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.