Hello from Honiara,
First of all I hope everybody had a wonderful holiday season with their families and friends and I wish you all a happy new year! My holiday season was unique, this is fairly long compare to recent posts, have a read if you are interested. After a really long sail we have spent the last week in Honiara, Guadalcanal, Solomon Islands. As usual after a passage some land time is a welcome activity. Lots of things have happened and our fluid plans are becoming more fluid and changing due to necessity. Internet here is costly so I am going to experiment and see how much it costs to post this with only a few pictures, I hope you enjoy reading.
My plan for our sail was to get a suitable ten day forecast for our 660nm sail from Vanuatu to Solomon’s. The forecast was not ideal but it didn’t show any systems developing and it did show about three days of consistent winds. I was hoping to make the usual 100 a day for those three days and even if we only did 50 a day for the other 7 days we would be there within that forecast, not exactly what happened. We left Santo with good wind and had a nice Genaker run out the harbour, some wind shifts and sail changes later we ran up the coast till we had a significant amount of searoom and then pretty much stopped. Guess that was local wind only. The next morning Santo was right where it was the night before, and we could still see the island the morning after that, slow going. We had a few days of making 50-70 miles a day and for my birthday Cara made me a pizza, real good. The time at sea was pleasant, hot but enough of a breeze that we could stay cool by hiding out under sheets hung and shifted to follow the sun and provide some shade. The sea was as calm as it gets so cooking and moving around was easy but we sure weren’t getting very far. On Christmas Eve we had dolphins come swim with us for a bit, usually they play in the bow wake but we weren’t exactly making one so they didn’t stick around too long, still always amazing. We spotted land Christmas morning and the wind picked up but we still had some miles to go as we could only check in on Guadalcanal which was still further north. The end seemed to be in sight but nature had other plans. The 28th was dead calm again and rained hard all day; this was the preverbal calm before the storm we found out. The following day the wind picked up, from the wrong direction and strengthened till we couldn’t make any way and ended up hove to. We basically spent the next three days hove to in very strong winds within sight of Guadalcanal. At one point we attempted to run with it and try and hide out in a bay on the south of Guadalcanal but the wind shifted and we couldn’t make it there either so back to heaving to. When the winds finally calmed down and we were able to take stock of the situation we discovered that two of my sails that were lashed down on the foredeck where ripped to a point where they were not usable and the windvane was not working properly. I knew about one of the sails as it had got sucked into the water between lashings and I spent some time hauling it back on board during the storm. We decided to try for the bay to make some quick repairs but after a day of tacking against current discovered this was futile so hand steering onto Honiara it was. At this point we were only just over 100nm away but beating into the wind against current with alternating no wind and light winds does not equal much progress so a couple more days of this and it bring us to day 17 of our 660nm passage. Things are looking good on our last day, still sailing into the wind but able to make our course on one tack, 13nm away, should be able to make it before dark when guess what, the wind shifts and strengthens, kicks up a horrible chop and again we are fighting for every mile. We finally drop the anchor at 2330hrs on day 17. Good times.
First order of business is to check in so the next morning I get the dinghy blown up and the outboard on and make my way to shore, couple dudes on shore tell me customs is on the commercial wharf and might as well dinghy there. I tie up the dinghy beside a tanker in a very commercial area and find customs no problem. Fairly easy except I have to fill out all the forms twice, guess they don’t want to photocopy. Of course I don’t have any Solomon dollars so when it comes time to pay I leave for a bank machine which turns out to be fairly close and come back to pay, about $240cdn, not really sure for what. Quarantine is just down the hall, few less papers and only about $40 but even less sure for what. Next is immigration which is about a 15 minute walk away and I get there while they are closed for lunch so a short wait until I get to fill out more papers, quite similar to the ones I had already filled out at customs, oh well, time to pay them some money except I need to pay at the treasury office and bring back the receipt to receive our stamped passports, wasn’t too far away and luckily the window I needed was the only one without a long line up. All in all not to bad a check in and everybody was polite and friendly, but of course something had to happen and when I got back to the dinghy I discovered the forward chamber had deflated, shit. More on this later.
While stomping around I was able to scope out the anchorage at the Point Cruz Yacht and we decided to motor over there as there was a couple other cruising yachts anchored there. The Point Cruz Yacht Club is mostly just a beer bar with a jetty sort of suitable to tie up a dinghy to, some local charter boats are moored here and there are a few amenities but mostly the beer is cold and fairly cheap. The restaurants in the same complex offer good eats and share tables with the yacht club so we had a nice dinner on land after checking in. There really isn’t anything that caters to yachties here, we can fill up our water at the yacht club but it is not potable and there is no one to tell you where to get potable water, there are showers in the washrooms, not heated but free and very refreshing. There must be a lady who will hand wash your laundry but after asking the locals it seemed there were no ‘house maids’ known to the many staff, no sign or prices so we just do it ourselves. We met an ex-pat who runs a charter boat, he’s been helpful and took some of our drinking water jugs home and filled them with rain water he catches and filters. We also met a cruising family from Belgium with three kids and had wonderful dinner and evening on their catamaran.
As far as Honiara goes it is a busy little city, hot, hot, hot and dirty, even the beach in front of the yacht club looks like a garbage dump. We met an animated ginger prospector who told us of his dreams of finding gold not far from the city. He lent us his scooter for a day and we enjoyed touring, the breeze in our hair, neither one of us taking the lone helmet. The main street is lined with Chinese shops all selling similar junk, the centre being an outdoor food court, not very exciting. The market is cool, a little smelly in the fish isle but lots of fruits and vegetables for cheap. Unfortunately taking pictures seemed to be frowned upon. The outlying shanty towns sounded many friendly calls of hello and hoots as we cruised up and around the hills.
So basically we are trying to get some things done in the city and then head out to the islands, we don’t need to do much but because it is so hot and humid not much seems to get done in a day, oh well. We are contemplating our options at this point as well; the dinghy is a problem as are the sails. Basically it is too hot for the dinghy and it has started to melt, one of the seams came apart and I have patched it but it still leaks and my guess is it is going to have more problems and will have to be replaced soon. I have enough spare sails to keep sailing and in an emergency I could fix the ripped ones but eventually they will need some expert attention. The Solomon Islands are not the place to do either and it’s not like I have the money anyway. Our original sort of plan was to cruise the Solomon’s for a couple months, store the boat here and fly back to Canada, Cara has a job to return to and I could look for one. Now we are not sure about cruising without a reliable dinghy so we are looking elsewhere to store the boat, the Philippines are an option but it is about a 2500nm sail.
At this point we have another 5 weeks on our Visa’s so we are going to head out to the Central Province and see how we go, it is only a day sail away has a bunch of little islands and many bays, has to be much nicer than the city here, I am sure the rest of the country is nicer than the city here. I hope I am not sounding like the biggest moan ranger, life is still good and we are a day sail away from some of the best snorkelling in the world and possibly some waves. We have been spending the hottest part of the day on the boat in the shade with a breeze relaxing, reading, writing and I am sure we will hit happy hour at the yacht club as the sun sets.
Thanks for reading, I will try and post more soon.
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