“The brave skipper with a shallow draft may turn sharply north here…” Dirk Seiling in his Solomon Island Cruising Guide describes the shorter entrance to Munda (Lambeti) Town, where our friends Graham and Kaylene Wadd were to arrive by air from Honiara that afternoon. I have been avoiding Munda as mull those words over in my mind. Maybe we should go to Noro, through a deeper but narrower pass? At least we have been in there a couple of times. A regular bus would bring our friends to us from Munda, for a $20 SID fare ($4 AUD)… peanuts… No, lets do it! I pore over the Google Earth imagery one more time, patchy reef…could one be a bommie a bit shallower than the others? Dirk was in a monohull with at most two-foot beam at the keel… we are 8m wide with two protruding rudders… risky… Are you sure? There are no haulout facilities here if you stuff up…. We are going to do it! On approach, the port and starboard markers look too close together for us to fit through, but as we glide past it opens up and appears wide enough. Hard to port, one engine ticking over, but just enough revs to give us steerage as we do a big S bend through the pass. No reef under port hull where the depth sounder transducer lives, but there is reef under starboard…how deep? Well we slide through with a minimum depth of 800mm under port side, who knows what under starboard… Wide grins replace grim faces as we once again breath, and make our way the short distance to anchor off Munda town.
The market looks busy; Friday is always big market day. I had heard from a reliable source that diesel was available in Noro for $8SID/litre, much cheaper than $10 in Gizo last year. We are getting low, and will probably motor a lot in our tour with the Medicos next week. We spy a harbour side fuel outlet with a big sign a few hundred meters behind us, so I dinghy down and enquire as to price. $9/litre… hmmmm… OK I say, gotta do it. As I get back to Drumbeat, I see a boat disappear behind a rock wall, and the crew carrying fuel cans up to a non-descript shed… another fuel outlet. I go over and find diesel for $8/litre, but I had already told the other guys I would be back… bugger. I load the dinghy with 7 x 20 litre plastic jerries and head down to the first place. “mate I can get diesel up the track for $8, sorry”, “I will check with the boss” … “$8.50 we can do, our diesel comes from Australia, who knows where theirs comes from”. I look at the rusty beat up fuel drum… sure… yeah righto, lets do it, can you do pure petrol at same rate?” Comes back from ‘Boss’ with a nod…
I do the market run, cleaned out all of their papaya, bought a heap of cucumbers, pomelo, limes, abiu and eggplant. Prices are better here than Gizo, but not such a big market. No fancy items… what I would pay for a pineapple… Later that afternoon we listened to the muted strains a wannabe Keith Green hogging the microphone and booming out ‘Do Lord’ and various other familiar Gospel songs over a cheap PA system, followed by a classic soap box sermon and more songs. The lazing betel nut chewing crowd were no longer staring wistfully seawards, but were fully engaged by old mate. Nice, thought I…
Until 10pm…
We could see the airstrip from the boat, so at the appointed plane landing time of 6pm, I took station on the back deck to await the imminent arrival of the friend bearing plane. By the time the crew had unloaded the baggage we could dinghy and walk the short distance to the terminal building to meet them. 6:15, no plane, nothing unusual, have another banana… 6:20 and I scan the shore… nothing… then I see a fibreglass canoe heading our way with distinctly non black heads peering over the bow. What? No plane? How did they get here? Long story, but they ended up missing there connecting plane, but arrived at Munda on an earlier flight… only in the Solomon’s!
Great to see old friends, we yarned and settled in, everyone was tired, so we hit the hay at about 9:30… nek minute it was 10 O’clock…
The large open building visible from the boat? Turned out to be a night club, with a professional quality PA, and a heaving throng to match. The side of the boat was resonating to the sub-woofer blows… not happy Jan! This went on until 2am, then the music was stifled to a mild bellow, but the crowds were fully amped, sounding like a home game footy match was on… a lot of pain out there later this morning… mine included. I passed out at 3am, despite concerns of drunken revellers coming to loot the boat… sweet dreams.
