We spent the first few hours of the sail flying the spinnaker in moderate rain. Then both rain and wind increased further, and we decided it would perhaps be more sensible to downsize to a reefed jib. An hour later, the wind was way past our limit for the spinnaker and still climbing. We were both glad we hadn't tried to hold out with it earlier.
We both had two terrible, wet watches, and then two much nicer ones as we sailed further west, away from Nendo. The Intertropical Convergence Zone (ITCZ), the band of rising air pushed up by colliding trade winds from each hemisphere, has been parked over the eastern Solomons for months now, and didn't look like it was planning on wandering away anytime soon. Our westbound sail gave us a chance to but some distance between it and us and return to more typical trade wind conditions.
The extra wind made us fast enough that we never got a chance to use the spinnaker again. If we had, we would have ended up arriving in the dark, so we stuck with the jib for the remainder. We even got a long enough period without rain on the last day to be able to dry out the spinnaker before stowing it below.
Malaulalo is home to what may be the world's largest single single species coral outcrop (identical coral polyps). Discovered in 2023, it is of the species Pavona clavus, about the size of a third of a football pitch, and is likely several centuries old. The island is generally surrounded by coral, but there is one small, sandy spot off the beach to the northwest. That was our destination.
Although the weather was improving, the surf and the intervening coral made a beach landing unadvisable. We instead decided to swim to the beach, with a plan of finding a route across the island on foot to the side with the big coral.
The anchorage and visiting ashore
That started okay, but there is a large area of swamp/bog separating our side of Malaulalo from the big coral site. Skirting it, we found the edge to be mud and quicksand. A bad storm had caused much damage to the Solomons just five months ago. It was clear to us as we walked along the island that the beach had been eroded well inland, many, many trees were down, and the big swamp had been inundated with seawater, killing most of the trees within. The walk was hard going in spots.
By the time we finally got within long swimming range of the mega-coral, we were starting to lose interest. It still looked pretty rough out on that side of the island and we knew going in that the best we were going to be able to do while snorkeling is get a glimpse of it from above, as most of it is at depths better suited to SCUBA diving. We turned and started searching for a route back home that would hopefully be better than the one we took there.
We arrived at the beach ahead of Begonia just as torrential rain began to pelt us from a cell passing overhead. We both instinctively tried to shield ourselves from it, which we immediately knew was funny for a pair of people in the process of donning snorkel gear for a swim back to a boat. At the other end, we climbed out and dried off. Within fifteen minutes, all the water we had used to rinse ourselves with after climbing out of the sea had been replaced in our rain collection tub.
Snorkelling off the island
Anchorage location >> On google maps
