Ariana Time

Utupua Island 11.15S 166.31E, 4 November 2010
Located in the Santa Cruz chain of the Solomon Islands, Utupua is a mountainous and heavily wooded island fringed by an extensive reef. We arrived off the Utupua before sunrise after a quick overnight passage from Tegua Island and jogged off the island's western shore waiting for the sun to rise. The current runs through the Ringdove pass at an estimated 2-3 knots. The lagoon is entered though a defined dog legged channel (there are a couple of pole markers) which we were able to find once the sun was high enough in the morning sky. Some care is required.
Upon entering the lagoon we were greeted by several dugouts. The first encouraged us to anchor off the village on the south arm of the bay. We explored that side of the bay but the anchorage was unsatisfactory being very deep (in excess of 30 meters) and steep to as our stern would have been just a few meters off the exposed coral. We politely opted out and instead anchored in the northeast arm of Basilisk Bay in 11 meters, mud..
Basilisk Bay is a very protected anchorage deep into Utupua, with picturesque, ehavily wooded virgin forest dropping down to the shore of the bay lined with thick mangrove. Again care needs to be exercised entering here and should be undertaken (at least the first time) with good light. Shallow reefs stretch off both shores of the approach to the bay.
This is not a good swimming bay. It is murky and obvious crocodile habitat. Rivers empty out of the forested mountains into the bay but are barely visible until you see one of the locals paddle into what appears to be impenetrable mangroves.
We meets Chief Stanley and his son who paddle up. We ask the typical crocodile question and are informed that it is not safe to swim here. In fact we are told that a Swiss sailor was killed here by a croc. He dove in to check his anchor and then decided to have a swim to shore!!! If you any of you reading this could see the water and mangroves of Basilisk Bay I highly doubt that you would take the plunge much less swim anywhere of distance from the boat. Well it turns out that the Swiss made a few strokes towards the mangroves when he encountered mister or ms. croc. He was taken as his wife watched in horror from the cockpit. Chief Stanley told us that when he heard from the horrified and grief stricken wife he paddled along the mangrove shoreline until he found the log where the Swiss had been stashed under a log for tenderizing. Stanley described in fairly gruesome detail how the mid-section of the Swiss man had already been consumed. He pulled out the remains and wrapped it in a tarp. In the words of Chief Stanly, "He was one dumb white man."
We visited Stanley's village on the north arm of the outer bay where we were greeted by throngs of friendly children and given a tour by Geoffrey who is the teacher at the local school. It is a very attractive village with flower gardens and neatly arranged, raised thatch huts. These huts differed in their design and construction from those we saw in Vanuatu. The people of this village were Polynesian and Micronesian. We traded for fruit and vegetables. They have plentiful gardens in the hills surrounding the village.
Their canoes are single hull, without outriggers. This was also a change from Vanuatu. The canoes were very large by comparison which may be attributed to the fact that Utupua has virgin forests of all kinds of wood including one of the few virgin kauri forests left. The chiefs here have resisted all offers to log the island. They seem to worship the forest. In the village, we saw a canoe being carved by hand in the traditional way out of a giant rosewood log! It is amazing that they can carve and shape a canoe so straight and true by eye. No plans or measurement tools or plans were observed nor were any power tools. There was no electrical power in the village and I suspect that there was none on the island.
We asked if many yachts had visited over the past year and we were told, "Oh yes. Many." Asked how many we were told about 10 we being the tenth.
When we left all the children and many of the adults lined the beach and saw us off waving and cheering a farewell.