Commodore
August 16, 2025

Sunday 17 August – big croc territory in Lever Lagoon

We had a dramatic storm overnight with thunder and lightning that was scarily close. Finally Rowan got up and switched off all our electrics, we put all our phones, ipads and laptops into our stove to act as a Faraday cage. The storm seemed to last ages. When we got up around 6am Rowan switched everything back on, all seemed fine, until he tried to make a cup of tea and the kettle would not work, our 220v circuit with all our plugs was not working. Yikes no Stinky! Rowan had manuals out, he was convinced we had been struck, and was wondering about our easiest passage to Australia! Only 12 of our model boat have been built and there have been 3 instances of these boats being near lightning, and destroying their electrics. Good reason to be concerned. Profasea departed, and we finally did call Kruno on Lella for advice as he is an electrical engineer. We tried to get our back up stinky working, but the plug for the 12v didn’t seem to work. Things were looking pretty serious. Rowan then suddenly remembered he had turned off 3 switches, and had only turned 2 back on. Hey presto the third switch flicked on and we were back to normal. Phew what a mega relief, a few hours of stress we could have done without.

Otherwise it was a long motor up the coast, absolutely no wind and baking hot. Rowan had found us an anchorage for over night-ing up a deep lagoon. It is called Lever harbour, one of the Lever brothers sailed passed here in the early 1900s and decided to buy the land to grow coconuts for their products. It was a wonderfully wild lagoon, with loads of crocodiles apparently, not safe to swim here! We got in about 3pm, the water was like a mirror in the anchorage. It wasn’t long before the endless stream of canoes arrived, amazing how far they paddle. The first guy with 3 very sweet kids traded coconuts with us, we are so enjoying drinking the coconut water, but hadn’t realised how quickly it ferments in this heat. A very sweet old lady turned up with two huge bunches of fragrant flowers. We traded plenty with her, and then she went to Profasea who turned down her flowers, I don’t think they have anything to trade on board or the budget to do so. The old lady was back to us offering us the bunch as we had given her so much which was sweet of her. I managed to find her a little sewing kit which she was very chuffed with. Happiness all round as the boat filled with the smell of frangipani. About half an hour later a lady arrived with her son, with another bunch of flowers and limes. I was a sucker for them too. So lovely to have the boat full of flowers.

We had a great evening sitting on the trampoline watching flocks of squawking red parrots fly back and forth. It reminded us of our time up the Chagres river in Panama. Finally the mosquitoes chased us inside. The stars were fantastic and the milky way was very obvious. All around us were billowing clouds, we hoped for a better night’s sleep.