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----- Original Message -----
Not to be too picky about this but most of the writings of David Lewis
regarding swell sailing are from Micronesia not Polynesia.
Mau is from Micronesia, more specifically Yap and more specifically Satawal
Doug Sheer

Perhaps we should say Polynesia AND Micronesia AND Melanesia, although the
three are well intermixed, one result of all that ocean wandering.
The Melanesians inhabit New Guinea, the Salomon Islands, Vanuatu and New
Caledonia. Some would say Fiji also, although the indiginous Fijians are
more Polynesian than their Melanesian cousins to the west. The name
Melanesia simply indicates their black skin. They are often confused with
the geographically adjacent Australian aborigines, particularly in the
Torres Strait,
although they are not closely related.

Generally the Melanesians are not credited with the same sailing skills as
the Poynesians/Micronesians, although I have an engraving from the 1880s
showing a large double hulled sailing canoe from the Ile des Pins (off the
southern tip of New Caledonia) that looks similar enough to the craft used
by the
Polynesians to suggest that this may not be the whole story. In Vanuatu,
a chain of islands to the north, one island speaks a version of Polynesian
while an
adjoining island speaks a language descended from Malay, a clue to the
cultural diversity of that somewhat isolated place.

When the Maoris (Polynesians) came to New Zealand, only about a thousand
years ago, they displaced (absorbed?) people already living there, of whom
almost nothing is known. I don't know who they were either, but it seems
as likely as anything else that they could have been Melanesian.
Some of these Pacific Ocean travellers must have fetched up on the eastern
Australian coastline, also, but they have left no trace we know about.

Speaking of l'Ile des Pins, it lies one day by sail to the main island of
New Caledonia but three days to return upwind, so regular are the south-east
trade winds that these are the sailing directions used for charter boats
today. Of all the lovely places he visited in the Pacific Captain Cook was
particularly impressed with this small and happy place, even now its easy to
feel the same way ...

   

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