Panapompom Pomp – Day #2
Tuesday, September 24th – Today is “Ride the Waves” day or so The First Mate has dubbed it. In the morning, we will be taken out for a ride on the Sailaus, and after lunch, the locals will get a ride on our boats. Those DimDims eager for the Sailau ride head ashore to be divided up among the available Sailaus.
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Yesterday, The First Mate and Laurie from s/v Eclipse had talked with a young man who was the proud owner of a new Sailau. He was obviously so very pleased with it that we asked if we could ride in his Sailau today. What a smile we received!
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Sailau Sailing 101: A Sailau is an outrigger canoe with a mast and sail. It is subject to the vagaries of the wind just like any other sailboat, but with the advantage of not having a keel, it can be poled or paddled through the shallows right up and onto the beach.
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With
the classic double-pointed shape of a canoe, it possesses neither bow
nor stern and, thus, moves equally well whichever end is forward. In
fact, to reverse direction, the leading edge of the sail is untied from
its support in the “bow” of the boat and then manhandled backward to the
“stern” where the “stern” now becomes the “bow”, and off you go!
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Sailing a Sailau is not a single-handed job. It takes 3 men on all but the smallest Sailau to keep these boats afloat and sailing.
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One works the tiller and works the line that controls the angle of the sail. On our sailau, they have an extra man on board to divide this job up nicely One works the tiller while the other controls the sail. The tiller, like the sail, is moved from one end of the boat to the other depending upon which end is plowing into the waves.
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Normally, the second person helps with the tying, untying and moving of the sail from one end of the boat to the other. The sail swivels around the mast.
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The body of the sail and all its poles are collapsed, folded up or let to fly depending upon what is being done with the sail and the angle of the wind.
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“Just like a bat wing”, thinks The First Mate.
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A third man handles the bailer, for these canoes are anything but watertight. Not only do they leak like a sieve, they sit so low in the water that waves constantly wash over the edges.
In the morning, we gather on the beach. Laurie and The First Mate see our man standing by his Sailau. He spots us and smiles as we walk toward him. The Captain and Ron from Salacia join us making 4 DimDims on this medium-sized Sailau. “Perfect,” thinks The First Mate. We are far from overloaded on what to her looks like a very flimsy sailing machine, new though it might be.
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“Flimsy,” she called it? “It is,” she defends. Look at the construction. It is held together with rope and string. Other than the canoe itself, which looks solid enough, the other components to the boat, like the outrigger itself, are tied or lashed together. There are loose sticks and boards all over the place. Perhaps that is their idea of redundancy or spare parts. A pole or stick breaks — there’s got to be one somewhere on this Sailau to replace it.
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Long, thin sticks or poles lashed together across the top of the outrigger offer a place to sit. However, when one lashed stick moves to press against its neighbor, as happens regularly with the movement of the boat, any flesh that happens to be in the way gets a painful pinch. She learns this from experience. It hurts.
Boards wedged into the bottom of the canoe provide a flat surface upon which to walk or stand. In theory, that platform should work, but application is another matter. Step too close to the end of the board and it will tilt upward throwing one off balance and potentially wedging one’s foot painfully into the bottom of the canoe. She learns this, too, from experience. It hurts.
Ignoring the pinch, the wedge and the general discomfort of trying to find a secure, balanced place to put one’s body, The First Mate really does admire these boats. They are the workhorses of the Louisiades hauling people, goods and news from one island to another. Yes, they may be expensive for the average islander, but they are far less expensive than a long boat and Yamaha engine. Once built or paid for, they are easier to maintain and less costly to run. No fuel needed, no spark plugs, no engine overhaul. This is a nation where the people have little money and even less chance of procuring replacement parts. Something breaks on a Sailau, walk up country to find another straight stick, hunt around for more string or rope, lash it all together and one is back in business. A Sailau’s source of power is a sail not a motor. Sail rips: Sew it or find some material to make a patch. Able to float in just a few inches of water, they are not intimidated by reefs like Avante is with her 8.7-foot keel. There are no engine propeller blades to worry about getting bent or stuck on coral rock. They can sail right up to shore where the crew easily jumps off into ankle-deep water to quickly haul the boat up the beach and out of harm’s way. They completely conform to “KISS”: Keep It Simple Stupid. Yes, she does admire them and appreciates just how perfect a means of transportation they are around these islands.
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They are also delightful to watch. From a distance, they appear to serenely and elegantly glide across the horizon. The Captain states that their distinctive sail shape reminds him of the tropical Angelfish we see underwater at almost every reef.
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Four DimDims have hopped on board and are trying to figure out where is the best place to sit to be comfortably out of the way. Ready or not, the crew pushes the boat off the sand, the sail quickly goes up and off we go, racing through the anchorage and out into the lagoon where the real sailing begins.
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To our crews delight, the extra man mentioned above is The Captain, good old sport that he is. He offers to man the bailer for our team of three. A never-ending and tiring job, but, in The First Mate’s opinion, it is the most important job on this otherwise sinking ship.
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One does not set out to sea without a person to bail and a bailer. The bailers come in all shapes and sizes out here and run the gamut from the sizable one shown in The Captain’s hands to half a coconut shell. We have never seen more than one in a boat, and none have ever been attached in anyway. What would they do if they lost one at sea? There’s no calling the Coast Guard, the Marines or any of those fine fellows out here! These guys could learn a lot from us cruising yachties with our redundant systems and load of replacement parts.
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What a colorful sight our flotilla is! Each boat has a different colored sail, and many of them sport various patches. One gets the impression that a sail is never retired for being too old. It is just patched together as needed. All the patch work just adds to the happy field of color out there.
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All too soon the Sailau ride is over. We thank our host and head back to Avante for lunch and to get her ready for this afternoon’s event. All DimDim boats are to sport “colors”. What does that mean? Run up the halyards anything bright and colorful. On Avante, we run up the many Courtesy Flags we have from all the countries we have visited.
The Captain is busy getting Avante ready to go. He wants to get as much done as possible before we have a load of locals on the boat waiting for their sail out into the lagoon. When he goes to remove the snubber from the anchor, he realizes that the anchor chain is way too tight and that it has caught on some coral. Avante is not going anywhere until we free our anchor. With The Captain at the bow, anchor windlass control in hand, and The First Mate at the helm, we maneuver the boat in various directions trying to release the chain. Nothing seems to be working. The rally leader is radioed to alert him to the fact that Avante may not be going anywhere anytime soon, and the valiant team goes back to work. Finally, we are able to pull free. The Captain leaves The First Mate at the helm with the boat barely anchored and the engine running on idle, and off he dashes in the dinghy to pick up a load of passengers.
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Many of the other boats have finished picking up passengers, and there are a lot of people still waiting on the beach. The Captain decides to accommodate as many as we can. Three dinghy loads later, we have 20 excited passengers on our boat. Women and kids sit sedately in the cockpit.
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The males in our group are all young Sailau-sailing fellows, and they claim the sides and bow of the boat. No sitting in the sissy cockpit for them. Eager to help, The Captain has them assist him in hoisting and securing the dinghy on board.
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Out into the broader lagoon we go. Most of the other boats already have one or two sails up and are hovering around the starting line. With all these guests on board Avante, many of them are blocking access to winches and lines, and with only 2 of us to handle everything, The Captain decides to only use the jib which can be easily unfurled.
We unfurl the jib but not the mainsail and enjoy a great sail with our young men whooping and waving back and forth to friends on other boats. After a while, The Captain asks if anyone would like to take the wheel.
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Eyes brighten with eagerness. As the guys take turns, The First Mate enjoys watching them. She remembers the first time she got behind the wheel of this J/160. It’s a big wheel, all 65 inches of it, and it can be intimidating. She remembers the feeling of power the boat had and how the bow surged forward to cut through the waves. She wonders whether they feel the same. Their smiles of delight show their pleasure for sure.
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Back at anchor, The First Mate nukes several bags of popcorn, and while she is doing so, she invites anyone who wants to see below decks to come on down. The invitation is accepted by everyone. The microwave is a thing of wonder. The Nav Station is beyond comprehension. The two photos we have on the bulkheads amaze them. One is of Telluride with snow-covered Mount Wilson in the background and yellow aspen trees in the foreground. The other is from Alaska with Avante flanked by two icebergs. Snow and icebergs: those are things one must take on faith, for they are beyond imagination out here in the tropics.
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The guys help The Captain lower the dinghy back into the water. We hope our guests had as much fun riding Avante as we did riding the Sailau. What a unique experience for all of us. This morning we DimDims got to experience a very ancient mode of sailing;
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While this afternoon, the locales got to experience a more modern version. What a great opportunity to share in something we obviously all love and all consider a perfectly normal, highly effective way of getting from A to B across a watery expanse.