Parents onboard Sophia

After two nights and three days in Tavinipupu we sailed to Honiara overnight. That passage was the busiest passages we have ever had navigation-wise. There was a few island and reefs we had to pass in the dark and in total 6-7 ships/boats passed us coming up and down the coast to the capital Honiara, only one of them on AIS and with proper nav lights.

We arrived early morning and were quite appealed to find the anchorage extremely rolly. We literally rolled from gunwale to gunwale. Honiara is notorious for being a bad anchorage: poor holding, rolly, squally and lots of thefts. But almost all boats have to stop there to clear into the country. I rowed ashore by myself to pay our entry fees with customs and immigrations (we had done the paperwork in Lata) while Phil stayed on board in case conditions got worse. Luckily it improved and by midday it was much better, and we hardly experienced more rolling the next two nights we were there.

My parents arrived on the Thursday and were met by 33 degrees heat. They had been quite cold on the airplane but I promised them they wouldn't be cold the next 2 1/2 week! We had thought we'd leave the same night and sail overnight to Russel Islands, but it wasn't rolly, so we stayed the first night in Honiara. It meant we had better time to eat more ice cream, buy cheese, wine and beer!

Another boat we had met in Tavinipupu told us about a nice bay in the Florida group where they had just spent a few nights, so we decided to check it out, also because it was only a 6 hours sail to get there. Roderick Bay Hide Away is a lovely little village (one big family). They came out in canoes to help us in and took a stern line ashore as it was quite steep right up to the beach. They also have a mooring, but another yacht was on that already. We were immediately invited ashore to join them that evening for a pot luck dinner, as they were having a farewell party for the other yacht. They had cooked up a lovely sea food chowder, grilled fish and several kinds of root vegetables, some baked into a kind of cake. The table was fully covered in beautiful flowers, we each got flowers around our neck and even the drinking coconuts were decorated with flowers.

The next day we were guided around the village, saw the guest books from previous boats visiting, a photo album another yachtie gave them, and we walked over to a bigger village where the school and church is located. We also snorkelled on the reef and they showed us a small group of giant clams. The kids came out to us several times with tomatoes, beans, nuts etc, but unlike many other places they didn't linger, but they were very polite and super friendly. It's really hard to pick the nicest places/people, but this is definitely one of the top ones, mostly because of the super kind and honest people.

We're now back in Honiara as my Dad is sick and needed a few nights in a nice air-con hotel and also to see a doctor. He is slowly on the mends again and hopefully soon we'll head to the western province. There has just been some civil disturbances in Gizo this weekend, some violence and arrests, so we need to keep track of the situation and possibly avoid it, but we'll wait and see.