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The purpose of the trip was manifold: to learn more about yachts; to learn more about sailing; to explore a new part of the world; to shoot fish; to free-dive in crystal clear waters.
I had an offer to join two other crews, which early in the trip seemed like it may have been a good idea. Later, however, I realised that you can’t plan the kind of trip I had. It was no holiday.
Getting on this boat seemed like a better idea as I would have an opportunity to dive a particular reef, where the skipper’s uncle had crashed a WWII bomber that he wanted to find, which was very rarely dived as it is very isolated.
Long story short, and to get to the juicy bits: first yacht had serious problems after being in storage for 8 months. On the second leg of the trip from Gizo, in the Solomon islands to Raboul in Papua New Guinea the navigation equipment (two sets of it), the steering and the generator failed.
Also, the skipper was a cranky old nut who cocked his Glock handgun below deck for some reason and scared the shit out of me and the other crew as we had just had a bad few days and things were tense between us.
Got off that boat …
Got on another boat … but that’s another story … here is a journal of my dives:
Honiara, Solomon Islands:
1. There are many wrecks in Guadalcanal, we visited 2. Got a taxi driver to take us out for the day. Didn’t take my gun the first time but took a few dives under the bow of the big Japanese warship. Vis was pretty good, about 15 meters, expected it to be better. Saw many types of smaller fish and a couple large snapper here and there. Also found a room where a big fat Barracuda chilling out in. Got pretty close to it before it slowly went off. No fish, but lots of nice dives to about 22m on the front of the bow. I had never dived a wreck so it was a pretty nice experience.
2. We decided to take a proper spear-fishing trip to the wreck we did the day before and were also keen on visiting another one. Took the taxi ride in along the beautiful coast to the new wreck, got geared up … silly me: forgot the rubber for my gun. Took the taxi racing back to the hotel, which was about 15 mins each way, luckily, and got it. Went in the water, and I must say I was stunned. This was an amazing wreck, that went very deep, beyond my free diving capabilities. The amazing thing was that I could see how deep it dropped off. There was some kind of antenna or something sticking about 20m out of it and I dove down along that. Coming back up to the surface was a real spectacle. While there was lots of beautiful small fish, there was nothing for me to shoot. So we move to the second wreck. The guys I was with didn’t really spearfish but were testing out their free diving skills to about 10 meters. The skipper, who I still liked at this stage, was 59 and was diving real good I thought, he was diving his deepest to try and keep up with me. Unfortunately they spooked a lot of fish I think. Especially that fat Barracuda in the room, who by the time I got to him had already spotted the skipper and was looking cagey. Like many of the instances on the rest of the trip, I wish I had a gun with me that had a better range than my 100cm Omer. I had a chance to shoot it, but I think I would have just injured it for no reason. All up, the dive on the first wreck I mentioned was memorable. I was diving really well too doing reasonable time and feeling very comfortable. I wish I bought housing for my camera … oh well … I guess I will have to go back.
Liapari, Solomon Islands:
1. This is where the boat was being stored and we needed to go some repairs before we set off. The vis right near the boats was not great and I wanted find out from Neal, the chief of the island, where the good spots were. One of the goals of this trip was to shoot a large trout and this seemed like the place to do it. Neal told us that we could shoot anything and that the best fish where we could find Spanish Mackerel and the Trout I was looking for was on the other side of Liapari. He warned us about currents and told us that there was a drop off. And what drop off it was. The currents were very strong too. At one stage on my second dive there I was going full speed against the current in my Wahoo fins and was completely static. The vis was pretty good, about 25-30 meters perhaps, but unfortunately a lot of the Coral had been damaged from an Tsunami/earthquake and so the fish life was not brilliant, or maybe not to my expectations for such a remote island. Went in the water with the other crew, without the Shark Shield. Lots of black tips and some white tips following us. It made me a little tense as I had not really seen this many sharks, and behaving this way before. At one stage J (the other crew) froze in the water about 100m behind me as he had about 3-5 circling him.
I saw a school of massive parrots, some good hump head maori wrasse, snapper, and various other fish of varying sizes I could not readily identify. I managed a beautiful red Coral Trout as well as a Cod which I was happy with. The vis started to deteriorate after a while. I had the fish on the stringer about 10m behind me and I told J to stay between me and the stringer to deter the sharks. He was suspicious of that as anyone would! But when he stopped doing it … you guessed it, a black tip got hold of my Trout and took most of it, thrashing about really quickly. It must have been about 3 feet or so. J got really afraid and I was feeling a little apprehension about shooting more fish as it was about feeding time. J wanted to bail back to shore so we quickly went back in, I protecting the remainder of my Trout and my Cod swimming backwards with my gun pointed in the direction of the sharks. There were some good bommies on this side of the island that held some pretty good fish, but unfortunately my rig didn’t let me dive to them comfortably as my purposely short bungee only stretched to about 15m and this made diving to them cumbersome. I fixed that later, however. The fish, although already half eaten, tasted very good.
It may take a while to post all of the dives ... but I hope it will be worth it. oh yes. and sorry about the need for editing. I have a hangover today.
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