We’re in Nairai. Back to where we met the wonderful folks who found the bottle we threw overboard at the equator (with a note in it) and after 4500 miles and 15 months at sea ended up here. That story is in our archive from last July/August.

Anchored off the beach (or rather reef).

So, we’re sitting here at anchor. It’s not a really friendly anchorage. If the wind goes at all south of east we are totally exposed. You have to time it here. But when the wind is east this little spot off the village of Lawiki on the island of Nairai is lovely.

Right now the stars are out, the wind is just barely north of east gusting to 15 knots. We hear the rumble of the gusts in the rigging and the splashing of the waves on the dinghy that’s tied just behind us, bouncing on the waves. Splish, splash. Then a few hundred meters away over in the dark toward the village, we hear, “Thud, thud, clank, thud, clank, thud…”. Those who have been in Fiji immediately recognize the rhythmic sound of kava being pounded in preparation for a long night of ceremony and celebration. The thud is the six foot long steel bar being lifted high above the head and brought down into the cast iron bowl containing the root. The clank is the steel hitting the side of the bowl as it’s brought back up above the head. The really good pounders have a syncopated song they play. The less talented sound more like a diesel engine that’s just thrown a rod.

We left Oneata yesterday morning at 1030. The sail over was uneventful and even mostly nice. With the wind dead on behind us, it was a bit rolly, but mostly 10-15 knots with no squalls. The water was a bit confused given all the islands in the Lau we were leaving behind, but when the sun was out it was so blue it was almost purple. The night brought stars and a waning moon although a little chilly – Ann put on socks and I had a hoodie over my tee shirt and shorts. That’s the definition of Fijian Chilly.

This morning delivered a nice sunrise at 0558 and then promptly clouded up. Damn. You really need some sun to get in through the reef. Without it you can’t see the coral lurking just below the surface. But, it turned out the clouds moved through just a little faster than Charisma and by the time of our arrival at 1200 it was gloriously blue water and blue sky. Entry through the reef was a non-event.

Didn't take long for the kids to find us.

Turns out word of our arrival got here before we did! By the time the anchor was set in the little patch of sand between bommies and reef that define this anchorage, there were people on the beach waving. They had heard from friends at Fulunga and from a relative in San Francisco that we were coming in. Wow. How to feel appreciated. By the time we got the dinghy launched and made our way to the beach our friends Esther and Able were waiting to give us a hand and they announced that lunch was waiting. Oh my. Fijian hospitality knows no bounds.

The village of Lawaki on Nairai.

The Chief of the village was out fishing, so his son took care of the sevusevu.

So great to see Epeli and Esther again.

After a delightful time catching up a bit and enjoying Esther’s fantastic cooking (which both Ann and I had been eagerly anticipating) we begged our way back to Charisma to catch up on lost sleep and put the boat away from the trip (fold sails, store lines, etc).

The plan tomorrow is to spend the entire day reacquainting ourselves with these fantastic people that we had so much fun with last year. We hope to take lots of pictures to share with the islands relatives in the Bay Area who we have also come to know. We’ll stay here as long as the weather cooperates. That looks to be Saturday or Sunday when the wind shifts into the south and we’ll have no protection.

Back in Nairai…issa…..

JHam asked how we kept track of where we were going on the trails. Many, if not most of the trails we have come across are very minimal until you get close to the village. The last two islands we hiked on the trails could not really be seen in many cases, it was more a matter of feeling your way. If you’re not on the trail, you can’t get through the underbrush/jungle. If you are on the trail, you move forward. Simple.

So…I have a machete and this also helps. Mostly it’s helpful for cutting coconuts to drink and eat, but sometimes it helps break trail and often I use it to mark a spot to use for coming back. A little cut on a tree that shows we were here. Sometimes when the trail forks, we just draw a line in the dirt.

A combination of things keeps us going the right direction. Also, we don’t walk late in the day because once the sun gets low you can’t see in the shade – a surefire way to spend the night in the bush.

We’ve spent the last 2 ½ months in the Lau Island Group on the East side of Fiji. More specifically the Southern and Southeastern Lau.

We left Oneata this morning on our way to Nairai. Planned arrival is tomorrow, perhaps late morning if the wind holds. For most of today (and now) the wind has been holding between 10 and 15 knots with somewhat confused seas. It’s a bit of a bumpy ride, but downwind at 5.5 knots average, so I can’t complain too much.

For anyone contemplating stopping at Oneata, we highly recommend it (particularly the village of Dakquiloa. The people there were really nice and if you are looking for really beautiful tapas Oneata and Namuaka-I-Lau, a little further south, both are excellent spots. We really wished we had more time to spend, particularly at Oneata but it’s getting late in the season and we still have some spots we would like to visit before heading back to NZ.

So for now it’s rockin’ and rollin’ threading our way out of the Lau and across the Koro Sea. Dinner was very simple: soup with some homemade bread that John from Orcinius gave us before we left. These 24 hour trips make it hard to get our sea legs, so we keep it as simple as possible and stay out of the cabin in these bumpy conditions.

Speaking of Orcinius, they are going north up the Lau via Lakemba and Vanua Balava and we’ll meet up again in Savusavu in a week or so. It will be fun to compare notes over a beer (or three).

Yes, a second day anchored just off a lovely beach at Oneata. Orcinius and Charisma are the only two boats here. There are two villages on this island, but they are on the other side, so we have a very quiet little spot.

We spent most of this morning just catching up on this and that. The afternoon’s project was to hike to the other side of the island and pick up a tapa that Orcinius commissioned from one of the villagers. OK, sounds easy, but first you have to find the trail. We went ashore and walked down the beach until we found something that looked “trail-like”. We followed it and quickly came out on the next beach up on this side of the island. At that point there was some disagreement over where exactly we should go. In the end we walked to the end of that beach and found another trail. Well, it sort of looked like it might be a trail. Through the jungle. OK, what the heck, we’ve got nothing else to do. So we followed it. It got better and after half an hour it miraculously opened to…the village! Score one for the Palangies.

The folks at this village were lovely and the tapa Orcinius had requested was almost complete. It’s about six feet long and two feet wide and inside the very intricate design is the name of the boat. It is really beautiful. The only problem was our talking was keeping Salote from completing her project, so we decided to do a little walking tour of the village. On the way we could hear someone hammering away – a sure sign that they are making the tapa paper. Following our ears, we came upon a nice woman pounding the tree bark that when soaked and pounded is turned into the paper that they paint to make the tapa.

Close up of the pounding hammer and the bark being pounded into cloth.

I’ll shorten a long story until the pictures are ready; Ann and Lisa learned to pound tapa paper. It takes a lot of muscle to pound a 2 inch diameter tree into paper. Ann found out when she challenged Salina, the tapa maker, to an arm wrestle. No contest, Salina won! Fun! Along the way we were also shown some already made tapas and Ann fell in love with one. I heard; “Oh, I can see future quilt patterns out of that” and that was that. We bought it. (Back at the boat, we unrolled the eight foot by two foot paper to look again and saw that it’s not only cool patterns, but a very beautiful piece in itself. Glad we bought it.

Ann learning to pound the bark that makes tapa cloth.

Our newest acquisition (we might have to start a museum or gallery).

So, that’s our day in a nutshell. John made a roast beef in his pressure cooker on Orcinius and we had a great dinner prior to going separate ways (for a week or so) starting tomorrow. Charisma is headed to Nairai at 1000 hours and Orcinius will be headed north to Vanua Balavu. For us, Nairai is where the bottle we tossed at the equator showed up last year and we want to visit “our family” there again. We’ll spend what time the weather will permit and then head to Savusavu to re-provision before heading out for more island-hopping. We haven’t had phone and internet for almost three months and also need to catch up on finances, taxes and more. Some things just don’t go away…oh well.

The trip from here (Oneata) to Nairai is 127 nautical miles. At our conservative cruising speed of 5 knots average, we’ll take 24 hours. We can go faster, but at night when the wind drops we sometimes go slower, so 5 knots is a good guess. Ideally, we’ll be positioned to go through the reef pass at Nairai sometime between noon and 2 PM.

We’ll see how it goes and let you know.

We moved up another island today. We’re now at Oneata. Usually, when we get to a new island there is the sevusevu or ceremonial gift of kava to the chief of the village. Well, today we experienced a different sort of sevusevu. A fiber, or 20-foot open outboard, came by once we were anchored and offered to “take our kava”. Since we’re pretty experienced with the sevusevu we were actually pretty glad to just hand it over in this case and be done with it since we’re not planning to be here long. Well, Ann said (not seriously) to Lisa that she was “crushed and that she missed the emotional contact” and Lisa’s response, “Get over it Ann”.

"We'll take your sevusevu right here!"

So…we did our duty and then took advantage of the ride to the village offered by the two guys in the fiber. The cost? A gallon of gas. OK, that works. A twenty minute ride around the end of the island later and we were in the village. It was a nice village. I wish we could spend more time here. The kids were awesome, flocking around Ann (as usual) and Lisa, and the ladies who make the tapas were very funny and fun to talk with. We bought a couple small tapas and John and Lisa commissioned one to be made and picked up tomorrow in the other village. It will be fun to hike over the island from our anchorage to pick it up. More adventure perhaps?

Kids at Oneata

This woman's name is Toga whose relatives we have met in California.

Kids on the beach.

Dinner tonight was the leftover mahi from yesterday cooked inside a pumpkin with onions, eggplant and curried coconut milk. The Fijians just put it on the fire. We have to cook it in the oven, but it’s still good! Just hollow out a pumpkin, sauté the veggies and drop them in with the curry and coconut cream/milk then cook an hour or so until done.

Nice.

We’re in Bounty territory, as in Captain Bligh. Not that I’m even close to that sort, just sayin’.

We left lovely Namuka- I-Lau this morning. Anchor’s up at 0830 and out the pass. A quick 12 or so miles (plus at least 2 more just going through the lagoon inside the reef) to Komo Island where we dropped anchor around 1130. On the way we got a radio call from Orcinius asking what we were thinking about having for dinner. Huh? We haven’t thought of it. “Oh”, they said. “We just caught a big Mahi Mahi so were thinking of fish fillet in cream sauce. Oh, yeah – we’re in paradise. We brought a mung bean salad. Some really nice folks we met on a yacht named Ohyra (I know I’ve spelled it wrong) told us how mung beans sprout and make a great salad when nothing else will stay fresh. There were right. We’re now having fresh sprout salads every day or two. Fun!

Ann and Lisa went out for a paddleboard/kayak expedition while John worked on Orcinius and I, um, napped all day. Yes, I have a nasty cold picked up on Fulunga. It’s one of those “just have to wait out all the symptoms” kind of things. I’m now on the still stuffy and starting to cough stages. Bleah!

Komo island is just a stop-over for us to break a long day into two short ones. Our real goal is Oneata tomorrow which is another 20 miles. So, we’ll leave at 0830 again and head out. The weather looks pretty good all week so we’ll probably stay there a day or maybe two then head to Nairai to reunite with the finders of our bottle while Orcinius heads north and we both meet back in Savusavu for resupply in a week. At least that’s today’s plan.

As they say here, these plans are set in sand.

Yes, we had to navigate the three miles to the other end of the island, this time through the jungle to pick up our tapas.

It was an adventure.

Heading through the jungle.

Right from the beach we tried to find the path and…woah, it wasn’t where we thought it should be. Hmmm, maybe this isn’t going to be as easy as we thought it would be. We forged inward and…ran right into a lava rock wall. Can’t go that way. We spent about ten minutes just looking for a possible path. Finally we found something that looked promising. Given how it was looking though, we took another ten minutes while I used the machete to cut us two substantial walking sticks. Now we would have something to balance off of as well as to ward off wild boars…should one decide to attack us from his jungle lair.

The first half of the three miles into the village turned out to be all that. Most of the time you couldn’t really be sure there was a trail. It was only our feet that could feel the trail. You couldn’t see it, it was so overgrown. I whacked away with my machete at times, but mostly for show. The jungle is so thick, if there was not really a trail somewhere in the underbrush we wouldn’t have made it. Then about halfway, we came to a real trail. You could actually see it. Things got more comfortable after that.

About an hour in and we came suddenly into the village. And then it started raining. We ducked into the island nurse’s station – as likely a place as any and it had benches to sit on. We were on “Fiji time” so we weren’t worried about time and just sat picking burrs out of our clothes when all of a sudden George, our guide from Thursday showed up. You think that Fiji is pretty slow and easy but word actually travels very fast when people show up. We weren’t in the village five minutes before word had gotten to wherever George was – and they woke him (he had been fishing until 0400 and was sleeping) and he made his way down to where we were waiting out the rain.

OK, tour guide in hand, and rain dissipating, we made our way through the village to the tapa makers. Actually there are a number of folks who make the tapas, but I think we lucked into some of the better of the folks who do it. They were waiting for us. As we approached they invited us in and proudly unfolded not one, but two six foot by four foot tapas to show us. They had each been made on Friday by two sisters (or possibly sisters- in-law, we were not able to discern). They were gorgeous and we couldn’t make up our mind, so we made a great deal and bought both (all of our cash plus a bag of brown sugar and a beach ball for one of their children). Suffice to say they cost five or six or more times as much in Suva and we now have not only beautiful tapas, but pictures of the ladies that made them holding them up. These are real treasures. These will someday adorn the walls of our home ashore.

The first tapa we bought.

...and the artist.

The second tapa...

...and the artist.

All we had to do now was find our way back through the jungle to the boats. Turned out to not be so bad. We almost missed one fork in the road but as Bob walked to the right, Ann pointed on the ground to where we had scratched an arrow pointing down the other side. Oops. Oh well, as Ann said, “That’s why we’re both watching”.

On the way out, the machete again came in handy as we were able to knock down a green coconut (the ones good for drinking), cut it open, enjoy almost a liter of sweet coconut milk and then we chopped open the nut and scooped out the soft meat. A real picker-upper.

Score another one for the machete.

Back in our little anchorage Ann and Lisa went hunting on the beaches for sea shells (Bob napped and John was planning future voyages further west) and then Lisa made an awesome fish curry followed by music night. Last night was movie night – we watched “Astronaunt Farmer”. If you haven’t seen it, don’t bother. But tonight was uke night. Bob and Lisa played ukes, with John and the bongo and Ann providing harmony. A fun night.

Tomorrow we move a bit further north to Komo Island. Then we’re headed to Nairai where our bottle was found last year!

P.S. To my Mom, who has been managing stuff for us while we’ve been out of cell and internet range for 10 weeks – we should be at an island with cellular in a few days and able to call…

We left as planned this morning at 0730. It was not a perfect day – a bit more overcast than I like for going out the reef, but it looked promising later. It was either today or wait until next week as it looks like there’s a bit of a weather system that’s going to hold people down for a few days. Cowboy Joe and his boys were spear fishing at the pass and so one more hearty goodbye and lots of waving was had. We will miss Fulunga.

So…off we went with Orcinius behind us. We made the 20 mile passage to Numuka-i-Lau in three hours. We had 15 knots of wind on the beam and we carried a double reef main and yankee jib. The stays’l would have been nice, but the dinghy was on the foredeck for the short passage and in the way of the boom. Even so, we averaged 5 knots over the distance from anchor up to anchor down. Fortunately the sun came out as we approached because there are some bommies to be avoided on the entrance and you can’t see them in cloudy weather. We threaded our way in to a lovely little cove with two beaches.

Once here and anchored in a patch of sand next to Orcinius, both boats had “anchoring beers”, a little lunch and a short nap. Then around 1400 John and Lisa picked us up in their (larger than ours) dinghy and we went around the island to the village (also named Namuka-i-Lau) which is about three miles away, to do sevusevu with the village chief.

We had to go almost all the way to the other end of the island and it was low tide so when we got there we had to anchor the dinghy about 200 meters off the beach and squish squash in through the mud and eel grass. Yuck, not fun! Turned out that there is a rocky path another couple hundred meters up the beach that we didn’t see. Oh well. But one of the villagers got one of the boys to wade out and drag the dinghy up to the better spot. Nice. John gave him a dollar and a pocketknife that I had brought in for just this sort of favor.

A long walk through the muck at low tide.

We did sevusevu with Chief Jone and his right hand man, Kingsley. It was a pretty simple one. We took a few pictures and headed out for a tour of the village. This is a surprisingly large village. We think it has somewhere around 350 people including children. That’s quite large compared to any other village we’ve been to.

Chief Jone (on left).

Namuka has a different feel than Fulanga. For one, they have horses here!

Wish we could have spent more time here. The people were very nice.

Namuka-i-Lau and several other islands north of here specialize in the making of tapas which are paper made from wood bark, then painted with many intricate ornamentals designs usually in brown and black paint made from earthen dyes. The wood bark has to be stripped from the trees, soaked then pounded into paper squares which are in turn pounded some more to make larger sizes. We saw them some tapas to be used in a wedding in Suva that were eight feet long. The main one for the wedding was 15 feet square. Very impressive and needless to say incredibly labor intensive. I asked if they would make one for us and they asked, “How big?” After some back and forth we settled on 6 foot by 4 foot. I think. You’re never quite sure, but they said with happy smiles on their faces; “Come in on Saturday and pick it up”. So, we’ll find out on Saturday.

Huge wedding tapa. The cloth is made by pounding six inch wide strips together.

Stay tuned. We’ll be here probably through Monday to wait out the weather, then maybe one more island north in the Lau, then across to Nairai where the bottle we threw over at the equator was found last year (the story of meeting these folks and seeing our bottle is in the July archive for 2013 on this blog).

So we’ve torn ourselves away, now what? We wait. We can’t go out this pass nor get into another island without three things: favorable wind, good visibility and tidal timing.

We were going to leave today, but this morning was squally and cloudy. That means wind and poor visibility. You can’t see the coral reefs. Also since it’s a full moon, the tides are really strong. We have to time the pass to slack water and this morning it seemed high tide was much earlier than the tide predictions. So we wait. Maybe tomorrow morning. We have a better take on the tide. High tide will be around 0730, so we have an hour after to make our exit.

In the meantime, we did some beachcombing. Found some nice shells and while we were walking on the beach we saw a boat load of Fijians in a little 18 foot “fiber” slip up next to Charisma. They saw no one home, since we were on the beach. Then they saw us on the beach and made a bee-line over. There were about a dozen people on board about half were adults and half younger children. We wondered who it could be. When they got to the beach one of the adults got out with a big lobster in his hand and walked over and handed it to us. It was Johnny from Maunaira village! His boat was the first one I fixed several weeks ago (it had a big hole and he had no fiberglass resin to repair it) and he was finally able to get out fishing to this side of the lagoon with the newly repaired boat. The lobster was our gift for fixing his boat! Nice.

Beach delivery!

Even better was seeing that they had a boat load of fish. A couple dozen large parrot fish So, our dinner (fresh lobster) tonight was twice as sweet. Delicious and so good to know that in fixing his boat we were able to help them get out and catch good quality food.

PS – Happy, happy birthday to Ann’s son Andy! It is very frustrating to not have internet nor phone access to wish a special guy happy birthday! Love you lots!

(by Ann)

Thank goodness that Bob wrote the blog last night. I was exhausted. Emotionally and physically. The song that we sang for our goodbye with John and Lisa spoke of “unwinding, down in Fulunga…” Really? When did we have time for unwinding. The last week has been incredibly fun but non-stop fun. And we aren’t as young as we used to be! Of course I would not have missed a minute of it.

Before the tears started flowing we had an evening of fun and silliness. I found myself jumping from the “kava circle” to the women further in the back of the hut. I would choose one or two women and go sit next to them just absorbing the moment. I looked around the room and was thrilled that I could count these wonderful folks as my friends and honored that they returned the favor. I was also honored that Chief Taniele stayed the whole time, also not wanting to miss any of it.

And there was a lot of fun going on. After we showed the slide show, twice, and sang our song we joined the kava circle. Lisa and Bob let go of their ukuleles and our Fijian friends started showing their musical skills. The men who carved were particularly interested in Bob’s ukulele from the Cook Islands. It does not look like any of the ones they have seen. One of my favorite images of the night will always be Cowboy Joe (one of our nicknames for one of the “joes” on the island) making that ukulele sing! We had never even seen Joe join in with the musicians but boy could he play. And with his huge smile, it was a treat.

The musicians know quite a few English songs but of course our favorites are the Fijian songs. And the big hit this night was “Vula Toa”. The white rooster. The best part of this song is that it screams for dancing and we did. I never would have believed that my husband could imitate a rooster so well! Very impressive…even Chief Taniele thought so. And when the song segued into other animal imitations the room was in a constant uproar. I love being part of a group that can let go and play. Wish I had not been given a kangaroo to imitate though!

Throughout the evening my little friend, Seta (the darling 2-year old I wrote about in an earlier blog and claimed as mine when a new cruiser asked) was dancing around the room. Always coming back to “Pu Ann” for applause. The cutest part was when he would pronounce Bob’s name. In Fijian the letter B has an implied M before it. So Bob should actually be pronounced Mbomb. And Seta called him Tua Mbomb all night. Tua means grandfather.

Bob spoke of the incredibly moving “Fijian Goodbye Song”. Tau translated for us but it was such a blur. We were facing the men of Fulunga…you know, the guys that don’t cry, right? Wow. Not so. I will never forget our friend Saimone’s face. Imagine James Earl Jones, bigger and taller, with tears streaming down his face as he sang. I knew that Saimone was a softy but this was such raw emotion. He let the tears make their path down his cheeks for a few minutes and finally had to use his t-shirt to try to dry his face. Others could not look at him. I was awash in his friendship and love. The Fijian word is “veilomani”. Very powerful emotions washed over all of us.

Today Joe, Tau, Jasmine and Samu (our host family) brought the many gifts that were given to us and Orcinius to the shed at the anchorage. This of course meant another set of goodbyes. Tau refused to say the word. Joe was silent and very sad. Jasmine was crying and trying to smile through it. We were all trying to hold back the tears. Some were more successful than others. Fortunately there is a wonderful word in Fijian…Sota tale, which more or less means “until we meet again”. There were many “sota tales” given to ease the parting.

And just as we got ourselves back in the dinghy to return to the boats we heard my name being called. Mata, (who we joking call “Octopus Woman” – even to her face), was not letting us get away without another very long warm, sobbing hug. It is so very hard to leave these people. But we have moved to the sandspit anchorage and spent the day cleaning up Charisma, stowing gifts, clearing the decks, and preparing to exit the pass first thing tomorrow morning on the high tide – on to other islands.

Final, final, goodbye.

I do leave with one regret… I was not able to go octopus hunting with Mata. A reason to return?

Perhaps.