Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
and dogs into blood-frenzied, shark-infested waters to see how they would react, to name
just two. There were also the Palmyra double murders.
Somehow the conversation got around to guitars. I must have said something about repair-
ing them. The two teenage boys suddenly perked up. The older one took off to the interior
of the hut and reappeared with a battered, old guitar that he proudly brought back. The gui-
tar had a few strings missing and looked as though it had seen the best part of its life a long
time ago. With his first real smile he offered it to me, “You can fix, Jonathan?”
I took the guitar and had a look at it closely. I believed that I could at least get it playing.
“Yes, let me take it back to the boat and see what I can do,” I replied. The boys beamed,
and I could tell I had found their soft spot.
Faali asked me if I wanted to make a traditional coconut guitar. I had seen one of the lads
strumming one earlier, and I had expressed great interest in it.
“I would love to!” I told him, “But I wouldn't know where to start!
“No problem, we make one. I show you; come back tomorrow we start, I show you, nice
coconut guitar. You take home for you. Tell people guitar from Penrhyn.”
I laughed enthusiastically, “That would be so cool!”
I took my leave soon afterward, saying a warm goodbye to my new “family” and took the
guitar back to Déjà vu with me.
The following morning I was up early. It was overcast, and while it wasn't blazing hot out-
side as it had been, it was still cloyingly humid. I was wet with sweat. I dived into the cool,
blue ocean naked, had my ritual coffee and then set about fixing the guitar. It was certainly
a challenge I enjoyed. Having grown up with these wonderful instruments, I had learned to
work on them as a necessity. The bridge had lost its ivory saddle, the white strip under the
strings on the box side of the guitar.
I looked around the boat and found a sliver of Perspex which I fashioned with a file. I fitted
it into the saddle slot and filed it to a reasonable height. One of the tuners had been badly
bent, as a result of a fall no doubt. I took a rag and wrapped it around the plastic head and
with my vice grips, bent it straight. I noticed there were a few places where the top and
back of the guitar were lifting off the sides; the glue was delaminating. This would have a
big effect on the overall sound.
I got out some tubes of epoxy glue and, mixing up a dollop, I forced the mixture into the
lifted areas, securing them down with strips of masking tape. I removed the rest of the rusty
old strings and gave the guitar a good cleaning and polishing with some abrasive metal pol-
ish, oiling it with some wood oil that I used on my guitar. It was beginning to look like new.
