Rowan had managed to put 12:00pm on the alarm, so it was nearly 1am before we woke up. Exiting the pass in the dark is quite a mission but we had our track to follow that we came in on, we followed that faithfully. The only thing against us was wether we would still make slack tide, thankfully it went like clockwork and although there was turbulent water in the pass it was fine. Once out we got out into open waters we got Pinkz our Asymmetric spinnaker up. Thankfully in the dark it all went well and we were cruising along in low teen winds. We had a wonderful display of a couple of dramatic shooting stars. The sea had flattened out, and it was a really comfy sail the whole way to Nuguria Island, which is also an atoll, sadly it’s sinking into the sea with climate change. Rowan had discovered a tiny sandbank in the middle of the sea, not charted, which he has now marked on the charts to be avoided. When we got within a couple of miles we saw a huge fishing vessel near it, we discovered later in the village that it is shipwrecked there.
We got to the Nuguria pass at 1pm after a great sail the whole way, Rowan was very chuffed with Pinkz. We crept through the pass, as there are no details on the charts. Luckily Rowan found a reference to it in a book with the Admiralty charts in it. We got in with 9m the lowest water beneath us, so not bad at all. The village is on the pass but we decided to go to the other side. We carefully navigated our way across as there were plenty of coral reefs to avoid. Saw a couple of turtles on our way across. Rowan found a nice sandy patch for us to anchor, he has an extra detailed satellite version of Google maps, which is proving to be very useful. It’s quite exposed but the wind is so welcome in this heat.
We got settled then headed to the village in the dinghy, laden with gifts. There was a little jetty to tie up to and we were greeted by two men, both chief elders and very friendly. The village has just over 200 residents, loads are young kids judging by the hordes who came to greet us, all very cute and jovial. Seats were produced for us and we had a long chat to the men. We said we had gifts and they told us we had to wait for Brian to arrive, he is the government chairman of the village. He was a much younger more quiet character, we laid out all the presents which they were very pleased with. Coconuts were produced for us to have a drink, and we handed out biscuits to the kids. The elders and Brian welcomed us effusively and assured us we were safe, and free to explore and snorkel everywhere in the atoll. They are really struggling with their island sinking, it appears a King tide a few years ago has done so much damage. Brian took us on a tour around the village. Sadly there are no big trees like in all the other islands we have visited, so the village was quite barren, but was immaculate with gorgeous gardens lining the main street through the village. They get a supply ship 4 times a year if they are lucky. They briefly had wifi on a government satellite installation but that hasn’t worked for most of the year. They have no idea when the boat will come. The nearest big town is Buka, a two day banana boat crossing with a stop over in Nissan Island. They have a tiny medical clinic which looked pretty closed. We visited the school and met the headmaster and his assistant, very jolly people. The thing that amazed us was the smart loos, all with modern composting bins at the back. Nowhere else have we seen such smart loos, they seem to be getting critical disaster aid from Australia. In the Solomon Islands we saw little loo cabins, but in Nissan Island we never saw any loos and wonder what they do. It certainly never smelled like they had a problem!
It was a very hot tour of the village followed by kids, who Brian was very sweet with. He seems a very genuine character, no wonder he is appointed chairman. What was astonishing was that his feet were totally webbed and two fingers in each hand were attached. No wonder he wasn’t wearing flip flops like everyone else does! I googled the condition as I thought it might be inbreeding as goodness knows how they improve the gene pool here. These locals are Polynesians, unlike Nissan and Buka who are Melanesians. The Polynesians are lighter skinned, straighter hair and have big builds, the Melanesians are much darker skinned, and tightly curled hair. PNG has 800 different languages, the most in the world for a single country. So they speak a completely different language here to Nissan Island which is just 80 miles away. PNG is predominately Melanesian, these Polynesians, are a tiny minority, 0.2% of the PNG population, they are only found on these remote outlier eastern atolls.
My ChatGPT search of webbed feet revealed that it is a fairly common defect in development in the early embryo stage, when all toes and fingers are joined and separate during the developmental stage. Nothing to do with inbreeding!
We were pretty tired from our early start, so headed back to the boat promptly after the tour. They asked if there was any chance they could use our wifi as they are desperate to find out a few bits of information from the mainland. Including when electioneering will take place here. Rowan has set us a guest wifi, so we invited them over to PolePole. Brian and his very sweet son came with two other very friendly men, all of them were incredibly grateful. All making long phone calls, always sounding very jolly. I think that might have been the most appreciated thing we could do for them. It doesn’t appear that they have any wooden canoes here, so every thing is done in a banana boat which requires fuel, with a delivery 4 times a year, boat trips are obviously kept to a minimum.
Once they were gone, it was a quick supper and bed! We were very relieved to have anchored safely, pleased that we got through the pass with no problems and that the locals turned out to be very friendly. We only found details from one other boat who visited a few years ago. Even our Passage Guardian was sending messages to us to be safe, that we are the only boat he is looking after that is so remote! He is a Kiwi guy who we update with our details every midday, so he can monitor us, and send alarm bells if he doesn’t hear from us!
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