We had a very lazy morning with a little bit of sorting out on the boat. A mooring ball had become available, so Ralla, with Ian and Laura, moved across to our side of the water. Their anchorage was not very nice in town, very rolly.
We went to the resort near us for lunch having booked in the morning. It took a while to get our drinks when we arrived, then when the men went up to order our food the manager said they had run out of food as they had so many walk in guests. We were not impressed, but luckily about 20 minutes later the waitress came and let us know they had 5 plates of food we could choose from, so we did not starve! In fact the food was very good, the men had burgers which they thoroughly enjoyed and I had a delicious Poulet fish, Laura had a chicken salad. The puddings were pretty good too. Laura and Ian depart tomorrow on their 10 day crossing to Port Moresby in Papua New Guinea, which has a reputation for being a dump and not very safe. They will stop over for 3 days to refuel and restock with fresh food. They had both applied for a long term visa to Australia, as they wanted to go to the Australian coast from here and then spend 6 months travelling around the country. Laura had to have a chest xray for the visa and they found scarring on her lungs which they think could have been TB, so they turned down her visa. Unbelievably, they then applied for the short 3 month visa and because she has been rejected once, it too was denied. So now they can’t even sail into Australian waters. Because of issues with Papua New Guinea, illegal immigrants and drugs. All yachts that go through the Torres Straights (the narrowest gap between Australia and PNG) get buzzed by Australian border force planes, and you have to respond on the vhf. So Ralla will have to keep in PNG waters quite carefully. From Port Moresby they head straight to Indonesia on another 10 day passage. Laura gets very seasick so I don’t think she is looking forward to it too much.
We had a very jolly lunch and crashed out reading our Sunday papers when we got back to the boat.
Our blue dot on Aore Island, across the water from Luganville
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