“We are at a carver’s shop who has graciously given his shop over to us so that we can fix the boom that was damaged on our way to Tongatapu. As I understand it, what happened is that Hōkūleʻa did an accidental jibe. When that happened, it put a lot of stress on the boom itself that the boom should have never seen. So the boom basically just snapped,” said Hikianalia captain Bob Perkins.
“We had my small workshop at Papua Village. I said to one of the government officials if anything happened on the way because there was a storm and wind encountered by the two canoes off of Pago Pago, American Samoa. They said to me there is something, and I said that they are welcome to my home for help,” said Sitiveni Fehoko.
“These people are absolutely unbelievable. Never a question was asked. They just said come on over. You can all of our tools, you can use our wood shop here. In fact, two of the master carvers came in and did most of the work for us. So you can’t ask for anything better than that.
“It doesn’t happen often, but it does happen. So I think the big thing is that the captain and the crew just kept working. They put up another sail and got the broken parts and pieces down so they could be repaired when we came into Tongatapu. So I think we are more the wise for it.
“We were very fortunate that we were able to have such nice people to help us out and very fortunate that we had skilled labor to help too. I think that the boom will last all the way to New Zealand and probably the rest of the way around the world. We’ll see, but I’m sure this will get us at least to the dry dock period in Aotearoa,” said Bob.