Malaita Island, Solomon Islands

On our way to Malaita we had a brief stop at the three sister’s islands. This is an excerpt from a letter sent to friends of our experience on the first night there! It is quite amusing.

"It is now 04H00 and we have already been up an hour and a half! We woke to the sound of the breeze through the rigging and the whistle that is produced by 12 knots of wind! It is quite hospitable, the weather, in that on a yacht it lets you know when it is arriving in that you generally get bounced out of bed from jarring around or rolled out from the size of the swell that rolls in to your once fine anchorage!

Back to make a short story long..........We arrived in this idyllic setting and anchored in the shallowest place we could find! That meant a 100 foot depth with our 300 foot of chain. A scope of less then 3:1 when you consider you cannot put it all out. Anyhow we figure it had been a beautiful day and why ruin it by having to move to another far off destination. And besides those big ugly clouds to the East that have been threatening us all day and to which we have cast our worried glances many a time, well we will just ignore them and maybe they will go away!

Wrong. Add to this that after a sabbatical from 'lifting the dinghy' in the evenings, an over-length one at that, we decide tonight is the night and we shall burden our Titan like windlass with the load so that the little growth that promises to make a home on the hull of the dinghy will not this day, or night depending on which way you look at it, succeed!

As I said earlier we wake to the whistle and so begins the mad rush of trying to stay on top of our newfound lee shore. Awnings are up just like the wind. 25 knots is fast approaching and so is certain death for our small dinghy, now let astern to enable us to freely use the windlass for its real job of hauling the anchor up off the bottom. If it should be needed!

The main engine being already engaged and in a state of readiness we proceeded to operate the windlass via the extendable control; but lo and behold it does not want to initiate?? Ah yes the good old trusty source of life aboard is not running yet! A quick buzz to the engine room and the generator is up and running and hey we are going to be 'home and away' not 'high and dry' tonight? A mad dash to the bow and we are back on top of things. Speaking of things on the top the awning is now straining and threatening to go on a strike with its new found union: the wind? Never mind the strike though; it is planning on heading for shore very shortly in tatters.

So we engage the control again and hey presto the chain starts to suck up into the so-called hawse pipe? To give you an indication of the speed of this operation is to look closely at the three toed sloth and then using digital technology slow the creature’s movements down about 50 %. This is the speed of our windlass in action, or so it feels when the wind is now 35 knots? The determined actions reveal only one thing of course, the 5/8" chain is wrapped very tightly around the cargo hook and should we be dragging now well tough luck buddy, you are not getting this chain up that pipe? A few solid bangs accompanied by one or two adjustments and again we are on the road to success!

The dinghy in the mean time, astern, has been visiting a kind of ophthalmic-dentist in that she was tied very abruptly to a point astern and only with her short painter? Her forward central eye is about to be extricated in the rolling 6 foot surf know breaking only 150 feet away on shore? We need to do something about that! But just when no-one knows!

After this huge exertion of energy, at an hour commonly referred to as un-Godly, and with all the pieces in place, after a fifteen minute struggle with everything, the wind has dropped to 13 knots and the rain is wetting our parade, not to mention my sleeping shorts?"

And now about Malaita...

Malaita, the center of a lot of hostility over the past 4 years during the civil war in the Solomon Islands was reported to be dangerous and the people, hostile. We had decided to give it a try and confined ourselves to visiting only the Are Are lagoon. We were very happy to have made this decision as we were treated to some of the best pan pipe music we have heard. On our arrival into the lagoon we were totally surrounded by canoes, children and adults alike. It was a spectacular scene and everyone was happy and full of cheer due to our arrival. As it turned out we were only the third yacht this year that had stopped off of the village.

We met with the school teacher over the next few days and Jim and Dylan enjoyed a guided tour of the village located on the mainland of Malaita. The houses were all built on stilts and off of the ground to allow some free air movement and the general area could be regarded as being tidy. Almost every household had parrots as pets.

We were also invited to the village on the island side of the lagoon and proceeded to be entertained by the local pan pipe band for a full 45 minutes. It was wonderful. We were first asked to come in at around 1pm which we did. We found that all the men were still working in the gardens and so the youth group gave us a full show of what they could do. Later we were enthralled with the men’s group, which was made up of many of the younger boys from the afternoon session as it was. Ultimately we had a great time and loved the pan pipe music and the people.

On Sunday Vicki attended the Catholic church and enjoyed meeting friends and the ?????Minister? He and his wife came out to the yacht for some chat and to play the guitar. His abilities and appreciation of music together with his keen interest for new music led us to give him a bunch of music notes for the songs he really liked. He was thrilled and hopefully when we return one day we can play together again!

When we moved up the lagoon to the North we discovered another village set well back in the bushes and out of sight! We were again invited to the villages pan pipe presentation. As it is the Malaitans are renowned for the capabilities with the pan pipes! We thoroughly enjoyed our second pan pipe show in the roots of a tree right on the edge of a gurgling stream. The setting was cool and picturesque with the entire village happily surrounding their local heroes who continued to put out the tunes in favor of us tourists. It was sheer magic and really made us feel like we were part of the village.

Jim and Dylan attempted to scuba dive the fringing reef but found that the water was too murky so after just five short nights in the lagoon we moved on to the capital Honiara.