The wreck of the World Discoverer cruise ship lies in the shallow waters of Roderick Bay
Island Hopping through Oceania - Roderick Bay
We had wanted to set off promptly at 7 am for the roughly 40 km crossing from Savo Island to Roderick Bay, the final resting place of the wrecked 87-metre-long World Discoverer cruise ship. Yet, after our tumultuous journey to Savo Island, we should’ve known it wouldn’t be so simple.
Getting to Roderick Bay wasn’t straightforward
As 7am came and went, Nester, the proprietress of Sunset Lodge, apologised as she explained the situation. Our boat driver had got royally wasted the night before and gone AWOL, and she was searching for someone else who knew the way,
“He’s one of these I’m angry with. Getting drunk all night”, she lamented.
Eventually, a skipper was found, and we headed out into the swell. It was a rough crossing, and the new skipper lacked the brash confidence we’d experienced on our journey to Savo Island. In a country where lifejackets are a rarity, it didn’t fill us with confidence that he wore one securely fastened. Despite a wave breaking directly into the boat and the occasional cracking sound from the hull as we slammed over the waves, we arrived at what we, and the skipper, thought was Nggela Sule Island drenched but not wholly traumatised.
We had to go ashore to ask for directions on our way to Roderick Bay
It soon became apparent that Nester had failed to find a skipper who knew the way. As we skirted the island looking for the half-submerged cruise ship, the skipper periodically checked his phone. It didn’t seem to help, and when we asked if he’d been to Roderick Bay before, he admitted that this would be his first time. As we discussed this, the water beneath us suddenly changed colour, from the midnight blue of deep water to the cyan shade of the shallows.
Our oblivious skipper kept pumping forward as I casually remarked, “It’s quite shallow here”.
“What?” Rico shouted over the din of the outboard.
And that’s when we slammed into the reef.
The thud of the propeller on the hard coral shook us from our complacency. Unfortunately, touch screens aren’t terribly functional when covered in salt water. Despite that, we eventually discovered, with the help of Google Maps, that we were on the wrong island. For some reason, our skipper didn’t seem so sure. So we puttered around the bay tensely waiting for the next crunch into the reef, which came often and hard, until he found someone on shore to ask.
With our position confirmed, we clunked our way back through the reef. We then skirted through the chop along the southern shore of Mbokonimbeti Island before finally reaching Nggela Sule. The skipper still had no idea where Roderick Bay was, though. So, Rico directed him using Google Maps, and we thankfully managed to avoid hitting any more reefs as we sped by the corrugated bays of Nggela Sule’s west coast.
Roderick Bay is a surreal place to stay
Rounding a headland, we finally knew we had hit the spot when the rusting mass of the half-submerged cruise ship came into view at the head of a bay. Roderick Bay Beach Bungalows, run by Patrick and his brother John, is surreal. Three thatched bungalows with verandahs jutting out over the bay, a sweep of sandy beach shaded by giant coastal trees, and a hulking great shipwreck ten metres from shore.
The three traditional-style bungalows at Roderick Bay sit on stilts over the water
The hulking mass of the rusting World Discoverer is a surreal sight, tucked close to shore in Roderick Bay
The World Discoverer cruise ship hit an uncharted rock or reef in the passage between Nggela Sule and Mbokonimbeti Island on the 30th of April 2000. As Patrick explained, the locals know this rock as tonykama, or the wind woman, and it is she who decides if “you have good permission or not” to enter the passage. Sadly for the ship’s 100+ holidaymakers, on that day in 2000, the World Discoverer did not have “good permission” from tonykama. As the vessel began to take on water, the captain evacuated the passengers before grounding the ship in Roderick Bay.
Salvagers arrived, but much of the ship’s interior had already been stripped, and the country was experiencing a period of civil strife. When shots were fired, all attempts to refloat the vessel were abandoned, and it has lain in the shallows of Roderick Bay ever since. Thankfully, the fuel had been pumped out later to protect the reef.
And what a reef it is, too.
Snorkelling in Roderick Bay
After 24 years, coral and giant clams have attached themselves to the ship’s hull. The arms that once held the lifeboats in place drip with colourful coral and soft plants and are circled by shoals of fish hundreds strong. The ship sits “like a plank,” according to Patrick, each end on a reef with a gap under the centre of the ship where the sea floor drops away. This deeper area is like fish soup, where masses of six-inch-long fish shimmer in the deep, a moving piscine carpet obscuring everything beneath.
The snorkelling in Roderick Bay was spectacular and very varied
And then, away from the ship, we snorkelled past clownfish families in their anemone homes and over fields of brown coral with blue tips, fluorescent orange coral pinnacles, cream starfish with brown spines, giant clams, and through seagrass fields with a rolling mass of tiddlers moving as one in a tightly packed ball.
Back at the ship, once we had overcome the spookiness of the cavernous interiors and curving hull, we marvelled at the loitering triangular fish through the missing windows and watched the elaborately feathered lionfish cruising the rusting exterior, past the propeller with its sprouting coral. We even caught a glimpse of the pufferfish that lives next to the bow.
In between the snorkelling, we laid back in the hammock on the verandah, watched the fiery sunsets, and soaked in the tranquillity—insects, birds, children playing, the gentle lap of the ocean under the hut—until it was time to entrust our lives to the skipper again and return to Honiara. At least he’d been there before.
This Leg
Days: 2
Flights: 0
Boats: 1
Islands: 2
Countries & Territories: 1
Total
Days: 24
Flights: 7
Boats: 12
Islands: 12
Countries & Territories: 4