“The more you get away from the land, the cleaner the water is”

Passionate about the marine environment, Chris Ellis and Sandrina Postorino – owners of 35-metre Beluga – love having the Great Barrier Reef on their doorstep, but in search of further adventure they decided to head more than 1,000 nautical miles to the remote cruising grounds of the Solomon Islands and Papua New Guinea. Sophia Wilson met the pair and their captain, Peter Lacey, to share the surprises they discovered above and below the surface “Chris and I have different interests,” says Postorino. “For me, it’s scuba diving, snorkelling and free diving; for Chris, it’s fishing.” However, having purchased the yacht in 2015, Ellis was keen to test the custom Moonen’s explorer capabilities outside of Australian waters. “We wanted to go to some of the places that we knew other domestic boats couldn’t get to,” he says.

After some debate the couple planned a trip to the Solomon Islands and Papua New Guinea. “They are both famous for having amazing diving, both in terms of wrecks and also in terms of fish life and coral. For me, that was the main attraction,” says Postorino, who is a PADI Divemaster. Looking at a map, the Solomon Islands look deceptively