there and back... meandering track is due to squalls
Left Kukundu in the morning, en route for Baga Island, the next bat colony location. Some communication break down prevented us to meet producer Mark Brownlow in time so in joined from Gizo underway, dropped off by motor canoe.
Mark settles in onboard a boat overflowing with pelican cases: straight into rushes!
Motoring under pouring rain for most of the day,
Mark decided that light was not going to be worthwhile the stopover in Baga so made it for Choiseul, the rat location for Voza, an overnight trip of 70 miles. Night crossing from Vella LaVella to Choiseul poses the only problem of fish aggregation devices, which are not lit at night, so had to look out for some dark raft thing with a bunch of flags, hard to detect in the peach dark New moon squally night so hoped not to run into one.
Shoals lay out 8-10 miles south of the coast of North choiseul so arrival in daylight necessary to shoot through the shoals. In the next morning, found just before the shoaling area a wide line of current which noticeably smoothed waters over.
Not long before, Mark had remembered to tell us that we were in fact going to Toro, at the extreme north of the island in Choiseul bay, some 15 miles further north. From there, one can see Bougainville and the Shortland Island to the North west. There was a constant 2 knot current flowing SE when we arrived in Choiseul Bay.
95 miles trip proved unsuccessful: the plane which was supposed to bring the scientist who was going to help search for the giant tree rat ran out of fuel and landed in Gizo! Next plane not before a few days!!! Weight anchor and reversed the route on the GPS. 18 hours of motoring for nothing and had to do it again straight away!
Choiseul Bay looked great, nice sandy anchorage off the wharf in 10 m of water and beautiful deserted islands, looked like possible surf break too...
The first few hours of our return trip were sailed in light winds
But the build up was a sign of the squalls to come in the night..
