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Back to Garove Island
We sail back to Garove Island in the Witu Islands to do some paid work, something we poor yacht cruising people need! After we arrived in Rabaul I received a message from Dickie Doyle, the manager of the Langu Plantation on Garove Island. He wanted to pay me to install a new Yanmar motor in his yacht. As a true "cruising on a budget" yacht I jumped at the chance. This meant a rather uncomfortable trip back to the Witu Islands and Garove against the NW Monsoon season, a period of calms interspersed by frequent NW squalls, enough to kick up a reasonable set of heading waves, enough to slow our motoring speed down to about 3 knots and a very uncomfortable motion. We spent a month at Langu Plantation on Garove Island with Dickie Doyle and family. I installed the new motor in his yacht and then Dick found me some more paid work building a new trade store and office over old foundations. After that we returned to Rabaul and explored the local area including watching the Firewalkers of Rabaul, a rather spectacular event. We also sailed down the harbour to the Tavurvur Volcano which had been quiescent for a long time. We explored and walked around the rim of the volcano and photographed the minor activity in it. All this changed in 1994, 17 years after our visit when Tavurvur erupted and covered Rabaul with volcanic ash. Vulcan, another vent on the other side of the old huge Rabaul harbour super volcano also erupted. After this the Government administration centre was rebuilt at Kokopo, a little further down the coast and out of the ancient Rabaul Harbour Caldera Remember that any video sections are digitised from 50 year old super 8 film. Photos are digitised from 50 year old 35mm slides.