Hi All,
I’m still trying to catchup the blog: this will cover from June 6 until present!!
After Qamea we went 10 nm to the anchorage at Matei Taveuni. This is where the airport is located and where we will drop Craig and Jeanette off. The anchorage is surrounded by reef but we were able to make our way through and find a sandy spot to set the anchor. We are protected from the swell but not from the wind. If the winds get above 20-25 kts which they might then we will have to move as there will be too much wind chop!
Craig and I dinghied to shore and explored the little village. We found a pretty good market/grocery store – they had Nori rolls – yes, back in the sushi business!!!!! We also found lettuce and tomatoes at a local vege stand…..score!!!! We also found a good liquor store – another case of Fiji Bitter please and the bakery – we’ll stock up later on bread – they even had hamburger buns and these giant hot dog buns…sweet!!!!
The next day we took a tour of Taveuni with Kamal……a taxi driver highly recommended to us by the good people at Dolphin Bay resort (the people we went diving with the previous week). We first went to the main village of Somosomo, saw the chief’s gathering place, many local stores, a very large Catholic Mission and the local market – where we stocked up on more vege’s. We went to the international dateline…..180 deg longitude runs right through Taveuni….there is a sign where you have one foot in yesterday and one foot in tomorrow…..a little goofy but kind of neat at the same time!!! We then went to the local grocery store and found a few things we needed and some Australian white wines plus Fiji Bitter beer in cans….sweet!!! We then went around to the east side of the island to Bouma National Park and hiked into the rainforest and the waterfalls. Jeanette stayed at the 1st fall, Kathy made it on top of the falls to a great lookout and Craig and I hiked up to the second waterfall…..maybe 1 hr+ round trip from the 1st falls…..it had been raining a lot off/on for the past week so the waterfalls were running hard!!!
The next day was spent getting C&J ready to go the following day. But first, we had to move Mystic as the winds had become quite strong and we had 1-3′ chop in the anchorage. So we moved about 2nm around to get into the lee of the island. But wait, there is a wrap around swell so while we were protected from the high winds, we had a 2-4′ swell coming in on our beam…..not comfortable at all. So out comes the flopper stoppers but even they were only partially successful. After a rather uncomfortable night, we tried an anchoring technique given to us by Les and Rose……you put a long snubber rode on the anchor chain and pull it back to the mid hawsehole. This turns the boat into the swell…..a much better and more comfortable ride…..Jeanette asked why didn’t we do that last night…..duh!!!!
But in true cruiser spirit, we only worked a little that day and then went off to the only restaurant in the area….Tramonto’s up on a hill where we spent the afternoon gazing at the beautiful view, eating excellent pizza, having lot’s of laughter with the locals and of course many Fiji Babies (they call the Fiji Bitter stubbies, babies:))))
The next day was very depressing to see C&J leave…..but wait, one more feast before you leave….we BBQ’d a butterflied leg of lamb (Ian and Agi had served this to us and showed us how to cook it). Oh, wow, just like butter….tender and very tasty!!!! So on this cruise we ate like royalty…..Bad Bob you would have been proud of galley queen Kathy – steaks, BBQ chicken, tuna sushi, walou, lamb, pork loin, pork chops, brauts, tacos, hamburgers, popcorn and a movie night, even bananas floorster (ask Jeanette about her new recipe:))))….and you know what, the freezer is still darn full….yikes!!!!
Boat Stuff: One night the watermaker went off on alarm…..check fuse 2…..WTH – didn’t even know we had fuses. It was 1.5 days until C&J left so with 1 1/2 full tanks we said we will deal with it later. So after C&J left I slept like 12+ hours…..read, nap, read, nap, popcorn, nap/movie, slept 8 hours and then up @ 6 and into the hole to work on Mr Watermaker….yep, livin the dream:))))) Sure enough Fuse 2 is a mini blade 5 amp fuse and it was blown. Turns out we had blown one of two of the booster pumps, small DC brushless pumps used to keep the main pump under pressure at s/u. We just plumbed around the bad boy and are using just the single pump. We are ordering 2 pumps from Baobab Marine in Denarau, the Fiji Spectra dealer and they will send them to Taveuni.
More boat stuff: After C&J left and we got the watermaker going and cleaned up Mystic we went over to Viani Bay to play with Bella Vita, Somerset and Interlude. As we were pulling up the flopper stoppers, we noticed both were broken…..whoa, we knew it was rough but yikes…..the smaller Magma flopper had broken both hinge pins…..eventually we were able to use a SS rod to replace the pins……and the bigger Prime flopper had broken 2 of 4 chains…..we have sinced replaced with amsteel so good to go on that one also!!
Ah, Viani Bay…..this has to be in the top 10 of our favorite anchorages…..DDG (drop dead gorgeous!!!!!). We partied like 20 something’s…..we had not seen Bella Vita and Somerset since Savusavu (just a few weeks) and Interlude not since Panama…..did they have fun!!!! We also got in 2 more days of diving with Dolphin Bay…..perfect conditions for the White Wall and Purple Corner…..indeed top ten dive sites!!!!!
Bad News: We lost Kathy’s laptop…..a crisis for us as she had all our Fiji cruising guides, google earth and other Fiji information……..arghhhhhhh!!!!! I got on the internet and searched for “Hard Disk does not exist” error and found a good 5 step troubleshooting guide…..I did all 4 steps with no joy, and on step five the guide says, call customer service, you are screwed…..oweeeee!!!! But wait, Jim on Somerset is a Computer Doctor….so we take the laptop over to Somerset and he starts it up and he has this major frown on his face as he listens to the hard drive make these awful creaking noises and says “interesting”……oh no, not what you want to hear from your doc….yep, 1 hour later he pronounces the patient DOA…..but wait, if you have an extra portable hard drive (which we did, a 1 TB drive that Craig brought for us) and the recovery discs Jim can get the laptop up and running, albeit without all your data…..but with all these boats and internet Kathy felt we could get most of the info back…..so, Jim did indeed install the new drive and the recovery discs and we now have her laptop up and running……unfortunately the internet is very slow here in Matagi so we are not able to really download anything yet!!
After Viani Bay we came over to Matagi with Bella Vita……we needed to detox for sure…..Matagi is a private island in the shape of a big horseshoe…..very protected from the nasty winds out there….20-30 kts but calm here in the anchorage…..but the reef is under a crown of thorn attack….we counted 20+ on our snorkel yesterday…..maybe 50% destroyed by now…..similar to what we found on the Qamea reefs maybe 5 nm from here…..ugh!!!!
Last night we had a sushi dinner with Brett and Stacy….both boats had caught Kawakawa tuna on the trip over…..a very fun night and the sushi “do” was one our best….Stacy also made sesame crusted pan seared tuna…..yummers…..as the wine and rum flowed we solved all the world problems and celebrated Father’s Day!!!!
Today is another chill day before we move over tomorrow (Tuesday) to Matei to get better internet and get Kathy’s laptop all loaded. We will also do a big provision…..too much jocularity since we left Savusavu and the white wine stock is getting low…..a mini crisis on Mystic!!!!
There might be a small but decent window for us to move on Thursday to the northern Lau Group…to Vanua Balavu…..if so, we will move over from Matei to Qamea Wednesday afternoon to stage for a 4:00am departure Thursday am to travel the ~60 nm SE to Vanua Balavu…..the trades blow from the SE so we will be heading directly into wind and seas…..not our favorite ride for sure…..it is an atoll and you need to enter around noonish to have good light to see all the reefs and coral bommies…..gulp!!!!
OK…..we are now all caught up on the happenings on Mystic!!!
Hope all is well and please drop us a line when you get a chance…..unfortunately we will be pretty much on our own from now on as everyone has different schedules and plans….we hope to cross paths with Spruce and Buffalo Nickel at some point and are waiting for our good friends on sv Bravo to catchup…..we still owe them a sushi dinner from when the Seahawks beat the 49’rs….still gives me heartburn to remember that game:))))
Take Care,
John
Mystic Moon
