By Eivind Andås, 28.07.2024
Wharrams attract all sorts of folks. Usually eccentric, unconventional and sea loving people who puts comfort second and aesthetics first. They have traditionally been outcasts of society, someone who doesn’t fit the mold and want to break free. But have you ever heard of a Christian missionary group taking a Wharram on a voyage? And not just any Wharram, but the ultimate ode to Polynesian seafaring traditions, the boat that was designed straight out from a traditional pre-western influence sailing canoe from a museum in Auckland? And not only are they sailing the Wharram Tama Moana on a voyage, but they are sailing it from the Philippines to the Solomon Islands, following in the footsteps of the Lapita voyage that was completed 15 years earlier, the voyage that was James Wharram’s antithesis of Thor Heyerdahl’s Kon-Tiki voyage. Is there anything more heretic than a Christian group taking the most Polynesian-true Wharram design as part of their missionary work? Or is this the most Wharram thing anyone could do these days? Are not the Christian missionaries perhaps the most unconventional outcasts of today’s society?
The Vaka Hop’e voyage took place early 2024, sailing from Davao in the Philippines to Munda in the Solomon Islands. Hugging the coastline and island hopping between anchorages, only carrying enough water and food to last a couple of weeks at the most. The original Lapita-voyage took place 15 years earlier, sailing the same boat from Philippines to Polynesia, using traditional sails and the traditional trading route of the Lapita people who sailed before them 3000 years earlier. Vaka Hop’e would follow in their footsteps, except not quite as traditional as the Lapita expedition. The Lapita Voyage already got a bit of criticism for their use of GPS and more modern building materials than the original sailing canoes would, as opposed to Thor Heyerdahl’s more original techniques. The Vaka Hop’e voyage is not trying to be a marine archeology voyage at all, and carries more modern aid like satellite charts, AIS and an outboard engine(!).
So why would this group choose to sail a Wharram Tama Moana on such a voyage from the Philippines to the Solomon Islands? And if they are not going to stick to the traditional principles behind the Tama Moana, why not use a completely different vessel?
The idea behind the Vaka Hop’e as a mission vessel in the Solomon Islands is more than just doing Bible teaching and water well drilling. It is also to empower and inspire young Solomon Islanders by teaching them the skills of sailing and navigating their own waters, breaking the bondage of isolation and poverty that many grow up with in their small villages scattered around the 350 inhabited islands. The idea is to hand over ownership of the boat to the local Solomon Islanders who are part of the locally based missionary group Youth With A Mission (YWAM), and to give them the appropriate training locally and in the RYA training center under YWAM in Fiji. The idea of the Wharram Tama Moana is to have an appropriate boat for the Solomon Islands that the islanders can be proud of, and not least; be able to look after and maintain locally in the remote Solomon Islands.
The Vaka Hop’e was built in the Philippines, and the voyage to the Solomon Islands would be a great test of the vessel and initiation of the crew. Truth be told, the real challenge of what had been undertaken had not been properly evaluated prior to the purchase, indeed not even before setting off on this whole voyage. But isn’t that a familiar beginning to great sailing stories? It is the allure of sailing the seas and taking on a great big challenge that draws certain people to step out of their comfort zone and into the adventure. People from all over the world have similar stories, maybe the reader can relate. But this story is how a missionary group took the leap of faith and sailed an ancient designed sailing canoe from Polynesia’s cradle to the Solomon Islands in the Pacific Ocean.
Sea trial
The Vaka Hop’e was actually purchased in 2021, sight unseen, from the boatbuilder Andy Smith in the Philippines. This is the same boatbuilder who built Lapita Anuta and Lapita Tikopia for the Lapita voyage 15 years earlier. 2022 came and went, the year spent fundraising, buying the motor and building the motor box, together with other upgrades. Early 2023 the Vaka Hop’e was finally launched and sailed its first 500 miles from Panglao to Davao, where it was dismantled and put up on land in a small fishing village in April, waiting for the next favorable season in order to sail south and east.
This was the sea trial of the boat and its captain (me), as I did not exactly have enough miles under my belt to call myself a seasoned sailor. I started my sailing career proper in 2022, jumping between different boats from Croatia to Fiji (not continuously), racking up my miles and experience with different skippers and boats. I was well in over my head as we set off in the Philippines, but braving the elements and tackling some really challenging water ways, like the Hinatuan passage, I came out of the experience more confident than when I came in. Later in 2023 I finished my Yachtmaster Offshore exam and felt ready to tackle the long voyage to the Solomon Islands.
Challenges before the voyage
In January 2024, a rag tag crew of myself, my fiancée Naomi (21), Paul (19) and Sammy from the Solomon Islands, rock up to the Vaka Hop’e. It had been nine months since I had left her alone in the fishing village, and I had no idea about its current state. It looked good at first sight and we set out to clean her up and put her together to be on the water within two weeks. However, we soon discovered that a termite damage bulkhead had to be completely re-built and the brand-new outboard motor refused to start. We were able to re-build the bulkhead ourselves, but the outboard ended up at a mechanics shop. In the end we received all the pieces of the puzzle to finally launch. The motor had been repaired, our life raft was released from customs and our EPIRB had finally arrived (a long story). We spent the next 4 days assembling the boat on the beach, and after a massive push together with the village, we were floating! It was only one month after we had first arrived in the Philippines, so we were on track. If only the engine would start, we would be off…
The outboard motor turned out to be our bane, as it refuses to start once we are afloat. We drag ourself out to deeper waters by deploying the two anchors, and I finally get the outboard to start by changing the spark plugs back to the original ones. Next day we set off on a small test motor run, but the engine dies completely after only 2 minutes, and we are drifting away into the open sea. We manage to get back to safety by pulling ourselves with our tender and its 2 hp outboard, but the mystery of our main engine continues. I am able to get ahold of the service manual and troubleshoot to find that the CDI unit most likely is dead. I order a new one and hope for the best. We set sail without an engine to Davao, in order to provision and prepare for the big voyage. Again, everything aligns and we are all prepped and ready to go when the CDI unit arrives. It was indeed the culprit, and the engine springs back to life! We motor to the main wharf of Davao, and in the following day we check out of the Philippines and set off towards Indonesia. It’s the 19th of February and it will be a tight schedule to get to the Solomon Islands before the southeast monsoon establishes itself.
The voyage begins
I had imagined that the voyage was going to be mostly downwind sailing from the Philippines all the way to the Solomon Islands, so I had been able to get my hands on an old spinnaker. On the first day of sailing, we deployed it for the very first time, not sure how to rig it or if it would even fit. But in true Wharram style, we were able to make it work and even though it was a bit big, we would be fine as long as we kept it full. Turned out that our first leg towards Indonesia would be one of the few times we would have use of our spinnaker. The promised downwind conditions were elusive, sailing more on a beam reach or not at all, just motoring. It also didn’t help that we tore the spinnaker on our third deployment, due to little wind and the sail catching around our characteristic axe head bow.
We didn’t exactly have tons of experience with the boat before becoming residents of the sea on our way to Indonesia, but I figured we would get into things as we went. Personally, I had sailed her 500 miles in the previous season, but none of the rest of the crew had ever sailed a Wharram, and some had hardly sailed at all. But we all had the right attitude, and with the help of satellite charts on OpenCPN, we were able to anchor confidently most nights on our way south. My biggest fear and greatest challenge was going to meet us on the other side of the passage – checking into Indonesia. I had prepared as much as I could, having bought a ship stamp, acquired an AIS and done everything I could to have every document I needed in order, but fear of the unknown and all the bad stories from other sailors had put me on edge. Turned out I had nothing to fear, and after a 24-hour check in process we were legal in Indonesia. Little did I know that the greatest challenge was yet to come, on our very next sail.
Breaking both rudders
How we were able to break both rudders in one night is still a mystery to me. My best guess is that the rudder blade was too big and the rudder stock too weak for the conditions we exposed them for. We were sailing over night on a beam reach across the Moluccan Sea in a force four and 6 ft wind swell. In the middle of the night, I hear something crack and Paul at the helm struggles to continue steering straight. We had lost a rudder! I jumped straight into action, loosening the mizzen, and we were soon back on track with one rudder still functioning, sailing comfortably. I was puzzled as to how the rudder broke off, because I hadn’t noticed anything out of the ordinary. We didn’t hit anything, did we? When I go off shift to sleep Paul jokingly says that he will wake me up if the other rudder breaks… That was exactly what happened, except Paul didn’t wake me, but Naomi was trying to wake me from the cockpit and suddenly Sammy was standing over me in my hatch, shouting that the rudder had broken. Slightly confused and befuddled I get up and realize slowly that we have no steering. Both rudders are gone. Dawn is breaking and we can see in the distance Gureda Island 12 miles away. We just have to get there…
I rack my sleepy brain as to how we can rig up an emergency rudder. I have read enough sailing stories and books to come up with a couple of options, but decide to try the easiest first. Our rudder design is from the Wharram Amatasi, basically hanging a giant paddle of the side of the hull. So, we try to strap up one of our paddles and lash on the tiller to steer. Together with adjusting the mizzen and turning on the engine, we are able to steer towards the island. Maneuverability is very limited, and I fear the upcoming reef passage we have to pass in order to get into the safe waters of the island. It doesn’t take long, however, until the paddle also breaks… We are only 6 miles away now, and I try to lash on a rowing oar. The blade is tiny, and I doubt it will give us any steerage, but after a couple attempts (the second lovingly encouraged by my fiancée), we are back on track. Steering with the oar actually gives us more maneuverability, but the speed needs to be kept up in order to have enough water to steer. The reef passage was upon us before I had time to instruct my crew to the plan, and after a couple of hectic moments where we at one point were headed straight for the reef, we were back on track and soon inside safe waters.
Marooned in the middle of the Moluccan Sea
We were safe, but we were stuck. I was thinking of how to rig up some emergency rudders with epoxy and plywood to continue the voyage, and how to source some new rudders along the way, but first I had to sleep. When I awoke Naomi and Paul was coming back from the village together with a school teacher, one of the very few on the island who spoke English. They had already found a local carpenter who could build us new rudders, and the school teacher was to take measurements and convey it to the carpenter. Later that day we heard a chainsaw in the forest, and later in the evening we could already find two crude shapes that was going to become our new rudders. I could hardly believe it. We had arrived in Tifure, a 95% Christian village in a 95% Muslim nation, and on this far remote place they had the people and the resources to help us get new rudders! After only 4 days our new rudders were finished, and we took them to the beach to lay one layer of fiberglass over them for extra safety. This proved to be a good idea as we had more problems with our rudders later… On the 5th day “marooned” on the island, we set off again, now with new rudders. It felt great, and kind of unbelievable. God is surely with us!
The rest of our voyage through Indonesia goes pretty much without drama. We experienced some crazy seas another night where the wind built up suddenly on the beam and the following waves were steep and uncomfortable, but the rudders and the boat held up beautifully. It was fun to arrive in the outlying islands outside West Papua where the people suddenly changed their appearance to the more familiar Melanesian race. They looked like they came straight out of Papua New Guinea, and I had to try to speak to them in Tok Pisin, but they did not understand a word of what I said as they all spoke Bahasa and were as polite and shy as the rest of the nation. We had some time exploring beautiful Raja Ampat, but not nearly enough. We had to continue towards Madang in PNG before the wind turned against us. As we left Raja Ampat, the wind also died down and we had to motor all the way along the north coast of West Papua and most of the way along the coast of Papua New Guinea. We arrived in Madang in time, mid-April, but not without some more drama…
Sailing the Northwest coast of Papua New-Guinea
In my research I had found that few boats sail the northwest coast of PNG due to some danger of pirates. I didn’t find enough reason to completely avoid it, and we wanted to visit our fellow YWAM base in Madang, so we continued along the coast. Our pirate deflection strategy was to rely on our status as missionaries, which is highly respected in PNG, and for our Melanesian friend Sammy to disarm any further doubts that they had. If worst came to worst, we would start singing worship songs in Tok Pisin. This may sound like a stupid strategy, but if you were to ask anyone from PNG this same thing, they would probably commend us. Several people we talked to said that no one would touch us once they knew we were missionaries, because the fear of the spiritual and getting curses inflicted is very much real in PNG. However, the one caveat was that somehow, we would have to let them know that we were missionaries before they pirated us…
Before we were able to have any run ins with the pirates, we had a run in with another very real danger along the northwest coast of PNG: Logs. I knew about this danger, but I figured that the north coast of PNG would be similar to the north coast of West Papua, where we had seen very few logs. I was wrong. On our first sail in PNG, we had to go overnight due to the distance, and we were all shook when our boat suddenly stopped and climbed over a massive log in the pitch-dark night. I feared the inevitable crack once the log would pass our steering paddle, and sure enough we heard a crack, but both paddles seemed to be intact. Our depth gauge had been ripped off, but no further visible damage. We continued into the night, on edge, more wary of the danger of logs, having a flashlight ready at all times. Upon further inspection the next day, we found that the rudder had indeed cracked, but that the fiberglass job had held it together in one piece. We would have to fix that later. First, we would have to deal with the biggest challenge we would meet in PNG: it’s people.
Encounters with the locals
The reason for going overnight in the first place was to anchor off some islands that were just out of reach for a day sail. However, when we arrived there, we found that it was too deep to anchor, and sleep deprived as I was, I decided to go to the coast to get some more bouncy rest off a beach. The idea worked well for the first 30 minutes until we invited the first fisherman onboard and told him our story. Soon two kids came out and the fisherman excitedly told them that we were missionaries and to let the whole village know. Soon we were overwhelmed by local village kids and youth who either paddled out through the breakers or swam out to our boat, even though we were a quarter mile offshore. We had been used to the polite and shy people of Indonesia and Philippines. The people of PNG are quite different. They are so excited about seeing us and wants to sit with us to talk and hear stories. To be polite, they stay to keep you company, and I have a hard time to dismiss them. In PNG relationships comes first, and it’s a beautiful thing, but after a long and difficult night passage all I really wanted was to sleep. On that day along the coast, we had fifty people on or around the boat at one point. But finally, Naomi and Paul decided to go to shore to see the village, and the people left. Sammy had even had enough of the Melanesian hospitality at this point, and we both stayed back for some rest.
Naomi and Paul were accompanied by four local youth in their dugout canoes. Their trip to shore and back had been a harrowing experience with the canoe getting swamped by the breakers both coming in and going back out. As they paddled back out, they had to try to paddle through the breakers four times before they finally made it on the outside. It was also getting dark, and the four guys wanted to wait for the wind to die down, and therefore the waves to die down, before returning to shore. At least four people is more manageable than fifty, and we had tea and chatted on deck. As we sat there, one of the guys got a phone call that there were a group from the neighboring village who wanted to come “visit us” in the night. Our friends decided to stay with us overnight and slept on the deck. Nobody came visiting us that night, thankfully, but we didn’t have to wait long until we got a visit in the night.
Police or Pirates?
On our very next anchorage we were a bit more cautious about inviting people on board. We were planning to repair our rudder, and all we really wanted was a calm and uneventful evening. That was not to be. As it was getting dark, we could hear a fiber boat being launched from the beach outside the village, and soon five or six guys with a grim look on their face came alongside us and demanded to come onboard. Usually in PNG, a smile and a hello is enough to turn any frown upside down, but not this time. These guys were determined and demanded to see our passports and to know why we were here. Three of them were wearing M16 machine guns, and we had little else to do than to comply. They said they were police, but we saw no signs that they were. If I was a pirate, I would say the same thing. We tried reasoning with them that we were missionaries on our way to the Solomon Islands, but it seemed to have little effect. In the end they grabbed Sammy and took him aboard their boat to question him. They seemed to believe Sammy, and in the end, they released him and left us alone. To this day we don’t know if these guys were actually police or pirates, but I am glad they left.
The rest of the trip along the northwest coast of mainland PNG continued in the same way. We soon learned to turn our navigation lights off in the night to avoid attracting pirates from the coast. Our nerves were on edge and we were happy to finally arrive in Madang. However, just one hour before arriving we had another run in with a fiber boat containing people with machine guns. This time we did see some identification that they were police, but they ended up taking all our passports and demanding we come by the police station to get them back. I was exasperated at this point, but we ended up mooring up to a wharf in town, belonging to YWAM Ships, and the next day we were able to get our passports back.
The last leg to the Solomon Islands
Madang was a milestone for us, and here we would be joined by a fifth crew member for the rest of the way. Billy is another Solomon Islander who has sailed with me, together with Naomi and Sammy in Fiji in 2022. I had invited him to join us and amazingly it all lined up. We had to wait for 10 days before he arrived, but I believe we needed that break. To be honest, I had expected someone to want to go home once we arrived in Madang. Sailing that far in a simple sailing canoe is already a massive feat. And after our first week in PNG, there would be even more reason to want to go home. But we all stayed united and everyone wanted to finish the voyage. I found out later that both Sammy and Paul were considering to go home from Madang at some point during the voyage, but the promise of Billy coming and the desire to finish the voyage kept us all going.
Closing thoughts
There is no well thought through plan behind this endeavor, only the gut feeling that God is in it. The whole boat is fundraised through churches, friends and family, while half of the purchase price was given by the YWAM Solomons. Later, money appears internationally though encounters that seems too random to be chance. Some calls it fate, I call it God. Before the voyage started in 2024, I had doubts if we would make it all the way to the Solomon Islands. So many things had gone wrong in the lead-up to the departure, so surely something more had to go wrong. I guess we did break both rudders, which is quite unusual, but even then, we could not be stopped. There are too many stories