After 93 hours we dropped anchor at Samarai Island at 3 am on the 12th August(Daniel didn’t get off the boat on his birthday). The crossing was pretty rough for the first 3 days and no one could eat due to sea sickness. The following is typical for all on board
Day 1 – one slice of dry bread
Day 2 – one slice of dry bread and about 6 of mints
Day 3 – two slices of dry bread and ran out of mints
last day – weather calmer so slowly started eating normally
Every thing on the boat got a good soaking. All the hatches and vents leak water and as waves were coming across the deck the front cabin was soaking wet. The only real dry place was the aft cabin.
We had a few hours sleep and woke to kids paddling around in dugout canoes. The customs guy on the island was away so we were told that it would be alright to come ashore anyway. Europeans are called Dim Dims and where ever these Dim Dims walked we were the centre of attention. The kids made friends with just about all the kids on the island and were busy playing soccer, fishing, lighting fires on the beach and even cooked a fish on our deck over a hexam fire.
The people over here chew a beetle nut which is a drug and mix it with mustard or lime or and it rots their teeth and their mouth are bright red / orange
Samarai use to be an administration centre but now there are only two little stores operating. Our notes said that there was a bank and post office and we expected we could get currency exchange and any extra supplies. One thing we need is 2 stroke oil for the dingy and we couldn’t get that. There is a public phone on the island that only takes phone cards but no one sells the cards(sorry lovey I didn’t ring you)
Out of necessity we sailed around to Alotau, which is now the admin centre for the Milne Bay Provence. It has a few banks and super markets a hardware and a market. The supermarket that we went to had about 10 security guards and one of them told Kathleen that her wallet was showing from her pocket and to watch out for pick pockets. On the way to the market a guy came over and asked if we wanted to buy some carvings, we said we would look and we went over to the market to look at them as it was pooring down with rain. Soon there were another 2 guys showing us carvings and we had quite an audience looking at the Dim Dims looking at carvings. A guy told me that there would soon be heaps of them so I hurried Wendy up, who was having a great time flashing her Kina(currency) around. And we went back to the boat. Another few people told us about pick pockets, it is not the type of place to be after dark. There were hundreds of people in the street and we saw now other Dim Dims.