The Liberty Escort Service / Anuta Island

We are anchored off Sola in Vanuatu. The name belies the place. First of all it rains most of the time due to the place being situated on a tiny mountainous island in the middle of sea. Secondly it doesn't at all look like the area around one of Norways main airports. Thirdly the 500 inhabitants in the village are way kinder and more hospitable than anywhere in western Norway.

Sola Bay is the last place in Vanuatu you can clear out before heading north towards the Solomon Islands, which is exactly what we're planning to do. Clear out and head north. Quick and easy.
Alas, as with most of our undertakings it takes us a bit longer than planned to clear out. We have to pay a fee which someone had forgotten to collect when we cleared in and we were just too happy not to pay. This means we have to wait for the bank to open the next day. We are happy the place has got a bank at all. As we're waiting we take up someones offer to do a tour of the kava-bars after dark. Kava is the slightly narcotic custom drink that substitutes alcohol through most of the Pacific. We enjoy the company of Francis who owns one of the local Kava-bars. He guides us through the protocol of enjoying kava the proper, down-key way that the local men (no women!) do, and when our funds run out he is more than happy to buy us a couple of more rounds. "You are guests, and should be treated as such!"

Next morning we awake at the boat, at anchor, ten points! The bank is (of course) not as straightforward as we were hoping, and again it takes more time than planned. As Egil is sorting out our economics I'm loitering around and run into Captain Ian, an Australian expat who runs a bar&restaurant&accomodation kind of thing. We chat a bit and he invites us to his place for tea.
When Egil has sorted out the money and cleared us out, we meet up and I inform him of our tea-invitation. Having cleared out we are supposed to leave the country immediately without delay, but a simple chat to the immigration-guy explaining that we'd like to enjoy a cuppa before we leave sorts that out. Who said bureaucracy needs to be difficult?

At Captain Ian's beautiful place (really the place to be should you find yourself in need of accomodation in Vanua Lava Island) we enjoy our tea and the company of the Captain, his wife and his two guests, the retired professor and his wife, the librarian. We end up spending several interesting hours talking about travels, photography, arts, sports and our respective countries. In the end Captain Ian even gives us lunch. Some of the best food we've had so far, and even free of charge!

Back at the boat decide to leave just after dark. Just as we're getting ready to get ready to start getting ready to think about getting ready to make the boat ready to leave, we are approached by the customs officer and the police guy in a motor boat. "Maybe we actually should have left after we cleared out" we have time to think before they open up by saying they need our help.
Happy that we are not about to be charged as the illegal immigrants we in fact are, we are happy to oblige once we hear what it's about. Apparantly some Solomon Islanders in a boat sailing in the Solomons have got into a storm and broken their rudder. Thus they have lost both steering and track of where they were and ended up in Mota Lava, Vanuatu, some 200 miles from where they were planning to go. Furthermore they are navigating by the traditional Polynesian way of travelling by the stars at night and the sun at day. This is a centuries old art and scaringly precise at times. However its one weakness is that it is based on dead reckoning and the navigator needs to know where he is at all times and know the area to be able to navigate. Now these 8 Solomon Islanders are a long way from home with a strong desire not to be, and with no way of finding their way home unless we are willing to guide them.

It doesn't take us long to decide to go along with the request. After all we are anyway going to the Solomons, and the grateful islanders will probably give us a few bananas to show some gratitude. The funny thing is how we, a couple of scruffy norwegians who, until a few months ago, had never sailed before, are able to help these people that grow up sailing and navigating, just because we have a GPS. We humbly accept the mission and decide to raise anchor at three in the morning in order to hook up with the guys at first light.

The next morning we find the Solomon Islanders and their craft. One of them, a handsome young guy, comes over in a dinghy. He introduces himself in excellent english as Joseph. Joseph explains that their craft is a 13 metre fibreglass catamaran; "Lapita Anuta" inspired by traditional design and donated to his island by the BBC after they made a documentary there. The BBC wanted the boat to continue in keeping the traditional navigation alive. When we bring out the laptop so that Joseph can point out his island and our destination he points at some open ocean some 180 miles east of us. When we zoom in on the map about half a dozen times we can see that yes, indeed there is an island there: Anuta. We measure it to be about one kilometre across. It is so small that the map doesn't show any real features, it just shows it as a small brown pentagram 50 miles from the nearest island (which is uninhabited, the closest inhabited island is some 70 miles away).

We didn't realize that the Solomons had any islands to the east of us at all. We were planning on going west, and going east means going against the tradewinds all the way, but what the hell, we're going with it anyway.

Joseph explains that if we are in a rush we can just lead them a bit over half-way, to Tikopia, and they'll find the way from there. Between Tikopia and the flat, 1 sq.km Anuta is 70 miles (130 km) of open ocean! Having no doubt about their ability to find their way home from there we still accept Josephs offer of taking them all the way home and visiting their little island paradise.
But before the seven guys and one girl can leave Vanuatu they must attend a farewell party at the village where they've landed. We jump on the chance to catch up on some sleep while the rest of them are ashore. After some hours they return, along with the entire village. OK, we get the idea of a farewell party now.

We decide to paddle over in our dinghy to take some photo's of the craziness. As I'm boarding the dinghy my camera slips from my pocket and into the water. I make no attempt of diving after it, it is after all waterproof and I can see the bottom and it doesn't appear to be more than five metres deep. Easy freediving. After donning a diving mask and jumping into the water I discover to my dismay that the water is super-clear. Thus the bottom is more like 25 metres below instead of 5. I never find out exactly how deep down the camera is since i'm pushing myself to hard to look at the depth-gauge the last few metres. After some heavy freediving with sinuses and eardrums screaming for mercy we're finally able to retrieve the camera which is supposed to be waterproof to 10 metres. It has worked (almost) flawlessly ever since!

After an amazing display of farewelling we're off. It is funny to actually sail together with someone for a change. "Lapita" is quite a bit faster than us and they reduce sails in order to stay behind us. Sometimes they are veering off to the horizon-line just to spend some time. At night they stay behind and to our right. It is difficult to judge how far away they are from their little deck light. Sometimes we will think they are a bit off, only to see the light colours of their hull drift eerily into sight some 20 metres away, as if appearing out of nowhere.

The third night, just before sunset, we catch sight of Anuta. Lapita immediately zooms off, and we do our best to keep up. When we're finally there we realise there's no protected anchorages, and our maps for the area are close to useless. We decide to spend the night hove to and drifting slowly away. In the morning we raise the sails again and sail back up to the Island. Shortly after our arrival We're boarded by Joseph in the dinghy. This time he's brought with him his adoptive father, Joseph, and Lazarus. They show us the best anchorage on the island. Incidentally the best anchorage on the island is our worst anchorage so far on the trip! It is over 20 metres deep (we only have 45 metres of anchor-chain), full of coral that the chain snags on, making a gnawing sound at night which constantly reminds us of the sorry, rusty state of our chain and we get swell from two separate directions making our nights feel like sleeping on a rollercoaster. ...But seriously, it IS the best anchorage on the island! No wonder this place is hardly ever visited by yachts. Too bad, for the beauty and hospitality that we experienced were way beyond anything we could expect! We found ourselves a little piece in the middle of the Pacific.