Commodore
August 11, 2025

Tuesday 12 August – long day sail to Marovo lagoon

We had the anchor up at 4:30am, leaving in the dark with reefs around was a little challenging, but luckily the full moon was still shining, and we could follow our path that we came in over the really shallow area. Lella had left at 4am, just two boats left in the anchorage. It was a stunning sunrise, with pink reflective skies just like at sunset. There was very little wind so we got Sporty Spice (code zero sail) out and the main sail up. We hoped for a bit more wind when we got out of the islands into open sea, we think we remained in the shadow of the island for a couple of hours.

The wind was coming from behind us and remained much lower than the forecast, so we decided to put our new smaller parasail up. That all worked like a dream, around midday the wind was moving around a bit so we decided to take the main sail down as it has a terrible time straining and making a racket in those conditions. We thought we could get the main sail down without having to get the parasail down as we were heading straight downwind. What a mistake! We knew it was a gamble, but wont try that again. The main sail came half way down and the wind angle changed a bit, with that we tried to correct the direction to get it down completely and in the process got our parasail completely twisted. Scorching midday heat and both sail in a mess. It took us a good couple of hours to untangle everything and get it all sorted. I managed to get a rope burn untangling a stuck line, luckily I wasn’t holding onto it like last time (a few years ago) so it just nicked the bottom of my hand. Still a nasty blister and painful! It took us a while to get everything sorted and untwisted. It was so good we managed to get the parasail untwisted and back in it’s sock, so we could get it back up again. What a relief and no damage done.

Finally around 4pm we got to Marovo lagoon, Lella were going to a more northern anchorage as that is where Claudette is aiming for tomorrow. With it getting late and thunderstorms predicted for the night we opted for the easier more sheltered anchorage. Also to my delight it is the big wood carving centre! We had to wiggle our way in over one shallow spot and then into a lovely anchorage, all to ourselves. Besides our 4 boats there seem to be no other cruisers about. We have a very useful app called NoForeignLand, that most cruisers sign up to, so you can see where other boats are, it also has loads of other valuable suggestions and people’s experiences.

We hadn’t been anchored long before Paul arrived to welcome us. He said he could organise all the carvers to come to the beach tomorrow for us, so that they don’t come to the boat and pester us all day long. What a brilliant idea, we arranged for 10am. He also warned us that there are crocodiles about …. so quick swimming always one person watching from the boat or land! Ugh no thank you! We had a quick supper and were in bed early after our very early start to the day. Plus we knew it might be a wakeful night with big storms predicted. I forgot to mention that a couple of nights ago we had a dramatic stormy night, lightening and thunder before we went to bed. When I woke up Rowan asked me if I had heard another the storm during the night, I hadn’t, I slept right through the whole thing! I blame the fan it makes brilliant white noise. We think we have hit the Solomon Island’s equivalent of the Fijian Bogi Walu we experienced (8 days of rain).