Well almost…we are in the channel and headed for the Q dock…sailing in because we ran out of fuel. Details to follow when we have had some champagne and sleep…at the Q Dock, of course.
Land Ho!
Getting ready to enter the bay at Opua.
Approaching Q-Dock (quarantine) where we spent the night waiting to pass customs in the morning.
The very nice and professional customs and immigration officials.
We are currently anchored in Momi Bay for a quick passage out of the reef around Viti Levu and the beginning of our trip to New Zealand. Two other boats that we know checked out right in front of us but did not stop for the night in Momi Bay. We decided we wanted to start fresh. There is a lot of stress that goes with moving in and out of docks to check out. Do you have the right paperwork? Is the Customs Dock clear? Where is the wind coming from? Turning around in tight locations. Lots to be stressed about.
At least our voyage checklist is complete!
Add to this stress add the heartbreak of leaving our best cruising friends,
Orcinius, John and Lisa. Rumor had it that Lisa cried as she woke up. I only cried when I allowed myself to think about the pending separation which was from my first opening thoughts of the day. We did not think we would cross paths with Orcinius as we waved good-bye to them in early June but we were blessed with a fabulous month-plus as we left Fulanga. We have had a blast with John and Lisa. So lucky we are.
And then add to that the fact that Lisa made a double batch of her wonderful chicken curry and John made a double batch of his famous spaghetti sauce to stock our freezer and you might understand how wonderful our friendship has been. Oh, and did I tell you that as we tearfully pulled away Lisa remembered the chocolate chip cookies she made for us? Yep, two cookies per day for the whole trip plus a few to cheat with. Oops, she forgot to give them to us on the dock. So after we pulled away Bob pulled one of his famous “Spin Charisma on a dime moves” and got us close enough to a dock for John to toss the cookies aboard. And we just had one and they are fabulous!
So tomorrow morning, after a restful night’s sleep and relaxing breakfast we head to New Zealand again. While we can’t wait to get there we first must pay the piper and make the crossing. Please offer prayers, cross fingers and a send good vibes our way. We will be out of Internet touch other than posting the blog for the next ten or eleven days.
See you in New Zealand! Happy Halloween!
Little buggers hit when you least expect it.
Yesterday late afternoon, Ann and I are winding down a bit from boat work getting ready for the crossing to New Zealand and Ann starts her last project of the day, boiling some eggs (great passage late night snack). “Bob, the stove won’t light”. Sometimes it just needs a nudge, so I went over to sweet talk it into action. Nothing. Nada. Hmmm, she was just using it about an hour ago to boil dried chick peas to make hummus (another great passage food) and it was working fine. Maybe the propane ran out. So, I went to the cockpit, opened the propane locker and changed tanks. Back down to the galley, switch on the tank switch, then hit the stove. No flame. Then it struck me. No noise either. When you flip the switch in the galley that controls the remote propane valve out in the locker you usually hear a little; “thunk”. That’s the solenoid opening the remote propane valve. I hit the switch a few more times and didn’t hear the thunk. Rats! If the solenoid gave up the ghost that’s not good because I don’t have a spare (although I’ve now added that to the ever growing list).
So…since it was evening by now and we’d been working all day I didn’t feel like chasing gremlins, especially since the wiring for this little beast is almost totally inaccessible in the veeerrrry back of the boat. Under the cockpit. Past the steering quadrant. Not fun. It will have to wait for tomorrow when I’m not so tired.
Morning. Take our water pot over to Orcinius where they kindly boil water for our French Press so we can have some coffee. Nothing gets done on Charisma before our morning coffee.
OK, coffee done. Now what? I opened the propane locker and stared at the solenoid. The wires that control it go through a little hole in the side of the locker and disappear under the cockpit. As I’m contemplating this fact (and procrastinating from the job I know I’m going to have to do which is to completely empty the lazarette – which I just packed yesterday – and disassemble the cockpit drain manifold so I can try and squeeze back far enough past the steering quadrant to see something) when Orcinius John came over and said; “why doncha just open this port?” There’s a 6 inch brass plate in the very back of the cockpit that covers the rudder post and allows access in case you need to use the emergency tiller. Since I always just think of it as “the emergency tiller hole”, I didn’t think of it as an access plate. (Sometimes it helps to have a second set of eyes – Thanks John). So, off comes the plate and sure enough, we have, well, access. Flashlights, mirrors and a lot of grease on our arms as we could just barely squeeze one arm in the hole and were able to see that one of the wires from the solenoid was just plane broken. It corroded at a crimped fitting and just fell off!
OK, fast forward a bit – there’s no way I can actually get to the whole length of the wire to fix it so I just cut it and ran a new one through an area I can reach. Once it’s connected I turn on the switch, light the burner and it works! Now all I have to do is put all that crap back in the laz and reconnect the drain manifold. Including the hoisting the 70 pound outboard that I just packed down there yesterday. In, out and now back in. It’s a three aspirin day already.
The only good thing about this is that I very much doubt that I could have done this repair under way. If we had left and the stove went out, we would probably have to return to port. So maybe these gremlins were actually doing us a favor this time. Hmmm.
I know that many of you think we just sail around on “vacation” but I have to tell you there is a fair amount of work involved. And more than just cleaning fishing lures.
We have been in Denarau for four days now and we are exhausted! This is what we have accomplished so far: refueled (always a stressful maneuver but especially dicey when there is so much traffic around), completely washed down Charisma, washed the dinghy, washed and stored the paddleboards, moved food stuff around so that passage meals are easier to prepare, polished the stainless steel, and most importantly….repaired the wind vane.
You might remember that our wind vane broke about 12 hours out of Fulunga. Bob managed to make a temporary repair that has lasted us through the season but neither of us wanted to depend on it to get us to New Zealand. We were able to get a new part shipped to Denarau and Bob spent the ENTIRE day replacing the broken part. I will not even pretend to explain the details of the repair. But I will share that while he was onboard Charisma rebuilding the broken part I was outside polishing the metal which like all stainless steel needs to be cleaned from time to time. We had to unbolt it from Charisma to make the repair so I took advantage of the chance to really clean it up. It took all day. At about 5 PM, John from Orcinius came over and held the reassembled monitor in place while Bob reattached it. Woohoo and Happy Diwali!
Pulling the steering gear off Charisma so we could work on the dock.
On the dock. Now if a little part drops, it won't go "kersplash".
Fortunately I had a bearing puller or I couldn't have gotten the ring gear off (in one piece).
A few of the parts and pieces including over 80 of the little roller bearings pictured.
Getting the pivot vane back on is tricky. One wrong move and 40 little bearings fall out. Helps to have a second set of hands (thanks to Orcinius John for the help)
Four bolts and it's re-attached to Charisma (yay!) And it only took all day!
Did I mention that today is Diwali in Fiji? It is a Hindu celebration of light and boy have we seen lights. Fireworks have been exploding for about four nights and tonight they were spectacular! Light over dark, good over bad, God bless us all!
But you know us, we found some time for fun too! Last night we spent a fun-filled evening on Orcinius with the daughters of our Fulungan host family. It was wonderful reconnecting with Fulunga. We had pizza and songs and laughter and lots of stories of Fulunga. Jui, Tau and Joe’s (our host family) eldest daughter is married to a guy, David, who works on one of the daily pleasure cruise ships here in Denarau. And Raijeli, Tau and Joe’s other daughter is temporarily living with them. Add to that Jui and David’s 3-year old son and David’s two younger brothers and a party is had! (Did I mention that Filipe, the 13-year old stowed away on the supply ship from Fulunga to Suva to see his new baby brother? ). What a wonderful family- and we are part of it!
Here are Tau and Joe's daughters and family. (What a fun night!)
Oh! And we stowed the cannon down below hoping that we don’t meet any pirates in June way to New Zealand!
Yup, that’s what we do at the end of the season.
More specifically, we’re almost ready to do the “jump” back down south to New Zealand, but not quite ready to do the heavy work of provisioning and preparing Charisma.
So…we’re sitting at anchor right now. Ann’s on the beach taking a walk with Lisa and I’m cleaning lures. The hooks have gotten rusty so I’ve got a file out and I’m filing the rust off the hooks and sharpening the points.
Quite an exciting life we lead sometimes!
We’re winding down the season in Fiji just anchored out in the western archipelago. Couple days ago, we were at Waya. Here’s a few pictures.
The view from one of our anchorages at Waya.
Sunset at Liku Liku Bay on Waya.
We went diving while Ann snorkeled above.
The coral's pretty healthy here.
A nice coral fan.
Diving with John and Lisa.
...and when there's nothing else to do, there's always a beer and John and Lisa's "floaties"!
We spent many hours during the first three months of this cruising season on the east side of Fiji documenting the beautiful, strong faces of our friends in Fulunga. These faces have so much character and speak to a life most of us have never dreamed of. Their faces tell of the hard work that subsistence living is. And they tell of the fun and laughter that can be shared by all ages. We love these faces.
Now, as the season winds down, we’ve been in a different kind of place. We have spent the last few weeks enjoying the Yasawas on the west side of Fiji.. The Yasawas are the tourist destination that most people experience when they visit Fiji. There are soft sand beaches lined with coconut palms in beautiful cool lagoons. And there are resorts. That’s a face of Fiji we had not really encountered this year. But an evening on a sand beach with fancy cocktails as we watch the sun slip into the ocean behind Charisma has some charm to it also. Just very different.
And today we encountered another face of Fiji. This one is the face that gets the tourists to and from Fiji. We motored back from the Yasawas starting bright and early this morning with anchors up at 6 AM. Ouch. But the timing was perfect in retrospect. As we left Liku Liku Bay, dark rain clouds were rolling that way. They missed us. As we got in sight of the big island of Viti Levu rain clouds headed toward us and veered off. Spared again. A giant sea turtle floated by unbothered by our engine noise. And we dropped anchor at noon in a bay just off the airport.
The airport is very busy. International jets, small island hoppers, helicopters and seaplanes are buzzing over head. I guess the tourists that don’t sail have to get here somehow. And to get into this bay we passed by several large freighters waiting to pull into Lautoka to offload their cargo. Yep, it’s the transportation face of Fiji.
Rumor has it that there is a pub in the two story building on shore. With Orcinius we are going to brave a whole new world and check it out for dinner. I bet we will meet some friendly faces.
Just easin’ down the west coast of the Yasawa Island Group in northwestern Fiji waters.
We’re roughly at 17 degrees 16 minutes and 177 degrees 07 minutes. We’re just off a little beach on the northwest side of the bay here on the north side of Waya Island. We were at Octopus Resort yesterday/last night ’round the other side, but the wind came up and forced us around to this side. Lucky us because it’s much nicer over here. Besides flat water instead of two foot waves, there’s no resort, just some stunning mountains that surround the little bay we’re in.
We’ve been day hopping with our friends John and Lisa on Orcinius. It’s also been nice that we’ve caught up with folks who we left Mexico with back in 2012. We had some nice catch up time with Don and Deb on Buena Vista and John and Pat on The Rose. We first met these guys in La Cruz, Mexico. Fun to catch up so many miles “down the road”.
OK, we just heard a whistle: it’s John and Lisa on Orcinius who are anchored about 60 feet away. “What!?” “Look at the moon rise”. WOW. It’s blood red rising out of the sea and reflecting off the still water. What a beautiful night after a couple days of rain and some lightning. Tonight there’s not a cloud to be seen and this amazing moon that is now 10 degrees above the horizon and has turned from red to orange.
We went snorkeling yesterday and today. Great coral, lots of fish. I think tomorrow we’re going to dive this area. It’s really surprisingly healthy looking coral.
Internet is not so good here, so no pics for a few days. We’ll try and post some when we can. At this point we’re looking to get into Denarau on the 20th, then resupply and look for a weather window to go back down to NZ.
That’s today’s plan.
Today’s excitement came from a boat dragging through the anchorage barely missing several others as it careened through in the 30 knot gusts, anchor dragging along the bottom. After a couple of us made frantic radio calls warning other boats of the danger, the dragging boat finally got under control, got their anchor up and moved to a new spot. Everyone’s a bit more nervous now in the vicious gusts and we have turned on the GPS anchor alarm on Charisma even though it will almost surely wake me up at least once tonight with a false alarm. Oh well, better that than no alarm at all if we drag.
Here's a picture of the anchor watch screen. You can see how many wind changes we've been having.
Other than that not much adventure to report. A more pedestrian day. I fixed the head which decided a couple days ago to stop working (again). You could flush but no new water would come in. We had to pour a bucket of water in the bowl to do the flush. After procrastinating the appropriate amount of time I finally took the bowl off and found that the check valve ball was stuck. I poked it and it came undone. Put the bowl back on and we’re in business again so to speak.
Ann made cookies and we finished the day with a walk down the beach. That’s about it. Tomorrow maybe if the wind lays down a bit, we’ll go to “The Caves”. One of those places where you snorkel through an underwater tunnel and come up into a cave. We’ll see.
Right now I just wish this wind would die down. The gusts are hitting so hard Charisma’s leaning over and I have to brace myself to keep from falling off the seat. And we’re at anchor!
Yes, that one. The one where Brooke Shields cavorted with what’s his name.
We sailed about 20 miles south down the west side of Yasawa in very blustery conditions. Nice to tuck in here protected on all sides. Still a bit windy, but no ocean swell to worry about.
It was probably once a beautiful spot. It still is, but in a resort kind of way. Tomorrow night we’re going to have dinner with Orcinius at the Blue Lagoon resort.
Just chillin’ for a day or so, waiting for the full moon when apparently it’s prime condition for swimmimg with the manta rays a little further south. Stay tuned for that one..