KUNA's having a rest in Tulaghi!

After an uneventful -but very easy!- downwind sail over the 700 miles back from Anuta, KUNA is back in the more friendly waters of the Central province for a break. Not easy to find a safe park for a yacht in the Solomon islands but had to go and do some work on the weather coast of Guadalcanal, which has no anchorage, so weighed the options:

- moorings can be hired at the Honiara Point Cruz yacht club (one of them from Steve, +677 96 000, just in case that's useful to anyone) but the boat needs to be occupied to prevent theft. NOw to find a local who is RELIABLE is another challenge and the city has too many distractions (Solbrew especially). Anchoring can be tricky there: it is quite deep 20m and crowded and even during the trade season, some afternoon strong northerly breezes or even squalls can burst out, putting the boats on a leeshore.

- the next best alternative was to leave the boat in the Florida group, 35 miles NE of Honiara.



Checked Tulaghi harbour and it is definitely more protected, though, not quite perfectly from the SE trades. But it is VERY deep and KUNA is now parke don coral in 30m of water, 50m from the shore, right in front of the Tulaghi dive center and the police station for security. KUNA has two reliable people occupying her 24 hours/day as well. Apparently, people in the Florida (well Tulaghi) tend to strip yachts of solar panels, so there was no way to leave her alone. That's a real shame because there are a couple of very good totally enclosed cyclone holes in the florida group and it would have been so easy to just go anchor in mud!
Another possible option in the Florida is AviAvi, which also has a shipyard.

Now, all the camera gear was removed from KUNA the waterline has come up a long way!



The plane took us to the weather coast but did not land because of the weather... there was so much rain the pilot could not see the strip!


Meanwhile, back in Honiara to update the blog. City life the solomon style!



out for some shopping... the amount of cargo, plastics, (mostly goods of mediocre quality imported by the chinese) is quite overwhelming after two months on islands which are not exposed to cargo and where everything disposable is organic. There, no rubbish is produced. Plates are banana leaves and backpacks are made of coconut!




...and public transport!

The city is very busy as it is the 30th anniversary of independence so eager to get out. Honiara is no place to hang around for too long!