According to her owner, Mike Crothers, in April 2026 Iceberg delivered more than two tonnes of food, drinking water, medicine and fuel to Budibudi atoll in Papua New Guinea. The 33.83-metre aluminium yacht, launched by Circa Marine in New Zealand in 2014 and still cruising, left on Tuesday 14 April for Rossel Island, the Conflict Group and Budibudi, PNG's national broadcaster NBC News reported. After unloading on Budibudi she took two women close to giving birth to a clinic on Woodlark Island. Crothers described the trip to BOAT International in an interview first printed in its September issue and posted online on 14 October.
How Cyclone Maila cut off Budibudi
Maila formed on 1 April. Australia's Bureau of Meteorology rated it a category 5 severe tropical cyclone at its peak, with ten-minute winds of 205 km/h, gusts of 155 knots (about 287 km/h) and a central pressure of 929 hPa. The bureau calls it the strongest system on record in the Solomon Sea. Maila weakened to a remnant low on 11 April and dissipated the next day. By mid-May the UN country team in Papua New Guinea had counted 50 deaths in the country.
On 10 April NBC reported no contact with Budibudi or Rossel. Budibudi lies about 150 miles offshore, with no harbour and no airstrip. Iceberg had sat out the storm in the fjords near Alotau. The owner says hundreds of people were cut off on the atoll and a seaplane could not get in: "A guy called the Flying Doctor tried to get in, but the weather was terrible and he couldn't land his float plane. We were really the only boat that could get there in those conditions."
What Iceberg carried and who she brought back
NBC described "a 33m private expedition yacht" delivering household kits together with local businesses in Milne Bay. The crew also gave to a GoFundMe appeal for Maila victims with a target of 18,000 Australian dollars (about €11,000). The owner told BOAT International the cargo came to more than two tonnes, gathered after a quick local fundraiser: care packages of food and water, plus medicine and fuel.
By his account the seas were three to four metres, and the fading cyclone was still blowing 30 to 40 knots. "It was a 23-hour rough ride in there, but luckily, we're not very top heavy and Dashew boats are great for cutting through bad conditions."
He described what they found on Budibudi: "A chunk of the island had been washed away with the houses on it, and the cyclone had covered the island so all the gardens were wiped out. All the big breadfruit trees had been blown down." The island had run out of petrol, he said, and everything went ashore in Iceberg's tenders and in a few local boats running on the last of their fuel.
The yacht then took elderly and sick islanders, and the two pregnant women, to the clinic on Woodlark, 40 miles to the west. NBC reported that the two "near full term expectant mothers" were taken to Guasopa station in the east of the island. On Woodlark the crew met doctors sent by the government.
Prime Minister James Marape visited Budibudi on Sunday 19 April. NBC described the atoll, home to more than 400 people in 120 households, as the hardest hit. "It went from being another busted trip to being able to help," Crothers told BOAT International. "You know, we love the Papuan people, so it was just a great opportunity."
Five months later another private yacht, the 61-metre Lunaris, joined the search for survivors of a ferry that capsized off Vanuatu.
What is the FPB 97?
FPB is a series of long-range motor yachts from Dashew Offshore, the company of Steve and Linda Dashew. Eighteen were built in several lengths before the programme closed with the Dashews' retirement. The FPB 97 is the largest and fastest of them, and Iceberg, built by Circa Marine in Whangarei, is the only one. The "97" is her waterline length in feet, and the hull is bare, unpainted aluminium. Berthon, one of the brokers on her 2021 sale, puts her mileage since launch at more than 50,000 miles.
How Iceberg got to the Pacific
Crothers, an American, had been following her since 2017 and bought her at the Fort Lauderdale International Boat Show in 2021, where he "locked it up with a strong offer". She is his first boat.
She had been laid up under her previous owner, and getting her back took two to three years and about $1 million (roughly €890,000), spent on the electronics, electrics, plumbing, water intakes and anchoring gear, with time on the hoist at Rybovich in West Palm Beach. In 2022 she went through the Panama Canal into the Pacific.
This is her third season in Papua New Guinea. In 2024, the owner says, the sea chest, the box in the hull that feeds seawater to the engines, cracked and "the boat almost sank"; she reached Port Moresby on external bilge pumps. In 2025 he cut his foot on a dive and developed blood poisoning: "They were two days away from cutting off my foot when I was evacuated to Cairns."
When BOAT International spoke to Crothers, Iceberg was in Fiji, about 2,000 miles to the south-east, waiting for a weather window to the southern Lau group.
Photo: William M Crothers / BOAT International. Source: BOAT International (14.10.2026), NBC News (10, 19, 20 and 21.04.2026), Australian Bureau of Meteorology, UN Country Team Papua New Guinea via ReliefWeb, Berthon.
