Finally cyclone season made its presence felt in our stretch of the South Pacific with a ten day run of continuous rain and squalls with gusts up to 40 knots at times. Cyclone Jim made its present felt 600 miles south of us and we hoped that as the cyclone would move, so too the weather would change. But for a week we were contained between a trough to the south of us and a ridge to the north, both belligerent and neither moving. It felt very familiar – like the ‘bungiwaloo’ phenomenon, the eight day winds we experienced several times in Fiji – except this lasted ten days!! Our anchorage at Mbambanga gave us some security during the heavier blows. The holding ground there is great. But flooding became a severe problem over many parts of the Solomons with rivers breaking their banks and gardens washing away. This was an unexpectedly intense rainy season and became almost a national crisis.

canoes surround us while anchored in Emu Harbour

We finally made it to Ranongga after all the rain and wind of early February. Before departure, we made some training maneuvres with Kitty and Starrlight each raising anchor, piloting the ship around the reef marker and returning Heraclitus to its starting position to drop anchor. Carol then piloted us out through the pass beside Kennedy Island and on our way to Ranongga. We arrived into Emu Harbour, Ranongga on Thursday morning. From before dropping anchor to raising again early Sunday morning, the ship was continuously surrounded by a flotilla of canoes, many of which were eager to sell their fresh food or carvings. There are some fine carvers on Ranongga and they did good business with the Heraclitus!

a lady tidies her garden beside the church on Friday afternoon

The village there is called Buri and many of the people are from Eddie’s tribe. It is also a Seventh Day Adventist community. We spent Friday making two trips through the village, up the hill to the church and schools, squelching through mud after all the rainfall. The gardens are meticulous with flower borders planted everywhere. We watched the women clean up intensely, lifting every fallen leaf and frangipane around the church, preparing for their worship which begins on Friday evening. SDAs do not eat pig, smoke tobacco or chew betel nut. Their teeth are eerily white.

scenes in the cool shade of a tree at Buri

We met one carver, Waldo, who lived away from the village in the mangroves. He showed us a storyboard carving he had made, outlining the legend of his great-grandfather, Sipata. The carving showed a tomoko (war canoe) hidden in a cave, an altar at which the tribe’s priest would make offerings of pigs before and after a head-hunting raid, the mythical bird that would guide the war canoe and Sipata on task with his axe and shield. Waldo showed us an original shield – woven from natural fibres and bearing scars of axe blade attacks. He also had an original ngzuzu – the Solomon figure that sits at the front of the tomoko. It was old and worn, but the form was easily recognizable.

Waldo shows his storyboard carving to Carol, Michel and Sharman

the storyboard depicts a headhunting scene

the shield, axe and ngzuzu

On Saturday, while the community spent the better part of the day inside the church, we stayed offshore and explored underwater around Woi, the island just off the north east tip of Ranongga. We found a lot of bleaching but we also saw two turtles, a few small white tip sharks and a few giant trevallies plus a five foot long giant clam.

Sunday morning, we weighed anchor and made for Jari – the small island at the end of the chain of islands running north west from Gizo. Danny Kennedy, a dive operator who has been based here in Gizo for 19 years and who is now the local Minister for Transportation, bought this island and had told us of the high biodiversity on the reef here. Gerry Allen, tropical ichthyologist extraordinaire, dived here last year and came up with the second highest fish species count in the Indo-Pacific! The reef looks good but again the elevated sea temperature is taking its toll – corals and even anemones are bleaching, leaving vivid clownfish looking very out of place amongst white tentacles.

We spent Sunday night at sea and had our first dinner on deck after weeks of being cooped up below. The sun set gloriously behind Ranongga, the almost full moon appeared between rose clouds and we drifted through the twilight. We anchored Monday morning in Gizo harbour and began to stock up.

We saw Eddie on Monday along with Stanley, his father, and Ronnie his uncle who is holding the family land on Raromana. Sadly Eddie had been unable to join us in Ranongga – there was no way out of Nusa Simbo with the channel closed at both ends. They had to cut many trees around the island when the wind started to blow in order to avoid damaging houses and Eddie told us that the village now looks like a desert. He also told us that in Legana, where the ship was anchored during our Simbo celebrations, several houses were toppled by the wind and waves. We are very lucky that we had calm weather during our time there. Eddie helped raise our Zodiac for the last time before he headed back to Simbo and the Heraclitus lifted anchor for Wagina.

the boat team in action with Eddie's brother Clifford watching on