Sunday 28 September – the lads go spear fishing

Silum was here yesterday using wifi, Rowan asked them if they wanted to earn some money cleaning the bottom of PolePole, they jumped at it. Two lads and Silum were here at 10am to scrub the boat beneath the water. They did an excellent job, we may even go a little faster now. Rowan asked Silum if he could show us a good place to snorkel, they all three volunteered and had their speargun ready too. I opted out of it as my ear is not quite right and I don’t want to risk it, plus it was potentially going to be a long time in the boiling sun with no protection. Claudette joined them, and the 5 went miles away. The guys got some fish with their spear gun. It turns out that Rowan’s brand new spear gun he bought in France, in Nov 2021, and has never been used was absolutely useless. Well that is Rowan’s claim anyway! It sounded like the snorkelling was pretty much like we had seen.

It was a lazy afternoon under the awning on the trampoline catching the breeze, which was lovely. inside the boat is like an oven. Only downside is we think we got burnt from the reflected light through the trampoline, we never felt the heat because of the breeze. I even had factor 50 suntan cream on.

Late afternoon a banana boat arrived it was a family who had enjoyed our internet cafe in Manta Ray pass, they came laden with coconuts, bananas and pawpaws for us, in exchange for some more wifi. Their son is at boarding school in Kavieng, and with all the 50th anniversary celebrations, a fight had broken out between the school boys and the university boys, and their son had run away into the bush to escape the fighting. They needed to phone relatives to see if their son could be found. They had to hang around for ages, for the relative to go and investigate, finally they got a report back from the school and the boy was fine. Phew what drama for them, I think they said he was 13 years old. Pretty tough to be so out of touch. They set off just as it was getting dark, seemingly pleased with the end result. It is incredible how big the populations are on these remote islands. We asked why the kid didn’t go to school on Manus island which is much closer than Kavieng and it seems they didn’t like the quality of teaching. The school here with its boarders from the surrounding islands looks very impressive, but I guess it is all up to the quality of the teaching. The PNG gov finances are not in a great shape, as we discovered at Clem’s place, he opted to start their own private school on the island run by volunteers, and it was thriving.

It is the most stunning anchorage here, just far enough away not to have a stream of boats visiting all day long. We will enjoy it as there really doesn’t look like there is wind for another week at least.