Commodore
August 4, 2025

Tuesday 5 August – snorkelling the cruise liner wreck

We went over to the wreck of the cruise liner to snorkel around it. The crew from Lella came but the crew from Alma Feroz didn’t because they don’t like the fact the guy charges a fee to land there and look around. I feel that it is a pretty legitimate way for them to earn a pittance. The wreck is quite something so close to the beach. The locals tried for ages to be compensated or get it removed, but supposedly too much time has past now, no wonder they want to make some money out of it. The boat was built in 1974 in Germany, it has a a double hull and as an expedition boat visited Antarctic and the Arctic. A substantial ship. We had a good snorkel around, quite eerie, but nothing sinister as nobody died. The captain beached it here after they had hit a reef at the entrance to the bay. This corner was most probably the most protected spot and he thought it would be salvaged. By the time an Australian salvage company arrived it had been totally stripped by the locals, there was also a civil war going on, so it was abandoned.

We spent a couple of hours there, an English couple were doing a day trip from Honiara, he worked here with the VSO in the early 1960’s, his first time back. The only staying guest was a German who is studying at St Andrews, and doing a dissertation studying people and politics of the South Pacific. One of the local ladies asked me to go and look at the gallery, which turned out to be a few stall holders, I was very surprised to see a WW2 hand grenade on offer next to all the shells! Poor stall holders, it all looks in slow decline.

It was a very steamy afternoon with no breeze, Alice and Jose from Alma Feroz came over to ask us to join them for a snorkel across the bay. I declined as the water is full of debris, not pollution, but I had already done my ear drops. Rowan went with them, they were not gone long as they got chased for money by some locals there who were harvesting live coral in huge quantities. So sad, most probably going to make lime for their beetle nut. What a crime! This is what Simon is fighting. They abandoned the snorkel as they were not the friendliest locals.

In the meantime Rowan has found with the help of Kruno (the Croatian skipper for Lella) that the problem with our chain counter is the magnet was totally corroded on our windlass. Rowan found a taxi dropping off the English couple in Honiara so he asked him to pick up a magnet for us. Luckily Aron and Craig the couple who helped us in Honiara, had some magnets for us. Amazingly the taxi was back by 6pm with the magnets. Fingers crossed we can fix it.

The water taxi guy lives on a small island called Tulagi, just off this island about 8 miles south. The town of Tulagi was the administrative seat (from 1893) of the British Solomon Islands Protectorate until it was destroyed by the Japanese in 1942 during WW2. The capital was subsequently moved to Honiara, a new town built on Guadalcanal. Everyone says Tulagi is very dangerous and cruisers are strongly advised not to anchor there, the taxi driver said the same. It could have been quite interesting, there is a memorial and a museum but neither have good write ups, certainly not worth the risk of visiting!