Sunday 21 September – heading to the western tip of New Hanover island

We set off soon after we woke up, about 7am, there was not a breath of wind, but we decided to head off anyway. We were waved off by the grandpa, and made our way through the reefs out to sea. The wind never got above 7 knots the entire way so we motored the whole way, in bright sunshine. It was incredibly hot, which spurred me on to fix our awning which we have not had up in a couple of years, too windy in French Polynesia. The straps have completely disintegrated in the sun. Luckily I had bought enough webbing to do a couple of repairs, at that stage I thought only a couple of straps had broken. I’ve discovered all 6 have perished, so I cut my webbing in 6 and have made elasticated extensions. It took me the whole 6 hour journey to nearly finish it.

We arrived at Dunung island at around 2pm and anchored off their very pretty palm lined beach. Rowan had been in touch with the guest house here called Clem’s Place. Clem is a local who has become well known as he has had a couple of famous guests on dive boats visit him. Clem is away but he has put Rowan in touch with his nephew at the guest house. We had not been anchored long when we were surrounded by canoes. First canoe came with coconuts which is hugely appreciated. Rowan has perfected opening them with his panga and we have a huge glass of the juice every day. So good with a big chunk of ice in this heat, plus it is full of trace elements, as good as rehydration salts apparently. It was not long before we had endless canoes paddling around us, so curious, I guess we are one of the bigger sailing boats that has been by the last couple of years. We traded with kids and teenagers, and have enough limes to go with all our pawpaws and my gin and tonics to last a long time! Rowan emptied the one bag of limes and found about eight big leopard cowrie shells in it. The guys had already gone before we realised, we don’t like to take any shells from them.

Rowan went off to find the guy at Clem’s place while I finished the last strap on the awning. He booked us in for supper tomorrow and a guide to go and snorkel a sunken Japanese boat from WW2 which was towing a mini submarine. The wreck is mainly only 15m deep so easy to snorkel over, the submarine was only discovered in 1987, and is too deep to see.

This tiny island seems to have a lot of people living on it, so strange they all live on the small islands and not the big islands. We had a very peaceful night with some drums being played in the distance.