Komodo’s break down versatility has once again proved very useful. This time, we couldn’t paddle to the remote island of Kicha since the rather large hatches of the komodo wouldn’t fit our 40 kg Dive compressor, so we fitted all camping and diving gear in a motor canoe to travel there.



Taking the kayak along would help us circumnavigate the island to take pictures of the shy nesting terns and go snorkelling.

Lets face it, if the boat engine broke down, having our own muscle power is a good way to get out of a deserted island! Yet, despite the fuel crisis bringing extraordinarily high prices in the Solomon Islands, often we are the only one paddling a canoe, a new generation of white paddlers!

Marau sound!

More playing ground to be explored by Kayak! Whilst awaiting visa renewal (which is never easy in this country!) the KUNA and the Komodo travelled to Marau Sound on the extreme East of the Guadalcanal to find excellent kayaking country in amongst many small islands surrounded by fringing reefs. Corals, seagrass and sandy beaches... and a lovely welcoming resort on Tavanipupu island (check www.tavanipupu.com), which also had a kayak, so it was a good opportunity to turn the Komodo into a single canoes and go racing!!!!

A long visit to Ngatokae island, Western Province

You may wonder why there hasn’t been many entries in the blog, well the Komodo has taken a bit of a holiday, at the Wilderness Lodge (www.thewildernesslodge.org) on the SE side of Ngatokae island! Here it is resting at the terrace overlooking the lagoon, the whole 7m length of hi!. Meanwhile, we took a trip to the rainforest, 700m above sealevel (see www.kunayacht.blogspot.com), a despite the beautiful creeks full of frogs, it was no seakayak country!

With the help of the locals, we also have kept busy taking video of the Komodo, not forgetting of course to play with the children !



One may wonder how I get to post these blog entries from such a remote country as the Solomons Islands, what a wonderful way to win your own carbon credits by going to the internet by kayak!! EU has funded a number of internet base stations throughout the country. These are called distance learning centers. These satellite links are completely independent from the local Solomon island Telekom. One such school at BekaBeka is located 5 miles away from the anchorage so an easy day trip with a purpose, 45 minutes each way on a good day.



Lately, time has been spent exploring islands around Peava, and because the KUNA is safely anchored in the lagoon, with the trade winds gone down, it’s a good time to go on overnight trips. Nothing wrong with paddling in glassy waters, it is a great change from Tasmania!


The islands offer few landing places for a kayak and a rugged lagoon edge needs to be crossed first but once landed there are plenty of trees to hang hammocks. Away from the village, the fish is tame and makes for a good feed!



Quick landing...

The kayak is a great platform for snorkelling but also to remain safe from sharks, should those come up to us. Unfortunately I have no pictures but on our way to the islands, we crossed a large school of dolphins who were resting and courting. It was great to be able to jump in the water to watch them, dragging the Komodo along, until two grey sharks came way to close, right under the Komodo. It was nce to be able to jump in and move on!!

Touring the Russell islands

The time has come for serious trials of the Komodo in Solomon Islands country. During the BBC project, now completed, we made very good use of it but had not had the chance to go on some serious touring. But now on real cruising holiday, we are attending to this!!!



In light winds, at a cruising speed of 3 to 4 knots with two paddlers getting fit - again(!)-, we have been able to expand our exploration territory from the KUNA anchorage place, doing touring trips of 5 to 15 miles (9 to 28 km) over the various lagoons of the Russell islands. With the predictable and light tradewinds, the sail has been perfect to add 1 knot to our cruising speed and rest the old arms to cruise past the cliffs and take some photos!



The Russels are an interesting group of islands. Once a volcano, it got eroded and sank under sea level, became covered in coral reefs but later got uplifted again dramatically, creating an amazing undersea geomorphology and some limestone islands. Most of them are old reefs now sticking out of the water. One can still see the old corals. Once submitted to rains and winds, the coral erodes into some very sharp stones, making it virtually impossible to walk on it. Thankfully a few sandy beaches are there inside the shallow reef lagoons.


Kayak trips are great to get where the “KUNA” cannot get to due to her – yet small- draft (1.5m). On the Komodo, it becomes easy to cross over reef edges and lagoons and go from island to island in a straight line, visiting the few sand beaches and checking snorkelling spots.



One some narrow islands, we could even portage the kayak from one side to the other to shorten our path!! We have been particularly impressed by the very shallow draft of the Komodo, allowing us to travel in no more than 15cm of water without touching the bottom!! Great for coral reefs…

A shallow lagoon is easily crossed: great to see all th epurple branching corals


While snorkelling, it is easy to take the kayak along on a long towing rope, whilst skin diving and if the winds aren’t to strong, the Komodo follows, like a very disciplined pet, while swimming the reef edges.




Due to its great stability as a double kayak, it has been a great platform to get in and out of whilst in the water, so no need to find a beach to park while going swimming! There are indeed very few sand beaches in the Russells, and the limestone shores are too high and too sharp to land the Komodo on. It has indeed been a relief to travel in a plastic kayak: no inflatable dinghy or glass craft would survive this lethal country. Only minor scratches can happen to plastic and we have been able to just tie the komodo to some rock emerging from the reef whilst going for a swim.


The Komodo has also been a great stable platform to scuba dive out of, though carrying to sets of dive gear is only possible over a short distance


And of course we have been dragging our lures around these – not so fishy – waters and sometimes got lucky to catch a feed!

Detangling the trolling lines

finally a catch!

Check the KUNA blog (www.kunayacht.blogspot.com) for more detail on the locations. The Russell islands are a perfect area for a kayaking holiday, even without a yacht!



PS:
Bolts…
While sailing the KUNA in flat waters, in between the islands, we have been towing the Komodo and to get around the problem of its bolts getting undone with the wave action (also the chop when the komodo is parked next to the KUNA at anchor), we added spring washers, which seem to help preventing losing the bolts.

More piccies

ON the way to the volcanoe Tinakula



Sometimes it's nice to have one's own mode of transport!



Russel Island curious



Lagoon from the top



Sailing wing and wing in light winds

Komodo canoe on Tikopia

Tikopia is a very remote island (see www.kunayacht.blogspot.com for more details on my stay there. I spent two weeks anchored with the KUNA while BBC crew were filming on Anuta island, 75 miles away. Very few yachts get to visit (10 in the last 8 years) and so my arrival was greeted by extreme excitement. When the kids saw me arriving in the yellow kayak, the were jumping laughing and screaming and I did not even have the chance to jump out that they were already carrying the kayak 30 m in the lagoon, in a big splash of water!


In less than 10 second, the Komodo, now a single kayak, was carried up the beach by 20 kids into a shady spot covered with leaves (one cockpit was removed and left in Lata to make space for more camera gear in the KUNA).


The kids learned very quickly how to unclip the break down paddles and while I went to visit the chief, a plethore of them stayed near the canoe. What an attraction!!


Everyday, at the time of my visit, they would gather on the beach to help. Here they are helping me crossing the canoe above one fish drive wall (a coral stone wall that helps them drive and catch the fish into a funnel where they place their nets or wait with spears)




On Tikopia, traditional dug out canoes are very valuable and the only mode of transport as no motor canoes are allowed on the island (chief order). The tikopian have enough building material to afford building canoe houses along the beach, to protect their canoe, and insisted I parked mine in too!!


With a single cockpit, I could not transport my crew Patrick onshore, so we even used some reliable pikinini to shuffle the canoe for us. He loved it and was very proud!



Only one or two resupply ship visit per year (if they are lucky) so Tikopians have no opportunity to spend money on petrol. Cash they have very little of anyhow, being so far from civilisation. So they use the wind, which is great on the flat waters of the sheltered side of the island. They also use their canoes in the lake and I would have like to go exploring there with the komodo but the heavy weather did not allow travelling far inthe exposed side of the lagoon

May 23rd – Voyage to the Duff Islands

The reef islands: forested and heavily populated islands with several lagoons to go exploring...

After a fast sail to the Reef islands, some low-laying coral atolls displaying some limestone cliffs, we anchored the Kuna on a shallow bommie with the intention of only staying for a few hours. Sadly, because this island group would be great kayaking country! I had to go ashore to sched with Taumako island, our filming destination, 70 miles further east. So the easy way was to just launch one half kayak, which paddled quite well despite being a bit unstable.

The face of people looking at me landing with HALF a canoe is always funny. Not only it is bright yellow, made of plastic but it takes unusual shapes too!!



A day later, we arrived on Taumako island, we were received with traditional dances, flowers and speeches. And the Komodo of course got quite a bit of attention!




Due to lack of time (yes, filming deadlines!) it was easier to transport the komodo two halves in the motor canoe to get to the island. I later assembled it to return to the KUNA.




I deployed my komodo sail and was able to sail around the island in the 1m meter deep lagoon. Great sailing on flat waters and the front of the canoes was used to carry various cargo: bananas and a fishing buoy which I later used as an anchor buoy for the Kuna. The self tacking sail was brilliant: I did not need to control it from the back cockpit. And when it was time to pack up I just luffed into the wind and crawled at the front to retrieve it!

Better than the local traditional sail made of one coconut branch!!!


Our aim on Taumako was to film the Te Puke canoes, traditional sailing canoes that the islanders used to navigate between islands. They are rigged with an amazing claw shape sail made out of pandanis fibers weaved together by hand.

We also got the chance to shoot a little bit of kayaking underwater video!

Komodo sniffing in the mangroves

May 10th, Nukufero Village



The Komodo fits quite nicely on the foredeck, split in two part and there is still enough room to move and pull up anchor comfortably. At first, we launched the two half separately and paddled them ashore, one each. It was kind of fun paddling backwards!!!! After experimenting, we have found a great way to assemble the two halves canoes from the boat: easy as lego, standing on both parts, we clip them together in the water and paddle ashore (hoping to put some video on the web!) and then place the bolts and plates to secure them.

The Komodo always gets quite a bit of attention from the locals whenever we pull in on the beach. They are quite interested on how it breaks down in four parts. Some think it is a racing canoe (because of the color maybe) but we just tell them it is just our custom Australian canoe, just made of plastic!


Looking around filming crocs in the Russel islands, we were relieved to have a 7 meter long canoe, as it was most likely to be longer than a crocodile. The locals reported to have seen some large ones (see www.kunayacht.blogspot.com for details on Liapare Island). On the other side of Nukufero, the village where we pulled in, a young man diving for fish got eaten by a crocodile just last week, suggesting this danger is very real. Crocodile populations have certainly been increasing in the solomons as they are not hunted anymore and meanwhile, population has been increasing with new settlements and people impending on the crocodile habitat.
While we were paddling deep in a mangrove river, a local coming back from its garden, warned us not to go to close to the banks because of crocs…


The kayak was the perfect working platform to get low angle tracking shots of the mangrove, getting really close to the network of tree roots, all in silence to not frighten the bird life. One person on camera and one person at the rudder, lining the shots and paddling at the right speed.

Out she comes!

Anchored in Gizo Harbour
OUr track tot he Solomons

Deck hatch..
Assembling the komodo on deck

Extracting the Komodo out of the cabins

After 8 days passage in the Coral Sea ( see http://www.kunayacht.blogspot.com/ for diary), the KUNA arrived safely in Gizo and it is time for the Komodo tobecome operational. Ever wonderd how to fit a 7 meter double kayak inside an 11 meter yacht ? Breakdown is the secret! In order to have the decks clear during a very windy passage, 3 of the four part of the kayak were stored in the cabins down below. The stern was kept on deck as a convenient storage hatch for sail straps and ropes.

Now, safely anchored in harbour, we assembled the Komodo for use as a tender. Good way to mix with the locals, as it looks like a custom canoe, except for the color!! We loaded her with fruit and veg and refueled the boat: discovered one can store a 20L jerrican in the front and aft hatch, very useful in this country!!