“I said to base camp yesterday that we’d have to cut some knots. What’s it going to be? It was lousy weather this morning. It rained, squalls came along, the wind blew first one way and then the other, and I sat there looking. What am I going to do now, where am I, what’s going to happen? Finally, in the afternoon, I decided to go to an island a little to the North-West, instead of a place called Lae on the mainland of Papua New Guinea.”

“The island of New Britain belongs to New Guinea too. I first thought it was part of the Solomon Islands, but I was wrong. The most important reason I’m going there is that the West coast of New Britain is full of reefs and coral, and there are whole areas about which nothing is known. If I go that way, there might be huge problems. I therefore chose a safe destination for the Zeeman Ocean Challenge, the Eastern coast of the island, where there are no reefs or coral, although it’s still going to be tough to get there safely and not to roll in à la Atafu.”

“This decision has a favourable side-effect. New Britain is quite touristy. There must have been some hard fighting here in the Second World War. When I looked at the chart, I thought: My God what happened here? There are hundreds of wrecks, which divers like very much, and divers also have to have their facilities. There are hotels and guesthouses and boats sail along the coast, so I’ll probably find a way of getting my boat to the mainland of Papua New Guinea and from there finally to Brisbane.

How it’s all arranged on New Britain? All the logistics, the possibility of arriving safely; base camp in Holland is really busy with all this. This will become clear in the coming days, because the Zeeman Challenger is making good headway. It’s still another 300 miles to the island and at this speed I can be there in about a week. I privately think it can be done in 9 – 10 days, so we still have the time to check through the options carefully."