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.