Canoe sailing and shunting in Fiji (Eco Challenge Canoe)

This is one of the 100 canoes that were built for the Fiji Eco Challenge in 2020. Unfortunately its not really a happy story. The Eco Challenge is an adventure race sponsored by Amazon (the big online warehouse) and filmed broadcasted as a show on Amazon Prime. Basically its an exotic safari for rich people. For the Fiji episode Amazon thought it would be nice to include a race with traditional outrigger canoes. To gain access to the local canoeing tradition they approached Uto ni Yalo, a Fijian NGO which is very active in preserving and reviving the sailing tradition. They promised funding to build 100 canoes with the opportunity to distribute them to the island villages after the race. Basically a very nice idea but the project had to be rushed in no time to meet Amazons deadline. This resulted in very poor built quality. On top the design wasn’t really traditional. The canoe you see on the video sailed quite slow despite enough wind to capsize it and could hardly make way to windward. Two years later