July 25, Waya north to Waya south

July 25, 2015  Waya north to Yalobi Bay


Moving on the next day, from the north end of Waya to the south.  I am starting to get nervous about the transmission.  It takes several tries before it goes into gear.  When it is time to pull up the anchor, Alan goes to the front of the boat to operate the windlass while I stay on the helm, ready to put it into gear and move out as soon as the anchor is off the ground.  Depending on the wind and tide and other boats around, this can be easy or tricky.  Basically, I want to hold position until he gets the anchor all the way up and tied down.  then I can give it gas and move out.  We don’t want to be moving very fast with a heavy anchor swinging free.  But if it does not go into gear, I can start drifting onto other boats or the shore. 

This was just a short motor sail and we did not even go ashore when we arrived.  Tomorrow we will get an early start and cut across the bay to the mainland.  We will stop for gas and provisions and then head to Savusavu and check out for Wallis.  Unfortunately during the night the chain managed to wrap itself around a rock and in the morning we could not get it up.  Luckily there were several other boats anchored in the bay and one of them came over to give us a hand.  Slowly, slowly, pulling and backing, we worked it free.  Only took about a half hour.

Instead of heading back to Vuda the next day we decided to just go across the bay to the village on the other side of the bay.  We had stopped there on the way up and when we went ashore this time we were greeted like old friends  My reason for returning here was to talk to the chief.  I realized that we have almost never taken the time to just talk and ask them about what life is like here.  We were taken straight to Chief Joe where we spent over an hour.  It was fascinating to hear stories of when he was a child.   Other people drifted in to listen.  Some of his grandchildren did not know about the things he was telling us.  There used to be three or four different kinds of yams.  Now they only grow one.  The men and women had separate fields to tend and different kinds of baskets to carry their crops in.  When he was a child they almost never saw white people and when white people came they hid the children because they did not know what they would do.

When it was time to go, we were loaded up with fresh fruit.  We had to wait while they wove a basket for us to carry it in.  The younger people invited themselves out to the boat for a visit.  As usual, they were intrigued and delighted with such a compact home.  But the best was when they spotted our iPads.  They immediately asked if we had games and went straight to Plants vs Zombies, Solitaire and Mahjong.  Times have really changed since Chief Joe was a kid.