Hi All,
We are on passage to Vunisea Kadavu having left Matuku around 4:30pm. We should arrive around 8:00am. This is a 110nm overnight passage in pretty good conditions. Winds are in the 10-17kt range but almost dead astern….yea!!!! Seas are a little choppy in the 2-4′ range and somewhat behind us. Not too bad of a ride!!!!
Matuku: Wow, what a gorgeous island and a little off the beaten path. I think we were the 6th boat they have seen all season. The topography reminded us of the Marquesas with fairly tall hills/mountains and everything is very green and lush. The day we arrived we did the sevusevu with the Chief of Lomati, Jico. It was a very pleasant visit that lasted several hours. We met Jico’s wife Penina, their precious 4 year old daughter Rosi and Muapi, the village minister.
The second day we went in just intending for a short stay to walk around the village and meet everyone and ended up going with Jico (and Jesi) in his longboat to pick up the children from school ‘around the corner’. Met the head teacher, et al, had a village tour, watched the children play in the surf while all their weekly supplies were loaded onto the boat, came back in a roaring wind, and after dropping everyone off in the village, Jico and Jesi asked if they could come to the boat for a quick visit. Well, sure! Jico’s very precocious 4 year old daughter, Rosi, came along because she absolutely HAS to see the toilet in every yacht she visits! Sooooo, after tour and tea and much conversation with Rosi, they finally leave and we pour ourselves a bit of a stiff one. Ha! Not bad….Only 5 hours after we left for our short visit. Note to self…There are no short visits. Duh! :))
We had a lot of crappy weather during our stay which canceled many of our island activities…..as in no hiking as the trails were all too muddy and slippery. For 4 days it blew 20-25G30 kts and it rained most of the time. Fortunately the anchorage was well protected!!! I did get in a dive….. I went with Paul on Monkey Fist….it was too cold and rainy for Kathy….an ok dive……we dove part of the pass….good coral above 30′ but not many big or small fish. Jesi, the local who watched our dinghy and does a lot of spearfishing, said it is much better outside the reef but the swell/waves were too big to go outside…..ugh!!!
We did go to Sunday service and once again the music was outstanding!!! This time I had to get up, introduce ourselves and tell our story. I think everyone liked the fact that this was a dream come true for us to be on our boat in Fiji. After the service they put on a HUGE feast! The food was delicious, some of the best we’ve had in Fiji, and maybe even in the South Pacific (how many ways can you cook fish, taro, breadfruit, and casava?:))!!
Boat Stuff: Well, we have good news, bad news and crappy news:
Good News: We got the Navigation (Big Bay) computer up and running. It turned out to be a bad ram card. This is about the 3rd time we have lost the Ram so when we get back to NZ we are going to have to get this computer serviced or figure out something else. We could get a new computer but the challenge will be to find a system running Windows XP…..all our instruments and software are setup to run off XP and are not compatible with the newer operating systems…..ugh!!!
Bad News:
Air Compressor: Not sure what is the problem but the compressor is very, very slow to build pressure. It took 30 minutes to fill a tank 400 psi…..it usually fills to 3000 psi in that time. We might have a blown safety, a leak that I can’t find or a blown valve…..ugh!!! We will be in Port Denarau marina in a few weeks and hopefully we can find a dive compressor mechanic!!!!
Outback Inverters: One night we had a very odd occurrence. It was near the end of the time on the batteries before we turn the GEN on around dinner time. The voltage was 12.2V. Kathy had turned on the microwave to defrost some food. The inverters started to go on/off. We started trouble shooting and think we had isolated which inverter was the issue. However on our last troubleshooting sequence all started to run as normal. We ran for another 15 minutes and all was well. We started the GEN and the Outback chargers kicked in although it seemed to have some weird amp reading initially……very high then very low but within 10-15 sec all became normal. When we shut the GEN off after about 2 hours, the inverters kicked in and no more incidents all night. We have been incident free now for the last 3 nights!! Weird….which is not good on a boat:(((((
Crappy News: We confirmed that the froward cylinder on the port stabilizer has a fatal oil leak. We have since shutdown this stabilizer and looped the oil hoses so we have no more leak. We lost about 1 gallon of oil before we got into Matuku and shut everything down. We are working with Wesmar in Seattle and Steve in NZ and will have new cylinders flown into Port Denarau and then fly Steve in to effect repairs…..ugh and very expensive:((((
In the meantime we are running on one stabilizer…..not ideal but with wind and waves behind us so far so good!!!
Passage: Anchor down @ 8:15 am…..nice spot…..bloody mary celebration begins…..but no talking, we are on the internet….PK had 1100 emails…..ugh!!!!! Thanks Courtney we got the emails with Sadie’s pics…..she is just DDG (drop dead gorgeous) for sure!!!!
We will be here for a few day…..getting caught up on emails and going into Vunisea for some much needed provisions and to see Bis’ family!!!
Hope all is well!!
John
Mystic Moon
Vunisea Kadavu Fiji
