Dolphins on our passage - always bring joy!
As we approached the southern, less frequently used anchorage, Milton came out in his boat and directed us to the best spot to put our anchor. Unfortunately, because of the language barrier and the difficulty with him and Maryanne hearing each other, he seemed to say, "yes" to every question she asked of him. This led us to putting our anchor where we thought he was telling us to, when he was really just trying to tell us we were on the right line to get there. We ended up horribly fouled in a maze of dead coral.
Even though I was tired from being up since yesterday, after a few attempts to fix the problem from the windlass end, I knew I had no choice but to go swim on it. Milton was at least able to reassure us that there were no crocodiles around.
Our anchor works great. I flipped it over, so it was just resting upside down on the bottom. Then I would untangle three or four meters of chain, which Maryanne would retrieve, until something else got stuck. Then I would repeat the process. When we finally got to where the anchor itself was about to come up, it would flip over and get hopelessly hooked under anything it touched. We were finally only able to get it back aboard after Maryanne maneuvered Begonia directly over me. Then I stood on the bottom and held the anchor over my head until she could take its weight with the windlass. I guess my back is better now. When she was done, she had to quickly go deal with Begonia's drift, while I swam over to the place where the anchor should have been. It turned out to be in the middle of an acre of clean, hard sand. Rather than leave me there, she said she would rather have me aboard, doing the maneuvering, while she operates the windlass. The anchor dug in first time and held fast. Well, that turned out to be a long night.
Milton told us LOTS of people were about to visit us by canoe. After Maryanne explained that we were a bit tired today and would like to rest, he told us he would have everybody leave us alone for the rest of the day. Instead of multiple visitors, we could arrange a carving demonstration ashore the next morning. The Marovo Lagoon, of which Mbili is the eastern entry point, is renowned for its many excellent carvers. At the northern anchorage, buying lots of carvings to take back home after your sailing sabbatical is the main thing to do. We really didn't want or need to buy any carvings, but tired, and offered a carving demonstration we fell for the trick and said yes.
To be honest, I had picked the less popular anchorage because there was supposed to be less of that here. It's not true. The carvers all have boats, and if you're not there, they'll come to you.
A pretty island and a small market (with maybe 15 different stalls) setup just for us by the local carvers all hoping for a sale
The carving demonstration turned out to be less of a demonstration of how the carvers do the work and more about demonstrating the finished product. Maryanne and I would have been genuinely interested in observing their tools and techniques. What we got instead was an outdoor bazaar set up just for the two of us. It gave us the same sense as winning a free holiday, on the provision that we attend a short timeshare presentation in return.
I must say, as we walked from one carver's display to the next, everything we saw was of universally amazing quality. The detail was intricate. Many pieces had complicated inlays that were so well done, they were flush with the surface and without any hint of gaps or mistakes. Had Maryanne and I actually had a big house to which we were soon going to return, preferably with a den and lots of shelf space, I think we would have happily forked over a small fortune to redecorate with as many pieces as we could carry.
The thing is, to people with a subsistence living, Maryanne and I look close enough to bo-zilionnaires with big, empty dens, for the difference to be indistinguishable. We really do like everything, but our boat is smaller than most, and is already filled full with boring pracical items along with plenty of little keepsakes from other places we have been. We have no need, nor space, for any big, heavy things that will fall over the next time we go to sea, even without the plinth, centerpieces that will cover our whole salon table, or anything that will take up more wall space than a sheet of legal paper. When we try to explain this, we get the distinct feeling they are thinking behind their polite smiles that we're a couple of cheap liars.
Maybe. I don't even know myself any more. As I said before, the stuff was beautiful.
As Maryanne and I were making a second and third pass through to decide on just the right things for us, we were at Chief Luten's table, when he broke character and barked at us to "Pick something, already!"
It didn't help that Luten's stuff was not on our short list. We made purchases from three different carvers though. We bought and traded for a few mementos to fill the spaces between the others on board. It really was hard to pick only a few. Maryanne prefers more pracical items and selected a set of dolphin salad servers too. I puchaced a necklace, and we also selected one of the smaller items that would hopefully fit on the wall somewhere aboard. The carvers, on the other hand, were clearly hoping we were going to be the ones to finally clean them out.
The procedure for selecting something here is a bit cumbersome. If you like something, you ask the seller the asking price to see if it's in the right range. If it is, they will set the piece aside. Then they will come to the boat afterward to see your trade items and haggle the final price. This is meant to prevent any resentments between sellers or embarrassment at public haggling.
To us, it seemed like it moved the whole thing to Begonia, where the line of boats probably still overheard everything while they were waiting for their turn at our cockpit table.
After the last of the boats left us and the whole marketplace was cleared off the beach to take to the northern anchorage, Maryanne and I were finally free to spend some less stressful time ashore. We found Milton, and asked permission to take a walk around looking for birds. He granted permission and gave us a tour of the village and directions to a longer walking path. As he was seeing us off, Chief Luten was just loading his wares into his canoe, preparing to have his grandson paddle him to the northern anchorage. He still seemed to be mad at us and yelled to Nelson several times that if we wanted to see the village or go on a walk, we should ask him, he is Chief!
Uh, oh!
Nelson said not to worry, his father is always grumpy. "It's okay. Enjoy your walk." In hindsight I wish Milton had just advised us to ask his father, we didn't know we were breaking protocols!
Our trail wasn't so much a nature trail as a string of paths connecting various properties. At one of them, we met a couple of men who were in the slow process of building a house. One of them was using a hand saw to trim some planks. We finally turned around at the house of an old man, who was outside doing his laundry in a tub. He was nice, but clearly hard of hearing. I think he only heard half of what we shouted at him, but he gave us a friendly sendoff as we turned back to the village center.
On the walk back, I (meaning Maryanne on my behalf) got an idea in my head. In preparation for our last big haulout, Maryanne and I had purchased a good selection of battery-operated power tools. One of them is a circular saw that could make pretty short work of the planks the guy at the building site was laboriously cutting. I could show up with the saw, and a few spare batteries, and hopefully ease some of their burden for the afternoon.
We returned to the boat. I got the saw. Maryanne picked up some stuff to help Milton's daughter hlhwith a power bank charging issue at their house.
The guys at the building site seemed a little confused by my offer to help. Their plan for the day hadn't included the use of a circular saw. I thought it would be an easy swap to switch me out for Hand Saw Guy, but after some reflection, the carpenter in charge decided the best use of the extra tool would not be for me to cut off any ends, but to narrow a whole plank, as if I had brought a portable sawmill.
The cut took the entire charge of our two highest capacity batteries, but I just made it. It didn't feel like much to me, only having done a single cut, but the guys thanked me and assured me I had saved them hours of doing the same thing with muscle. Probably not with that guy's physique. The carvers here have a thing about not using power tools, maybe that extends to houses, too?!
More time ashore and Kyle's handiwork with our cordless circular saw was (we think) appreciated
Anchorage location >> On google maps
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