Release Date 10/22/2010

I got off work early and went for a birthday paddle. I wasn’t able to swing a birthday trip this year, but we are going to the PNG Canoe festival next week. That is a big culture show and outrigger canoe race that is held every year in Alotau PNG.

The paddle was nice. The surf has remained mellow, and I was about to go out and in directly in front of our house. On the way back in the dark I landed on the reef and got stuck for a second, tide was falling, and was down by about 1/3, so that must be the minimum tide for a crossing.

I just went down the coast to the little school on the highway. I could clearly see the Fisheries College, but it was still quite a ways away. It was just about an hour to the school.

I was surprised by some dolphins I paddled

right up to them. They freaked out when the saw me at the last minute. It was rough so I don’t think they could hear the paddle or the boat until it was right on top of them.

The moon was up in the early evening, and it was full, so even after the sun went down it was very light.

Kate had been going out every night to check for the palalo worms. These are worms who live in the reef and spawn once a year a few days after the full moon in September and October. People had told us that it happened last month when she was out of town, but she has continued checked to keep track. All of the worms, many different species, all spawn on the same night and time every year so they can be sure they will meet other worms.

There were millions of them in the shallow water near the reef squirming all over the place. She caught a number of them, to get samples, and soon we had all the little kids from next door our helping. It was an army of field biologists to do her bidding.

Some people eat them, so I fried-up a batch. It tasted like a creamy spinach, it was very rich. The doggies helped me finish it off. I just cooked the little ones, a guy on the beach told me the bigger ones were more like prawns (shrimp), but Kate was hogging all of those for her stupid science stuff.

Truth: Sometimes its your birthday.

Release Date 10/14/2010

I made it back to PNG and took a quick paddle over to Nusa for dinner. Nusa is very close to our new house. It is a shorter paddle there, than it is back to Kate’s office. It might have only seemed like a shorter paddle since I wasn’t towing a boat like the last time I made the trip.


On the way out I saw this wacky Indonesian fishing boat. Those are giant outriggers made out of huge logs on the side of it. The guy who owns the local Fish plant bought it and is using it for some kind of plundering of the sea project.




The surf has remained fairly low and I had an easy time getting back in. I was too tired from the jet lag to drink anything so that made the trip home a lot easier.





Truth: Electricity makes life easier.

No Release Date 10/2/2010

I was back for a visit in NYC and I went paddling with my old dtbh kayak buddies.

We, or actually I, was trying to collect a ton of beach glass to us for my next Figment Festival art project. Years ago I found a beach in Staten Island that was totally covered in it. In my memory the entire beach was glass, with just a few rocks.

I found the beach but it only had some glass on it, not nearly as much as I remember. I picked up some, then found quite a bit more at another location that some of the real “locals” pointed me to.

We also found a bit of trash on some of the beaches. You don't see this amount of crap in PNG yet!

When we got way down near the very bottom of Bayone we saw what appeared to be a castle perched, up on top of a grassy cliff. For a while we thought we were in Scotland. It turned out to be an exclusive golf course!

It is totally crazy to have a golf course here.

Compare and contrast the course with the next door neighbor fuel terminal. St. Andrews doesn't have anything like this!

It does have a nice beach, and I am dreaming of some guerilla evening golf to the tune of full moon someday in the future.

I did find a whole bunch of floating golf balls. It turns out the driving range is made-up of floating balls and a 5 acre area sectioned off by an oil boom. A lot of balls must get hit out of the park. I brought them back to PNG.

Now I just have to train the dogs to fetch them out of the surf off of my porch and I’m all set.

We fooled around a lot on the way home. Most of the delays were caused by me picking up glass. It got very very dark, as it usually does at night, and the tide turned against us. The trip ended just like the old days paddling into the tide, in the dark, into the wind without enough lights. We got back to the boathouse around 9:00PM, totally missing going out for drinks with friends after the boathouse closed.