Sunday 5 October – our last snorkel in PNG was a magnificent farewell

We decided to move to a smaller island closer to the western pass, so that we can make a quick get away tomorrow. A weather window has opened with a little wind, and if we don’t take it we may be stuck here for weeks. Towards the end of the month the winds blow the other direction and that would mean bashing our way into the wind to get to Indonesia. We set off mid morning, it took us well over an hour to get to the next anchorage navigating our way through the bommies. It is a lovely island with nobody living the side we are anchored on, so we are hoping to have a quiet time without the internet cafe service running.

Rowan suggested we go through the pass and snorkel the outside wall of the reef. Everybody joined in, including Gary and his spear gun. We went quite far along the wall so we could have a long drift dive. We all jumped in and could not believe the change, the coral was flourishing, as far as you could see, with loads of different kinds of corals, definitely a few we haven’t seen before. The fish life was not as good as we saw at Hermits, but it got better as we made our way towards the pass. The conditions were so perfect with the sun out to pop the colours and very calm sea water. We saw one reef shark, quite small and definitely not interested in us. Lots of brightly coloured clams embedded in all sorts of different coral. We snorkelled all the way to the pass, where the coral was less impressive, maybe the current roaring in and out is too much for it. Definitely the most impressive coral we have seen on our sailing travels.

We all returned to our boats for a quiet night as we prepare for our 4 day passage to Indonesia. We gave Claudette two jerry cans of our diesel, as she doesn’t quite have enough if she has to motor the whole way. Looks like we have plenty. It feels quite momentous having our last day in PNG, we have so enjoyed these outer islands and the people, thank goodness we ignored all the dire warnings about going this way, including the Germans on the trimaran Trinity, who told us we were going to be killed!