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‘Salt Water and Spear Tips’: Danish adventurer recounts New Guinea expedition
Danish filmmaker, adventurer and illustrator Thor F. Jensen tells of his journey circumnavigating New Guinea in his upcoming book, Salt Water and Spear Tips.
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Picture perfect: The 'Tawali Pasana' docks in the blue-green waters of the serene Triton Bay in Kaimana regency, West Papua. (Courtesy: Thor F. Jensen/-)
I
t was on his newspaper delivery route in Copenhagen that 12-year-old Thor F. Jensen saw the sign for the Adventurers’ Club of Denmark.
He would have to wait 24 years to be inducted into the club for his world-record expedition: a 6,300-kilometer circumnavigation by traditional canoe around the island of New Guinea that took 13 months and 21 days.
Half of this modern odyssey happened in Indonesian waters, a life-transforming experience he recounted to those gathered on Aug. 13 at the CoHive D.Lab in Menteng, Central Jakarta.
Now 37, Jensen is a filmmaker, illustrator and adventurer. The devilishly handsome and permanently tanned Dane is not your typical Renaissance man.
Prior to the circumnavigation, Jensen had paddled around Denmark by kayak, crossed the North Atlantic on a sailboat, and worked as a guide in a Venezuelan jungle.
The coastal dangers, rich tropical fauna and the marine life of New Guinea depicted in travel books summoned Jensen in August 2016 to Milne Bay, Papua New Guinea. There, Jensen met three skilled local sailors: Job Siyae and the two brothers, Justin and Sanakoli John.
