Fair winds took us all the way to Wagina. It was a beautiful night’s sailing and the next day we anchored in front of Cape Labée, a small atoll at the eastern end of Wagina. A sea bird had joined us for the last part of the voyage, flittering around the rigging and finally settling for a while on the mizzen sheets. The current speeding along the coast of the atoll reached up to four knots at its peak, bringing volumes of water rushing past our hull and anchor chain, sometimes giving the impression that we were still at sea.

We spent Friday exploring the atoll – a narrow strip of coral rubble separating breaking waves from a stagnant lagoon. Many birds waded in the hot, salty shallows of the lagoon – egrets and sand waders – with cockatoos squawking overhead. Two young Gilbertese men were wading through the water, spearing sting rays and using a machete to hack off their poisonous tails before flicking them into the fibre glass boat that they dragged along behind them. Colourful crabs, from bright red to jewel turquoise, gathered on the edge of the water where the sand turned to liquid mud.

On the seaward side, fallen trees broke up the shoreline where blue coral and giant clams were washed up along with coral skeletons to form a beach. Eibes, Carol and Katie found a turtle nest, stalked by a large lizard (perhaps a monitor lizard) with several eggs freshly cracked and sucked dry. Unfortunately we had to swim to shore, there being no easy landing spot, and so have no photographs of this interesting site.

On Saturday, we moved to the atoll next door, Kerehikapa, where The Nature Conservancy has established a marine reserve with the primary aim of protecting the beaches for turtle nesting. There are two teams of four men that alternate care-taking of the atoll for a month at a time. They come from different provinces – Ysabel, Wagina and Choiseul. Their task is to monitor turtle activity and to protect the lagoon from fishermen – no fishing activities are allowed within the reserve apart from their own subsistence.

We dived the outer reef and found extremely healthy fish populations following the 1-2 knot currents – bumphead parrotfish, dogtooth tuna, mackerel, grey reef and black tip sharks, a lemon shark, plenty of napoleon wrasse. The coral cover was less spectacular with macroalgae overgrowth and bleaching affecting it. We observed a few turtles underwater and at the surface but the men here told us that no turtles have come to the beach to lay eggs since the weather took a turn for the worse a few weeks ago.

Exploring the land, we found a swamp between the lagoon and the ocean and significant amounts of trash littering the ground – mostly plastic bottles and the ubiquitous flip flops. But despite the debris, we felt like we had arrived at the end of the world.

textures on the atoll

The weather was very changeable here, flat calm and blue skies turning to grey sheets of rain with wind at a moment’s notice. We made a last minute decision to depart the atoll on Monday afternoon and head for Nikumaroro, twenty miles to the west, anchoring off the island in a dark night.

The village of Nikumaroro is named after its inhabitants original home – Nikumaroro in the Phoenix Islands, which we visited in 2004. These people were evacuated in 1964 by the British Government that at the time colonized both the islands of Kiribati and the Solomon Islands. Several communities of Kiribas people are now scattered throughout the western province of the Solomon Islands – Mbambanga and Titiana, close to Gizo, and here in Wagina.

Michel, Orla, Carol, Kitty and Starrlight – having all been part of the expedition to the Phoenix Islands – arrived in the maneaba on Tuesday. The chief, Teekai Akura, was extremely happy to hear news of his home as we described our brief time there during which we explored the outer reef and the lagoon on the island. He left the Phoenix Islands when he was nine years old but still has vivid memories. He told us of some of the complexities that have arisen since the Solomon Islands took independence from a British sovereignty – how the security of their future is possibly in jeopardy with claims to their land now being raised by tribes from Choiseul.

That evening, we brought our mobile cinema to shore and showed them the film we had made of the Phoenix Islands expedition in which there are shots of Nikumaroro, both below and above water. All the young children, born as Solomon Islanders, were enthralled. We also showed them the Tuvalu film since there is a cultural crossover between Tuvalu and Kiribati. This was a brief exchange with a culture to whom we feel an extremely close connection. We will return to their original island in 2009 and hope afterwards to meet again with this community on Wagina to bring them more news. The chief asked us, jokingly, to come back next time with a bigger boat so that we can bring them all back to Nikumaroro!

Heraclitus at anchor in front of Nikumaroro, Wagina

some of the carvings purchased in Solomons

We flashed back to this day last year when cyclone Percy cancelled our celebrations in Tuvalu. This year a tropical cyclone, Kate, sprang up just south of Port Moresby on the 24th – the US Navy website had it building to a 70 knot cyclone within two days and tracking south east, but the Australian Bureau of Meterology dismissed it as a mere blip on the weather horizon. Several yachts moved out of the harbour in Gizo towards Kolumbanggara for a safer cyclone anchorage. Fortunately, Australia’s predictions were more accurate and nothing more than a breeze and a light sprinkling of rain came our way.

By six o’clock, our cakes were baked and we were ready to receive Eddie’s family – Stanley (father), Lena (mother), Clifford (brother), Stanley Jr (brother), Ovaline (sister), Mason (uncle), Saron (cousin) and a few other ‘uncles’! They brought Simbo gastro-specialities with them – megapode eggs etc. and we ate together to a soundtrack of island music. Afterwards, Ovaline sang and danced for us and Michel replied with his song for Heraclitus. We all gathered in Synestesia to watch ‘Voice of Kava’, Studio of the Sea’s latest film following the journey of Heraclitus and its crew through Tanna in Vanuatu. Eddie joined us on the big screen! The Zuna clan stayed the night on board and we said our farewells in the morning, until we reunite in 2009.

On Saturday morning, many of the crew went with Danny Kennedy’s (local dive operator) boat to the Toa Maru, a Japanese WW2 wreck. The timing was perfect, having just last week watched again the National Geographic special on the underwater hunt for JF Kennedy’s PT109 boat that went down at the mercy of the ‘Tokyo Express’ – the Japanese supply boats that would plough down the Blackett Straits at 30 to 40 knots in the dead of night. Our divers enjoyed exploring the wreck, finding sake bottles and appreciating the marine life that has overgrown it since it sank.

Becky in the wreck

the coral coverage today on the wreck

Saturday evening brought another farewell – to the island of Mbambanga. We gathered after the evening bells in the maneaba (meeting house) with most of the children of the island and a few elders. The children taught us the games they were playing with each other – attention exercises! The boombox was borrowed, the amplifier set up and a controlled ‘disco’ began. Afterwards, Michel was invited to perform the dances that he has learnt over the years from the community there. The finale for the evening was teaching us all a ‘stick dance’, similar to the one that we saw and filmed in Kanton, Phoenix Islands. It all looked very simple, watching them swing their strips of bamboo with ease and matching each other’s gestures with style, but we were less elegant and precise in our stick swinging. This is another dance that we can add to our Island Repertoire on board.

On Sunday morning, we raised anchor at Mbambanga for the last time and motored back through the Blackett Strait to Noro (at significantly lower speeds than the Tokyo Express). Noro is a fishing port with a tuna canning factory. Visiting there this morning, we met a female security guard who checks the bags of lady-workers as they leave the factory each evening to ensure they are not smuggling prized cans of tuna with them. Her name is Miriam, she is from Nusa Simbo and is related to Eddie, a wantok of his.

The Phoenix Connection continues – here in Noro, on the opposite side of the bay, lies Ravaki, another community from the Phoenix Islands. They were originally moved from Phoenix Islands to Titiana (near Gizo) and Mbambanga but bought land here in Noro and moved in the 1970s. Michel had already made great contact with Rev. Tikeri, a minister who is based here but was visiting Mbambanga while we were there earlier this month. He has prepared a thesis on the relocation of the Kiribas people from the Phoenix Islands and is very happy to share his knowledge with us.

We had plenty to accomplish during these last days in the Solomon Islands – stocking up with fresh food from the small market in Noro, making last minute communications and most importantly working hard to extract a chaffed hydraulic hose to our winch, re-crimp it and safely reinstall it. We pushed through the tasks at hand and departed Noro at 8 o’clock on Wednesday evening, slipping northwards past the anchored fishing boats in the darkness. The sea calls, it’s time to raise sails and find winds to bring us on to our next adventures in Papua New Guinea.