It is time to take the Vaka Hop’e out of the water for some TLC and some rest. I’m leaving the Solomon Islands in October, but there’s a massive shift within YWAM Solomons in September, and everything needs to be finished by then. To help us take the boat up, Matthew from Australia has come for one month as a volunteer. Together with YWAM Munda, and some of the local youth, we are ready to take the boat up! A lot of preparations have gone into this day, as you can read in the previous post. My biggest worry is if the new trolley we built for the boat will fit…
We are lucky with our tide. We beached it last night during high tide, and while we work on the boat it is low tide. Taking the boat apart is a lot of work! We spent 4 days putting the boat together, but we were able to undo all of that in 4 hours. I wanted all of the boys in YWAM Munda to participate in this, as taking the boat apart is crucial knowledge for future use in the Solomon Islands. It is also very helpful when we are going to put the boat back together. That was the only experience I had before assembling the boat earlier this year. First, we had to take down the masts, and the method I was using I had learned from Matthew in Australia who was with us on the boat!
Once the masts were down, we could start directing our attention towards taking the decks off. As you may know, our whole boat is held together with ropes, and it is a lot of rope that needs to be unwound to take our decks off. But I also needed to unscrew the plywood patches we had made to cover cracks and rot. Underneath, I found a nasty surprise… In many of the cracks, we found lots of tiny bugs! Those buggers had been hitchhiking all the way from the Philippines, most likely! I am happy that we have already been making preparations to replace the whole deck. At one point, I planned on repairing the cracks, but now I see that would have been impossible.
With the decks off, we were down to the bare bones and it was time to call in reinforcements. A local youth church group volunteered their time and muscle to help us get the boat to its storage location. Now came the test of the cradle we had designed. Would it fit? We lifted one hull and slid the cradle underneath, right there on the beach. The tide was coming up, but we were relatively dry. I had to slide in a couple of planks and a pair of flip flops for the sides, but the hull fit perfectly! We rolled it off the beach, up the slope and onto the road. It all went so fast that I didn’t have time to put on my flip flops! I ran back to get them and grabbed a bicycle. By the time I caught up with them, they were running and laughing down the road, having a great time!
We had to walk the hull half a mile down the road before we could put it under our newly built boat house. With one hull down, we only had one more to go! We just got it up from the beach before the tide came in. The afternoon also brought in a very nice and refreshing rain shower to cool us all down a little. The second hull went as smooth as the first and soon we had both hulls in place. Our job was complete! Back in the village they had prepared lunch for us all, so we headed back for a small fiest. Everyone was happy and I was super releaved. The boat is up and safe. It all worked out.
