carl has been equally unwilling to stand behind his work or the NL product he sells. It seems that he feels that 400 hours of runtime on a generator is enough time for operator error, poor maintenance, and manufacturer faults to creep in and it's no longer his problem at that point. I agree that some users coudl abuse an engine and kill it in that amount of time, but ours was immaculately maintained, changing the oil much sooner than the recommended 100 hours. We were on our 6th oil change when it failed.

I'll provide more details on 3rd party oil filters, fuel filters, and other parts for the Lugger in future blogs. But we may swap it out for a Perkins, if it is available locally and can get here more quickly than the Lugger/Shibaura from Taiwan. Northern Lights can't even tell me when their Lugger engine would ship if I ordered it! With airfreight shipping, customs, and tax the NL price tag comes the $7K. The Perkins is $5.5K, without local shipping, which will probably be $1K. So the price is a wash between the two, and the only deciding factor is if I want to support NL any more and whether they can get their act together with the cross-pacific timezone difference between their dealers and the headquarters. I'm playing the relay game every night at 2 am to connect the messages from the two parties to each other all the while paying them a premium for the convenience of being a "one-stop-shop" for my generator needs.

Clowning Cockatoo

2010-07-05T08:50:00.000+07:00

Who knows how long this Cockatoo has been hitting up the cruisers for handouts in Nara Inlet, Australia. But after several days of hunkering down to escape the rainy weather we got to know this guy pretty well. We could hear him calling from the overgrown cliffs with a unique call like a clown's bicycle horn. We'd return his call and hustle up on deck with whatever food we could find. In the end we were able to pawn off the remaining stale peanuts from Mexico, and we got rid of some rotten lettuce and moldy bread too. We almost worried for him as we left the anchorage and he called down from his perch deep in the jungle cliffs. I'm sure we did an ecological misdeed in feeding him so regularly. All of the other boaters nearby were too busy with life below deck to even notice him, I think. But he seems clever enough to survive despite our spoiling him for a while in the rain.

Magical Cross-Species Moment in Nara Inlet

2010-07-01T18:17:00.000+07:00

This cockatoo in Nara Inlet was our constant companion every evening around sunset. He'd call out from the jungle with a clown bicycle horn call and if we came up on deck and called back he'd fly down to the boat for a handout. He was greedy with the handouts, fighting off 2 other "suitors" for our affection. When we left the anchorage three days later he called out to us from the jungle. I'm sure some other non-ecologically savvy boats like us will feed him too. He's obviously learned calls from cruisers past.

At the other end of the island (Hook Island, in the Whitsunday group, Queensland Australia) we found an equally spoiled and fattened tropical fish. He'd eat nearly anything you tossed in the water, especially stale bread.