A Reason For

The Levy

Other letters on the subject of the Solomons light fee in clude one from a “sometime yachtie” signing himself lan Powers, of Wellington, NZ.

Mr Powers claims the light fee was imposed at the behest of a government official, who was annoyed, when he visited the Honiara Yacht Club, to find that yachties were sitting at the table which he was in the habit of using. The visitors refused to move and the of ficial left.

“A few days later / happen ed to return to the club only

to notice that there was not a single sailing vessel left in the basin,” Mr Powers writes, and added that he asked a long stand in g member what became of all the yachts and he replied that the official had made so much trouble for them that they had left.

Mr Powers alleged that the official took a law assessing a navigational levy on freighters of so much a ton and claimed yachts had to pay it.

“Also, since it was merely a few cents per ton which would have troubled no one he stipulated there was to be, for yachts, a $lOO minimum!”