We finally left Savusavu today. Repairs done and hopefully everything, especially the engine, holds together (cross fingers, knock wood).

We left at 1215 on the end of some squally weather, but the gribs said it would be clearing up. I was a bit worried as we rounded the point into the ocean and started to slam into some good size waves and the wind was almost 20 knots on the nose. But, as advertised, the wind veered and the sea laid down and now (after dinner of Bok Choy, rice and Mahi) we are motor sailing in about 6 knots of breeze and fairly calm sea. I’d rather have the engine off, but we have to time the passage to get to the pass at Fulunga right at 1000 Saturday, so for now we’re booking some miles. 1000 is on the rising tide and also the time of day with good light so we can see the coral reefs. This place is very remote and not well charted. In fact few were allowed to visit before just a couple years ago.

So…we’re about 30 miles out of Savusavu, with 150 to go. Stars are out and we’re waiting for the moon to come up. There are no clouds for a change. Here’s hoping for a nice night.

…by Ann.

Ever since the 2010 Baja Ha Ha where we caught and filleted tuna in the cockpit (thank you Geoff Byrne) I have been craving more fresh tuna. We have caught many mahi mahi since then, but … I LOVE tuna. I love tuna from the can even. But I really love fresh tuna. And we have been carrying three packages of seaweed wrappers just in case we catch a tuna.

I am not just fixated on tuna today without reason. Monday our friends from Lightspeed, Dave and Kathy, arrived in Fiji. We last saw them in the Marquesas and have followed their blog so we were delighted to reconnect with them. And like Wrigley’s used to say…double the fun…they caught three huge tuna on their way into Savusavu! Well done! So the other day they had us over to lunch to catch up and eat TUNA! Sushi and sashimi!

Wow, so fun to catch up and so great to get such a treat. And do you know why I love cruisers? They gave us some tuna to take home! Bob just made seared tuna for dinner. Did I tell you I LOVE tuna. It was delicious!

We are dropping our new fishing lines in the water as soon as we head to Fuluga tomorrow! Wish us luck!

We are leaving Savusavu after almost four weeks. We, mostly Bob, have repaired very important systems and we are ready to go. I, meanwhile have cleaned and polished and repaired sails. The ugly side of cruising. Payment for the fun to come!

But before we depart I want to send out two important thoughts to incoming cruisers.

Firstly, beware of where you buy carved souvenirs. Our friends had quite the problem getting some beautifully carved items into the US because the proper quarantine paperwork was not available. I even went back to the store where they purchased the items to see if I could get the necessary documentation. This is difficult to do after the purchase. So make sure you get actual quarantine cleared wood. The real quarantine stickers are about 2″ x 3″ and are yellow with official green writing on them. Other stickers are not good enough for customs.

Secondly, for cruisers still headed this way from New Zealand please don’t forget to provision with the three C’s- cheese, chocolate, and coffee. These can be found in Fiji but are very expensive. I was prepared for the coffee but am heart broken that I did not know about the chocolate and cheese. I thought cheese was expensive in New Zealand and so passed on paying $8 for a large brick of cheese; it is $22 FJ ($11 US) for half that size. Ouch. And our favorite candy bar is $18 FJ vs. $2 New Zealand. In US that would be $9 vs. $1.80.

Lesson learned.. Stock your “C” foods!

I’ve attached a few miscellaneous photos below as we get ready to leave Savusavu.

There’s a weather window coming up that brings unusual North winds for a couple days.  We’re going to take advantage of it to head southeast to the farthest of the southern Lau Group.  The Lau is supposed to be a true paradise, but few visit because from here (where you have to check into the country) it is a 180 mile upwind slog against the trade winds.   Hopefully with this window, we can cover the miles going downwind and then when the trades fill back in use them to ride northwest through the Lau back towards Fiji.  If this goes as planned, we’ll be out at least a month.  Stay tuned.  We plan to leave tomorrow sometime.

In the meantime a few pictures.

Charisma (in the middle) on her mooring just off town

Ann's finished sewing the stays'l with a more permanent and proper color patch

We went for a hike. This is the suburb of Savusavu

Walking down the street, couldn't resist taking this little girl's picture.

Good thing I noticed this. The Monitor steering line was frayed almost all the way through. Hard to see because it was at the turning block that goes inside the tubing.

They have the darndest labels in the stores

It was an angel.

A Bright Angel!

Ann and I were sitting in the cockpit after dinner, marveling at the spooky weather tonight-the solstice driven full moon weaving in and out of the clouds in between the rain squalls driving down though the anchorage-when we heard an engine and saw a bright light slashing through the darkness. Both were growing closer and Ann exclaimed: “Is that light coming towards us”? “Nah” being my usual grumpy response (I take after my Dad). But just a moment later it became obvious we were about to be visited by someone-or something-out on this wild, blustery night.

Just then we heard the cry of an angel: “Ahoy Charisma”! It was Linda and Bob, and they were bearing gifts. ICE CREAM! Homemade ice cream from our favorite local spot. In fact a Coffee ice cream for Ann and a Ginger for me. Our favorites, that only our angels could know!

Wow! Just wow.

This is what we like about cruising.

(Thanks Guys)

P.S. Ann broke out the sewing machine today and did a proper repair on the staysail. The easiest part of this project was the sewing. However to do that meant emptying the locker where the sewing machine resides so we could get it out and hauled on deck. Hauling a hundred pounds or so of gear out of the vee-berth to get to the fabric, dig out the extension cord, thread…you get the idea. Everything is stored so carefully, it takes an hour to set up a ten minute project and another hour to put it all away. But the sail now has a proper repair with tanbark fabric, so it doesn’t look like Frankensail anymore.

We’ve added pictures to the blog going back to 5/20/13 when we left NZ.  Don’t forget to clear your browser history/cache or you may not see the pages with the new pictures.

In the mean time, here are some other pictures that I like that don’t fit the “story” on the blog

Here's a view up river from when Ann went up the mast

View from the top of the mast

I even got in on the mast climbing "fun" to go up and check the spreader brackets. In a picture Ann took from there, it look like the welds were cracked. They weren't-just dirt.

I couldn't help but buy this beautiful Kava bowl. It's about two feet across. Don't know how we're going to get it home, but the carving was so pretty I couldn't help it

Speaking of Kava, here's the shop where it's ground for "mass" consumption. On the outer islands, they do it all by hand

Here's the machine that pounds it up. You're walking outside and you hear this amazing synchopated beat and you just have to investigate!

And of course this story wouldn't be complete without this picture of Ann drinking Kava at the Rugby game.

Yesterday we heard this beautiful singing. We looked outside and it was a baptism in the river

It takes a while.

In the Saturday market. That's packaged Yagona (Kava) above Ann

You gotta love this sign (click the picture to make it bigger)

Back on Charisma, a closer view of the Yagona all packaged and ready for Sevusevu

Fueling by dinghy gets a little tedious...

...up the dock, across the street...

...it's about $5/US gallon...

Some of what we have to do is obvious, like “buy food and beer”, but there are also the time consuming things that you might not think of, like going to customs and getting our interim cruising plans blessed. You must check out of your first port in Fiji after which you only need check in via email or phone-but you still have to send a note once a week to let the authorities know where you are.

Also, just the act of fueling can take time. There is no easy to get to a fuel dock here. In fact there isn’t one. You want fuel? Jerry jugs. We made two trips today with two 5 gallon jugs each. 20 gallons. We had 10 in the tank and will add 10 more tomorrow plus a final run of 10 that we will tie on the deck for an emergency spare. Three hours of work for the equivalent of one fill up at a gas station back in California that would take about 5 minutes. Each run means going to shore in the dinghy, walking across the street to the gas station, jugs in hand. Filling the jugs, back to the dinghy, motor back to Charisma, haul the rather heavy jugs on deck and then pour them through a filter (to make sure this is no crud, dirt or water-I found a dead spider and some dirt) into the tank. Then, same, same all over again. Takes time and we still have to collect some regular gasoline as well for the dinghy before we can leave, since there will be NO services in the outer islands where we’re going.

Of course everyone here has to do this, I only bring this up for our friends who are reading this back in the States who wonder what we do with all our time. A lot of time we’re goofing and enjoying the life of leisure, but more often than you might thing we’re actually working to make this cruising thing happen.

We also picked up the laundry (a nice luxury when we’re in port is having it done). Ann takes it out of the bag on the foredeck, shakes it out and refolds it to ensure we have no “travelers” (read:cockroaches) to join in our adventure. She also teak oiled the cockpit and cleaned out the fridge to prepare it for the food we’ll buy at the Saturday market- which is when the freshest veggies and fruit come in.

And so it goes. We hope to leave Sunday and start the real Fiji adventure, versus the Fiji engine rebuilding adventure.

Some of the beauty of the gardens

Some of the plants didn't even look real

And it was HOT. Here's Linda from Chesapeake taking a break (and kitty)

Bob and Linda (our benefactors on the engine project) from Bright Angel on the walkway through the gardens

This gives a little impression of the enormity of the place. Behind me is the crown of the rainforest part of the gardens. This place was huge!

Our big event for today, now that we don’t have any major boat projects, was a tour of the Floral Gardens. Just 5K out of town an expat Aussie bought some land and developed it into the most fantastic haven for endangered palms. Its basically a rainforest with all this palms artfully planted within. OK, if this sounds geeky, it is and isn’t. He is actually protecting a number of species that are no longer found native in the wild. Many have been used up either in the face of resort development or gourmet food. We’ll certainly never eat hearts of palm again without ascertaining how it was sourced.

Anyway, this was a spectacular, beautiful and educational tour over a period of about three hours of walking through his park. And we enjoyed sharing the adventure with Bob and Linda from Bright Angel and Jim and Linda from Chesapeake.

There was no wind or cloud cover for most of today, so it was also smoking’ hot! We took a cab in the morning to get there, but walked the three or so miles back in the noonday heat and humidity. Wow, I needed a nap by the time we got back to Charisma.

So, light dinner and now we’re sitting in the cockpit enjoying a gentle evening breeze and the subtle glow of our citronella candles to hopefully keep the bugs at bay. So far so good.

We ran the engine again today. We now have a little more than two hours since the new parts and she’s still purring, so I have my fingers crossed that we caught the problem before it did too much more damage deeper in the engine (i.e. bearings, crankshaft, etc). That would be major no bueno. In the mean times she’s actually running more smoothly than I can ever remember.

Our plans are now to wrap up things here and get ready to leave to start exploring Fiji as early as Saturday, but more likely on Sunday. We’re thinking we might hire a cab to explore this island a bit more tomorrow and that will take at least half a day-probably more. Then, jerry jug some fuel on board (probably three trips in the dinghy times 10 gallons per trip), get fresh vegetables, some meat, beer and kava for Sevu Sevu (more on this ceremony in future blogs as we explore some of the outlying islands and villages-in the mean time you can google it to get some idea).

That translates to about $18 US. The sewing AND the fabric. All up.

What do you think?

Really fun to have something made to fit, from fabric I picked out in the store,

Picture to come-let me know what you think.

It was toward the end of dinner. We were having a lovely time with our friends Jon, Carol and their crew Jack from Arnementia (who we first met last year in Niue).

We started the evening with cocktails on the dock admiring the gorgeous sunset across the river, with the far mountains shrouded in clouds in the background across the bay. Stunning view, and great catching up on our respective journeys this past year. And given that Jon was in the British Military in the artillery, we also learned a bit about “screw guns”-artillery pieces that came apart with a couple screws that you would then cart up a mountain on the back of a mule. Used in Burma and all that.

But I digress.

So, there we were…a little later in the evening at the newest hot spot in Savusavu enjoying some curry dishes while listening to a Fijian rock band playing ’60’s Brit rock/blues when a…a creature came hopping along the floor past our table.

At first I thought it was a mouse or possibly just a hallucination. Then I turned further to look more closely (while becoming mildly alarmed) to see what kind of creature was hopping past me two feet away while I was in the midst of some lovely curried prawns.

It was a frog. Actually a rather large frog. With really long legs.

Ironically (for the frog as well as for me) I had just read a review in the New York Times (online of course) of how to properly cook frog’s legs, so this was the first thing that came to mind while munching my delicious curried prawns in the Fijian restaurant.

Fortunately for the frog, frog’s legs were not on the menu and the manager of the establishment took control and began to shoo Mr Frog back out the door the way he had come in. He was barefoot. The Manager. And he chased that frog all the way safely out the door and far away from the grasp of the very large Fijian Chef. Who was planning tomorrow’s menu. I could almost see his lips longingly murmuring “froooggggs leggggs”. In curry no doubt.

So there you have it. Another exciting night in a Fijian restaurant in Downtown Savusavu. Actually there really isn’t a downtown. Savusavu is not big enough to actually have a downtown, but you get the picture. And it’s a safe place for wayward frogs. Good thing he didn’t hop further inside where the band was drinking Kava, then all bets would have been off (although I might still bet on the frog).