Fijian Canoe

The Fijian "Camakau" was built from twenty different plant species.

Sailing canoes on the Lau Islands of Fiji - FIJI Shores and Marinas

Formerly, in most of the archipelagoes of the Pacific, it was important to have traditionally used sailboats. However, during the course of the twentieth centuries, much of the country's maritime tradition has been abandoned and sailboats can now only be found in a few places, such as the Gilbert Group, the Tuvalu Outlying Isles and the Western Caroline Mountains.

The Lau Archipelago in eastern Fiji is an area where yachting is still very much in vivacity. Lau Group is made up of almost a hundred indigenous archipelagos and coral cliffs located on a north-south line about half the way between Fiji's principal isle of Viti Levu and the Kingdom of Tonga.

The Lau archipelago is in many ways a transitional area between Fiji and Tonga. The Lau Isles extend over 250 sea leagues from west to west. Usually the distances between the isles are less than 30 mile and most of them are higher than 100 meters. For the yachtsman, these facts make it easier to navigate the region and make the Lau archipelago a major "destination" when approached from afar.

In view of this, the significance of the term "Lau" in the regional language, "to hit the target", could well have its origins in canoeing. Today's yachting boats in South Lau are known as "camakau" or "camakacu". Today's Camacau is about 7 to 9 meters long and bears a unique Latin American ocean-going sails of about 27 sqm.

It is a one-boom boat, with the boom ("cama") accounting for about 60% of the overall length of the canoe. This canoe has a round bottom and a dug-out trunk. With the extensive book "Canoes of Oceania" the writers describe the 1925 Camakau:

"Fijian camacau, the large boom used for inter-island travel and especially for visiting chieftains friends, agrees with the Micronese "flying proa" that it is one of the two best kinds of sail boom canoes ever made. Camakow seems to be a result of the Micronese and Polyynesian technologies used on Lau's hard wood-ressources.

It' s generally accepted that it is a Micronese sailboat that was probably imported into Fiji via Tonga sometime in 1700. Verbal traditions and historic reports from early travellers point to Tonga and Samoa for the origins of the canoe itself. At the end of the 1700' a joiner from Samoa, Lemaki, was sent by the king of Tonga to make canoeing in Lau, where he finally founded a group of canoeists that still exists today, especially on the isle of Kabara.

Though there are four species of timber that are sometimes used for the body of the camacau, the prefered species is vulcanized sycamore. Just like the sailboats from the Micronese Isles in the far northern hemisphere, the camacau are always sails with the only boom to Luv. If you go against the breeze, a camacau changes course over the eyes of the breeze.

This manoeuvre would be called "turning" on a contemporary boat, but it is a different technique on a camacau and is known as "manoeuvring" from a technical point of view. To counterbalance the power of the winds on the sails, the boom is upwind. Like most outriggers, the camacau can overturn. Usually the cause of a canoe falling over is an excessive amount of winds in the sails in combination with another element, such as entrapment of the bulkhead, a shift in ship's weights, an unanticipated shaft or the detachment of the jib.

In order to correct a canoe that has keeled over near the bank, the boat's crews pull the boat into flat waters and lift the boom over the mast. Since a boom's lift is less of an obstruction than its gravity, the deck will attempt to lower the boom so that it is undercut.

It can be done by a combined stand on the boom and pull under water from the fuselage on a line fixed to the boom. Seafarers have been admiring the city throughout its entirety. A naval officer of the United States, C. Wilkes, in 1840 described a 30-meter-long Camakow that needed 40 men to sails it.

"And the speed with which these beautiful boats rip with the winds in the neighbourhood has caused the amazement of all who have seen them. In the time of the seafarers living in Lau today, the excursions in Camakow were mostly limited to visiting other Lau Isles and sometimes Fiji's capitol Suva.

Around 1914 a canoe was taken to Moce Island by eleven prisoners who fled Tonga jail. It was about 14 meters long and the inhabitants of Moce recognised it as one that had been constructed a few years before.

It is about 200 sea-mile from Southern Lau to Suva. Over the past half centurys the journey was apparently undertaken twice by Kamakau. 1953 two Ogea and four Fulaga kayaks left these archipelago for Komo, Lakeba, Vanuavatu, Moala, Gau and Suva for an formal tour of the Queen of England.

In 1964, eleven years later, a navy of four Kabara kanus sails to Totoya, Moala, Gau and Suva for a Methodist church festival. A canoe was flooded by a large shaft between Moala and Gau. Some of the members of the boat crews were taken from the other boats and the handicapped one was left behind.

Canoeing in most areas of the southern Lau is not a big challenge due to the short distances between the isles; the destination is usually visible before the disappearance of the starting isle. In Lau, the resources of lumber are an important topic for the further development of sailboats. The construction of the new plant in South Lau was due to the presence of native trees in Kabara, Fulaga and Ogea.

Current commercially produced petroleum shells, especially "Tanoa" (shells from which the indigenous beverage "Kava" is divided), from these isles influence the supplies of petroleum for canoeing. Recordings show that over 100 Tanoas are exporting from the Kabara alone every year. It' s easy to understand why experienced loggers who work full-time to produce wood trays for money hesitate to waste valuable lumber on canoeing.

It' s likely that external incidents over which the inhabitants of Lau have little influence, such as the cost of petrol and other goods, transfer receipts from family members and the funds made from the exports of "Tanoa", will have a great influence on the continued existence of the Southern Lau tradition.