Bay of the Wood Carvers

0800 Position 8-56S 139-32W. At anchor in d'Hane Bay, Ua Huka.

Yesterday we motor sailed east to the first bay we had poked into on Ua Huka the day before, d'Hane Bay. That name doesn't look to be Polynesian to me, but that's what it says on the charts. The village behind the bay is called Hane.

After anchoring and launching the dinghy all five of us ventured ashore through the surf. It was an interesting landing with our temperamental outboard engine choosing to stall just as we entered the surf zone on the beach. Bill and Longy sacrificed their bodies by throwing themselves overboard to keep the dinghy upright and we made it in otherwise unscathed.

Once ashore we met a nice gal in the village who told us that there was a festival with sports competitions going on in the next bay to the east, about a ten minute walk away. Her brother just happened to be driving that direction so she waved him down and asked him to give us a ride in his pickup truck. We all piled in and were chauffeured to Hokatu village where we found a crowd gathering for a soccer match on a concrete slab the size of a basketball court.

They were selling numerous kinds of local food in the building next to the arena and we tried them all. Longy had the local version of "poke" with lime juice, fish, and tapioca. Mike had beer batter fried prawns. Bill had chicken and noodles, I had a panini, Rob had mystery meet on a stick. It was all good.

The soccer matches were impressive. There were men's and women's matches with team's representing different villages. The ball handling was quite good, officiating professional, and sportsmanship between players and teams exceptional.

After the games were over we went into the village artisan shop to look at wood carvings. War clubs appeared to be their specialty, but they had all manner of wood and coconut carvings. Mike bought a coconut gourd but the rest of us just looked.

Our trip back out through the surf was as exciting as the trip in was. The outboard once again decided to stall at the worst possible moment, but we made it out intact and decided to spend the night right where we were.

This morning's topic of discussion in the cockpit over coffee is a fisherman who is walking along the lava ledge on the side of the bay carrying what the boys have decided is a twenty pound ulua. Our fisherman must have caught it out near the mouth of the bay. He is stopping every hundred feet or so as he moves over the jagged rocks to rest and have a smoke. Now it looks like he must have dropped his cigarette lighter because he just put the fish down and is headed back out searching for something in the rocks as he goes…

----------
radio email processed by SailMail
for information see: http://www.sailmail.com