Monday 20 October Biblical plague of ants

Aaaargh!  It was raining this afternoon and into the evening so instead of having our evening meal in the cockpit we moved downstairs and closed the hatches.  There'd been a few flying bugs attracted by our lights too.  Some came inside the boat.

Carpet of bugs

Sometime after dark I looked out through Polly cat flap to see thousands of insects swarming in the cockpit lit by the red light we leave on as an additional anchoring light.  We went into 100% lock down with every window sealed.
Next morning most of the insects had gone....apart from the thousands and thousands which had died and fallen on the deck, in the cockpit, in ever loop of rope, in the dinghy, down the walkways, even in the sails. It was horrible.  Like a carpet of locusts had swarmed on us.  The worst piles were on the hatched where the light had shone through the hatch covers.  We spent almost two hours rinsing the decks with buckets of water and when you thought they all been washed overboard another snowfall of debris fell from the rigging, or was discovered in another corner.  We pulled all the sails out to shake out any which had found their way in there too.  I don't know what insects they were.  They did look like ants but could have been something else.  Termites would have been worse.
Talking on the long range radio with our friends we discovered this was a one night phenomena when the insects swarm, usually following rain, and covered an area 50 miles by 50 miles at least.  We are on the north side of Batanta island, people near Gam, those in Waisai had the same problems.