Veita Waqa – a future for ancient boats

About a thousand years before the birth of Christ, the first Fijians plowed through hundreds of miles of uncharted waters of the Pacific Ocean with nothing but currents and stars to act as their navigational system. The mighty dug-out double-hulled canoe was their only transport. They battled ferocious seas and weather to find landfall among the 300 scattered islands that would later become Fiji. Quite an extraordinary feat, considering it took place at least two thousand years before the Vikings navigated their longboats to the coasts of Greenland and America!

Testament to the ingenuity of the traditional Fijian boat builders and voyagers is that smaller outrigger canoes were until a few decades ago used as the pickup trucks of the Fijian lagoons, ferrying people to fishing grounds and transporting trade goods such as coconuts, tapa cloth and hardwood from island to island.  A much smaller number of these boats are still around today, but with technology that brought the outboard motor on a fiberglass hull, and the departure of many youth from outer islands to secondary schools in urban areas, the use of traditional craft has seriously declined. But the tide is now turning.