We are finally ready to do the last push to launch the boat! Exactly one month after arriving in the Philippines, the Vaka Hop’e is ready to be pushed into the water. We met a few setbacks and challenges in coming here, but in the end, we are ready just in time for all the pieces to come together. Over the last few days we have pushed the hulls down to the beach, assembled all the pieces, tied it all together, raised the mast, and loaded most of our possessions. We had planned for the fishermen of the village to help us push the boat in the water, but naturally, they had all gone fishing by the time we were ready. So instead, we recruited all the women and children of the village, plus a couple of tourists passing by, to make the big push to get the Vaka Hop’e to float once again.
I had never before assembled the Vaka Hop’e, and neither had anyone else present. The boat is held together with ropes, so we are trusting our lives to the lashings we are doing ourselves. That’s a scary thought… I had briefly watched the builders assemble our boat in the previous year, but I had not taken part or even paid close attention. Instead, what I did have was a general understanding of how everything was held together from our time dismantling it last year and lots of experience doing lashings from my days as a scout. I felt confident that we would get it right.
First, we would have to push our two hulls down to the beach. For this, we get help from the same fishermen that helped us push the hulls up the previous year. We would pay a symbolic sum for their help and then we would all eat lunch together to celebrate. We tie up bamboo to the hull and start pushing. Around 20 people helped us, and everyone is excited. First one hull, then the next. Everything goes super fast, and what was intended to be lunch became a late breakfast. But now things start to slow down. Last year we did all the dismantling in one day, but putting everything back together would take longer. From now on I needed to be in control and we did the rest of the work by ourselves.
In order to lash everything together, you need to get everything aligned first. The forward and aft beam has key blocks that align with some blocks on the hulls (where termites had found their way in earlier). This decides the width of the boat and makes it square. The beams in between go in, but in what order? I had an idea, but it turned out to be wrong. When we started putting on our deck planks, it was obvious that two beams needed to change place. So we undo our lashings, change the beams, and get back to it. Somehow we are not able to make the deck planks fit. The margins are so small. We have to shuffle some beams and in the end, turn one around to make everything fit. Finally, we are ready to lay the decks!
The decks need to be tied onto the beams. It’s a lot of work in the hot sun, but the crew is going for it! Everyone is hungry to get on the water. One sits on top, feeding the rope through, while one is underneath, putting the rope back through to the top. It’s hot to be on top, but straining to be underneath the decks. By the end of day two, we have most of the decks lashed on. The boat builders finished everything by day two, but I was happy with our progress. On the third day, we put in the engine and raised our masts. I learned a trick from a friend in Australia, when we went out on his trailer sailer, to use the boom as leverage to raise the mast. This works great on the Vaka Hop’e, and after some adjustments and more tying of knots, we are ready to go in the water.
On day 4, we do some packing and final preparations while waiting for high tide to come up. It is not as high as I would like, so it will require a massive push. All the fishermen in the village have gone out fishing, so we try to rally their wives and kids. The wives are surprised when we ask them but honored at the same time. We try to push as hard as we can but the boat doesn’t budge. We may have loaded it too much. More people rally to our cause and we recruit some random passers-by’s to come and help us push. Finally the boat moves! One more push! Almost there. One last push and we’re floating in the water. I jump up on deck and start pulling us out by the anchor we set before launching. Everyone else jumps up to join me, except Naomi who was filming the whole thing on the beach. She has to swim out to the boat and struggles to get on board.
I go to start the engine to get us out to safe water. We are bobbing around dangerously close to shore and I would like to get some more water under our keels. However, the engine doesn’t start! We just had it fixed at the mechanics, and it was working fine last time, but I haven’t tried it since we came back. Discouraged after many tries, we decided to pull ourselves out into deeper water by using our two anchors. As we bob around out there, I go back to my routine of troubleshooting the engine again. The one thing I had done to the engine, upon the mechanics advice, was to change the spark plugs. Now I changed them back to the original ones, and finally the engine comes back to life!
I am exhausted after a long day. Actually, it has been 4 long days of assembling the boat. We are safe where we are and decide to rest. The next day we decided to go for a little spin with the motor. It is still really hard to start. I hope driving it for a while will help it settle. I rev it up and we are driving out of the bay going 5 knots. Whohoo! This is great! Then suddenly … it stops. No nothing. Immediate and complete failure. I tried to start it again but no signs of life. I had a feeling this was it for the engine. And we had just exited the bay far enough that we were not able to anchor. And the currents were pulling us further out to sea. How could we save the situation? We didn’t even have our sails rigged up yet!