We sailed to Matuku Island on 14th August because troughs and fronts were on the way, bringing changing wind directions and unpredictable conditions. Matuku harbour is very protected from wind of any direction, so we tucked oursleves in, ready to sit out whatever came. We were in for a very pleasant few days! Early morning on the 15th, we had rain and lightening, with misty cloud hanging over the mountains all around us, but the day became fine by mid-morning. A local boat was on the way out of the bay to go fishing when its outboard motor stopped. We watched the man repeatedly try to start the motor and it was clear he was not going anywhere apart from drifting out of the bay. So Karl jumped in our dinghy, motored over and towed the boat back to Aradonna. This is how we met Jese-James, who prefers to be called Jay. Jay came on board and Karl worked on his motor, replaced the spark plugs and got it going again. Jay is 30 years old, he is a fisherman, a lay preacher, a father of three children and is the tour guide for visitors to Matuku. He was born with one leg deformed. From the knee down the leg is half the size it should be and his foot is very small with only three toes. But there is nothing at all about Jay that is disabled in any way. He climbs mountains and coconut trees, goes pig hunting, scuba diving and has even tried surfing. He is fit and strong and he is a very intelligent man. His mother was a school teacher and he speaks very good English, reading everything he can get his hands on to improve his vocabulary. It was very easy to like this man. He asked about the previous islands we had visited, where we had been, how long we had been travelling. As soon as we told him about our journey through the Lau group, he said: "You will be wanting some fresh vegetables!" He knew the places we had been to did not grow vegetables. Matuku is blessed with rich volcanic soil and plenty of rainfall, so things grow well here. Before we knew it, he had loaded us up with Bok Choy, tomatoes, cucumber, paw paw and coconuts. After weeks without fresh vegetables and our freezer now empty of frozen veges, we were thrilled. I never thought I would be so happy to see Bok Choy!! He refused to take money from us, saying he had plenty in his garden! Later we gave his family some canned corned beef and milk powder, which he was embarrassed about, but grateful. We also gave vegetable seeds to him to grow seedlings which would then be distributed to the villagers to grow their own veges. He warned us, however, not to give too much to the village - he said if yachts come in and give many things to the village it will change the culture of the village. He is afraid some people will get greedy if they are given too much. In his mind, gifts should be reciprocal, not expected. A very wise man.
Part of the problem with very sheltered harbours is the mosquitoes that seem to love these wet places. We have mosquito screens on the boat of course and now and then we get one or maybe two mosquitoes on the boat, but we have not really been bothered by them. Staying in bays where the boat is in the wind and anchoring more than 200m from shore also helps as mosquitoes cannot fly very far, especially in the wind. But in Matuku, we were close to shore and protected from wind....At 4am Heather woke up with the sound of mosquitoes buzzing in her ears. Karl, with ever increasing deafness, can no longer hear this high pitched whine, perhaps one of the benefits of getting deaf? But when Heather woke up, it was not just the noise of one or two mosquitoes flying around, it felt to Heather like she had her head in a bag of mosquitoes! Turning on the light revealed a whole squadron of mosquitoes buzzing around in the bedroom. After swatting 7 of them, all fully gorged with blood, and not making a dent in the flying squad, we sprayed the bedroom and retreated to the saloon to have hot chocolate. As you can imagine, Karl spent the next day blocking up every tiny hole he could find with mosquito net and with foam rubber strips, to seal off the boat completely! The next night was more peaceful.
Sitting in Matuku, waiting for bad weather to pass, Heather finally got sick of her long hair. The last cut was in Savusavu, but that was several weeks ago and her hair was flopping in her eyes and irritating the back of her neck. So she holed up in the bathroom with the scissors and had a hacking good time! After the initial cut, the hair was shorter but looked a bit chewed. It was also shorter on one side than the other. It took time to even all of this up, and by the time she was finished, her hair was, well, short! When she emerged from the bathroom Karl gave a startled look, which was quickly covered up by a big grin. "You took a lot off!" he said, still grinning. After Heather hastily reassured Karl that her hair would grow again, he said "It doesn't look TOO bad!" That is true love.
On one of our visits to the village, the chief, Chiko, asked Karl to help him with his boat. The chief used to have a short shaft outboard on his boat, so had cut a piece out of the back of his boat to accommodate it. Now he had a long shaft outboard and needed to fill in the gap. Karl set about getting tools and glue and timber from Aradonna and helping the chief with this project while Heather went for a walk. Ladies were in the community hall weaving mats which they sell in Suva markets. Some men process coconuts to make copra which they sell to get money for fuel. Jay took Heather for a guided walk to the next village where she met the Headmaster of the school. The school services 4 villages, they have 41 children and 6 teachers. There is also a kindergarten for 4-6 year olds. As it is a half hour to one hour walk between villages, the children are boarding at the school - even the 4 year olds only go home at weekends. The Headmaster was collecting coconuts at the beach and children were playing with skipping ropes while ladies prepared pandanas leaves for weaving. A few children were gathered in a little pup tent with a laptop - which looked quite out of place among the palm trees! later, back in the Harbour, the chief was zooming around the bay with his long shaft motor, to try it out, despite Karl asking him to leave it overnight until the glue had set. Hopefully it hangs together.
The people in Matuku were so friendly, we felt at home there. A lovely place to be and we would like to return one day. But the weather came right for moving on, or so we thought, so we set sail on the evening of 17th August, bound for Ono Island. This is a 90nm trip, so we left at 5.30pm, to arrive about 11am the next day. The forecast was for 15 knot wind, from the right direction, so it all sounded good. The wind forecast is an average of the wind. If we had a steady breeze of 15 knots all would have been well, but it was not to be. The first 5 hours we trotted along with 20 knots and made good speed, but then the wind dropped to about 8 knots and shifted to more from behind us. About every 10 or 15 minutes it would change. 18 knots for a while, which pushed us along nicely, then 8 knots for a time, which left our sails flapping uselessly about. We had 2-3m swells from beam on, not too bad if we have wind in the sails, but without enough wind to steady the boat we were tossing about like a cork in the ocean. It was a long night. Neither of us got much sleep at all, maybe 2 hours at the most. We were grateful to drop anchor at Ono Island and go ashore to the village of Nabouwalu. We had visited this village 3 years ago and looked forward to seeing some of the people we had met last time. This time the village was full of people! They were having a big family reunion. A man had left the village 100 years ago and gone to live in the northern part of Fiji, Vanua Levu. He had never come back. Now, 4 generations of his descendants had come to visit the village of their ancestor, for the fist time in 100 years. An extra 40 people had arrived, which doubled the village population. Families from other villages on the island arrived as well, swelling the numbers to almost triple the usual size. When we went to find the chief to do the customary greeting of sevusevu, we found him in a large group of men, all doing sevusevu as part of being welcomed into the village. It was great to be part of this sevusevu, seeing this ceremony used when people from other parts of Fiji visit a village - just the same as we do as visiting yachts in the village. We of course joined in with our own sevusevu and stayed for a couple of bowls of kava before we excused oursleves and left them to enjoy the family reunion.
A man from the village came with us, to show us around. On the walk through the village we noted that all the gardens were well tended and neat and tidy. We asked if the village had any damage from cyclone Winston last year. The man said they did not have any damage from the cyclone, because they prayed very hard....Heather could not help but ask about the people in the northern Lau islands, who also prayed very hard but suffered a lot of damage. His only response was to shrug. Like all of the Lau group, Ono is Methodist. There are no other churches and no other choices. Life is simple. The have services every morning at 5am and three times a day on Sunday. We have been to a few of these services over the last few weeks. They are full of hell fire and brimstone stuff, pretty heavy going. The preacher always looks like he will have a heart attack any moment during the sermon. (Today we slipped quietly out of the bay and had fellowship with fish instead!) Our first night in Ono, after our long sleepless passage, all we craved was sleep. We were in bed asleep by 8pm and didn't move again until 7.15am the next morning when it was time for Gulf Harbour Radio.
Yesterday we did some snorkelling around the mouth of the bay at Ono - sad to see damage from crown-of-thorns starfish here. Bright white blotches on otherwise healthy coral gardens. Near every white blotch we found a crown-of-thorns star fish hiding in the rocks or still feeding on the coral. We counted 10 of them in a quick 15 minute snorkel. Not good. The worst we have seen in Fiji so far. The crown-of-thorns star fish has venomous spikes all over, so difficult to grab. If you spear it, it releases eggs before it dies. It can be gently hooked out and put in a bag, then killed on land and left to dry out before putting back in the water, but this takes vigilance and care from the people in the village to keep on top of the population. We hope to get a chance to ask the village about this before we leave the area. Ono island is at the southern end of the Great Astrolab Reef, one of the largest reef areas in Fiji and probably the most famous. It would be a shame for the coral to have the life sucked out of it by these predators. For us, when we look at coral, we find it very pretty, stunning and beautiful. For the local people, the coral is home to the thousands of fish that they depend on for food. It is a resource that needs to be preserved.