More From Honiara

Perhaps I was a little grumpy when I wrote the last post so I will write a little more about Honiara, we ended up spending about two weeks there, had some good times and met some good people. Once again I am playing catch up and trying to remember what has happened in the last month, I don’t know why I do this, it’s not like I don’t have time to write along the way. I have heard from some Canadian cruisers that I can use Wi-Fi at the Telekom office here in Gizo and they charge by time not data usage so should be ideal, plus the building has AC, so exciting. It is Sunday today and raining so nice and cool on the boat, perfect day for writing and going through pictures which I have many.

The first patch on the dinghy held for about a day and started getting worse, the seam just opened up a little more and the air came out fast, I put a second patch on, waited 24 hours blew it up and put it in the water, looked promising at first, about 15 minutes later the forward compartment was deflated and the seam had opened up enough to put my head in, shit. The local Mercury dealer provide a price for a new dinghy, it worked out to be about 4 grand Canadian, basically twice as much as in Canada, not an option. After some googling I discovered they would be available in the Philippines for half as much as well. I had one new tube of glue left and did my best on a third repair at the next island we visited, I was able to do it on land as I could swim back and forth to shore, I left it for longer than the recommended 24 hours and although there is still a slow leak it seems to be holding and not getting any worse. I don’t pump it up too much so as to keep as little pressure in it as possible and am hoping it will last as we continue to cruise the Solomon’s.

After inspecting the Monitor windvane I discovered too much play in the lower part that connects via gears to the upper part, the gears had separated. After reading the manual and going through my spare parts kit, it wasn’t going to be a problem to fix; only thing was they strongly recommended taking the whole unit off and doing it on land, no thanks. Replacing the worn bushings was easy, the hard part was not dropping the 48 tiny roller bearings in the water, I decided to replace them as well seeing as I had to take them out anyway. I managed to get it all back together with a little help from Cara while in the water and only donated a few roller bearings to King Neptune. The Monitor is an amazing piece of equipment and of the few things I have had to do the spare parts are always in the kit provided by Monitor and they even had the foresight to provide extras of the ones they know you are going to drop in the water, thanks Monitor!

Tonga, Fiji and Vanuatu have Kava, The Solomon Islands have beetlenut. I had heard about it but wasn’t really sure what it was all about. It is a bit shocking at first. The people enjoy the mild narcotic effect of chewing the beetlenut at the expense of having terribly stained and rotten teeth and constantly spitting what looks like blood. You really need to see it, or not, unfortunately I have no pictures as I haven’t really came to a point in any of my relationships with hard-core beetlenut enthusiasts where I feel comfortable asking if I may please take a picture of your horrible mouth to post on my blog. Of course I had to try it. Cara and I stopped at one of the many beetlenut stands where you can buy a beetlenut for about 40 cents and single smokes, this seems to be the most common profession in the Solomon’s, for our lesson and chew attempt. Basically you take a bite of the beetlenut, then dip what looks similar to asparagus in a white powder and mix it together in your mouth and chew. The white powder is lime, made from dried coral. I found it rather uncomfortable to have this wad of stuff in my mouth and had to constantly spit, after chewing for a while I thought I could feel some mild effects, Cara didn’t last long enough for anything to happen.

Just hanging out at the Point Cruz Yacht Club and meeting people there was probably our favourite thing about Honiara. It seemed to be the coolest place in town with its shady outdoor area, some sea breeze and beer as cold as it gets. We met Steve who was a manager at the new casino in town; originally from the UK he worked as a dealer on cruise ships until marrying an American and moving to Vegas. His marriage didn’t work out and he heard about this job and now lives in the Solomon’s. We visited him at the Casino which was easily the nicest building and restaurant in Honiara and got a quick tour. He told us about some of the difficulties of managing a casino in the Solomon’s, like how he scheduled 54 dealers to work on New Year’s Day and only 3 showed up. Minimum wage is $4.80sbd about the equivalent of $1cdn so what do you expect. We also met Doug, a 60 something ex-pat with a local wife half his age, he owned the ice company in Honiara as well as Doug and Mobbie’s restaurant. He invited us to his restaurant saying they specialised in burgers, it was a little ways out of town but well worth the trip, Doug shouted us a couple beers and some internet and we ordered the best burger I have had in the south pacific. If you are ever in Honiara I highly recommend Doug and Mobbie’s. Henk continued to be a good friend with helpful information and told us we could hang out on his mooring at Beauna Vista Island in Central Province which gave us our next destination.

There is much more I could write about our experiences and the people we have met but I think that is it for now. As always I look forward to hearing any news from home and seeing pictures. Thanks to everybody who takes the time to keep me inforlways looking forward to hearing any news from home and seeing pictures, thanks to everybody who takes the time to keep informed.