Day 29 - 10/31/22 - Conflict Islands, Papua New Guinea - Day 1

 It was an easy voyage from Alotau overnight to the Conflict Island we visited.  The Westerdam hovered in place all day using the thruster and azipods.  The Captain indicated that the water depth was over 1100 feet deep which was well beyond the length of the anchor chain.  This set of 21 islands are the remnants of an ancient and long dormant volcano whose core sank into the ocean.  We were located on the outside edge of an island called Panasesa which is in the southwest corner of the group.  

Tendering was used and one had to obtain a tender ticket from the Ocean Bar except for 4-5 star Mariners who could go to the BBKing nightclub for an express pass.  We took a leisurely morning to watch the Seattle Seahawks beat the NY Giants (a 1:30pm Seattle time game comes on at 6:30am here), eat breakfast and then gather our things and were quickly onboard a tender for the very short ride to a very long floating pier.  We spotted a small turtle on the walk in on the pier.  The water is very shallow for a long ways to what we affectionately call the abyss.  

Based upon the advice of our lecturer, we headed out far to the right (south) from the long floating pier.  We left our things on the white sand beach and snorkeled out a long ways with little success in seeing any substantial sized fish.  It was really shallow also.  So we came back in and walked north back towards the pier and found a place to put our things and snorkeled out to the abyss.  It was much better snorkeling with the occasional bright coral and more fish.  The abyss is impressive with deep blue water that suddenly appears.  While we didn't see any large fish, others reported seeing sharks and large rays and grouper type fish.  We snorkeled in the mid afternoon as the tide was coming in.  After about an hour we decided to head back to the Westerdam for some lunch.  Once we reached there it was around 2pm.  With a little food in our bellies, all motivation to go back out in the 94º heat was lost.

After the tenders were picked up and stowed after the 4:30 last tender, the Westerdam sailed out into the Coral Sea to spend the night away from land and probably to make more fresh water.  I'm sure we're using a lot of it to wash off the sand.  The Captain did give the daily Covid count which was 44 passengers and 5 crew.

Coming back to my account of our day, I spent the time until dinner reviewing my video footage and selecting still photos and doing post processing on them.  We ended up eating by ourselves before attending Vickie O'Keefe's rock performance on the Main Stage.  Again, her style is not my cup of tea, and this 7pm set was not well attended.  Afterwards we watched the Billboard Onboard do a set of top 100 Halloween themed songs.  The artists dressed up as each other and switched ends of the performance area.  It was rather cute.

Given that it was Halloween, there was a party in the BBKing at 9:30pm, and a number of guests and crew costumed up.  There was a contest, but we didn't stay up to see the results. Generally, celebrating Halloween isn't our thing although we did have some simple masks and Angela had a Halloween hat to wear that she found in Noumea.  

And so ended our bonus day in the Conflict Islands.  It was a worthy stop.  It just didn't have top notch snorkeling as was touted.