That’s the universal Fijian greeting. We say it to everyone we meet on the street. With gusto! We probably say “Bula!” 30 times a day as we’re walking in town. The reply is also “Bula” along with a very big and sincere smile. Very nice people, the Fijians.

So, quick update since its late and we’re tired:

We went for an eight mile hike around one side of the island today. We ended the hike at the Coustou Resort. It’s a very upscale and fancy (but low key) resort along the water. I think run by a relative of Jacques. They graciously, but somewhat grudgingly allowed us “pond scum” to sit at their bar and have a fruit smoothie. Then we headed back into town.

Our injectors and injector pump almost made it back today. They got hung up in Labasa and won’t make it here until Monday. But at least we know we can get to work trying to get the engine working in another day or so. Cross all your fingers it all goes back together so we can get moving on.

Three other delightful “cruising moments” completed the day:
1. A new boat pulled in this morning to the mooring right next to us. After hiking all day and coming back, I took a nap, but Ann was out in the cockpit when one of the crew of the boat next door came over with HALF of a Mahi Mahi that they caught on the way into Savusavu Bay. They had too much, would we like some? Duh! So I made a delicious Sautéed Mahi fillet on a bed of Bok Choy in garlic pepper sauce. Yum.

2. As we were sitting in the cockpit finishing dinner in the dusky evening, watching the moonrise, a dinghy came by. We could recognize the profiles of our buds on Gato Go and asked them aboard. We got to hear their stories of taking the bus across the island and other adventures of the day. As we all commented-in our previous lives we mostly came home, opened the garage door, drove in, closed the garage door and went in the house, never to see or talk to the neighbors. Here, we’re an integral part of the landscape and a big part of the enjoyment is how exposed you are to the world, and therefore how many people we get to meet and enjoy.

3. Jan from “Slipaway” dropped by this afternoon while I was taking my nap. She and Ann sat up on the foredeck and yacked for 45 minutes or so and she invited us to dinner tomorrow night. Um, YES!

Just another couple of cruising moments…

A view of the harbor from up the mast (taken by Ann)

This is the harbor. It is up a river just inside Savusavu Bay

We’re still engineless, but there’s some light at the end of that tunnel.  The diesel shop has emailed and said that they should be done with the injectors and injector pump by this Friday.  What I don’t know yet is whether that means “ship” on Friday or Monday.  Since it’s the weekend, it makes a big difference in when we get them and start work trying to put them back in.  Stayed tuned on that one.  By the way, most of our friends here just shake their heads when I describe what we’re doing.  I can tell they are thinking; “thank goodness that’s not us…”  But so it goes.

Our friends from Gato Go have kindly been lending us their portable generator, so we were able to top off the batteries a couple days ago and there has been just enough sun in between the rain showers (it’s the tropics you know) to keep the batteries charged enough to keep the fridge running.  We’re keeping all other electronics as off as we can until we get the engine going again.

The head is fixed for now.  I say “for now” because the Y-Valve is very, very tight and hard to work.  I may have to “go back in” and try to do something about that, but for now am content to just let it be.

We’ve been paddleboarding in the mornings.  Really fun to skim the water just above the reef as we tool up the mangroves.  I’m not sure if I mentioned before, but Savusavu and the mooring area is actually up a river from Savusavu Bay.  We’re moored about 200 meters upriver from the bay.  From here you can go about ½ kilometer before the water get shallow with reefs.  All the boats are moored in this area along each side of the river and we’re paralleling the town which is alongside the river.  You can walk the whole town in about 15 minutes and this is one of the larger towns in Fiji.  As we move beyond here (if we can ever get the engine working) all we’ll see is small villages.   Can’t wait!

...and then there are the Fijian versions of paddleboarding...

...I think I like mine better.

It’s been great catching up with all the other cruisers that we’ve come to know over the last year or so.  Some we have not seen for over six months, like Island Bound, who just came in.  We parted with them waaay back in Bora Bora and they have been in Fiji through the cyclone season while we sat it out in New Zealand.  They just got in yesterday afternoon and we can’t wait to see them.  We were going to stop by this AM, but a squall blew through just as we were headed their way and we retreated back to the boat (and I’m doing this report while waiting for the rain to subside).

Yesterday we went to a talk on Cruising Fiji put on by an expat New Zealander by the name of Curly.  He has straggly white hair and a foot long white beard and refers to himself as Father  Christmas’ brother.  He came here something like 27 years ago and never left.  He now is the cruisers’ Google for Fijian cruising.  Whatever you want to know or need, you just call Curly on VHF Channel 16.  Anyway, fun talk, lots of useful information and most importantly some verified gps waypoints for some of the passes through the reefs.    A dozen or more yachts are lost in these waters every year-so we’re not embarrassed to take advantage of every good bit of navigation information we can get!

Curly also makes fishing lures.  “Guaranteed” to catch fish.  I asked him; “Guaranteed or what”?  He said if we didn’t catch a fish, we could come back and pull his beard.  Hmmm, I would have preferred a more useful promise of performance, but the lure was beautiful, so I bought one.  $25 Fijian, which is about $12 US.  Anywhere else a lure of this quality would have been more than twice that, so we’ll give it a try.

Here's Curly doing the chart talk

And I can’t finish this note until I mention that Ann went up the mast yesterday.  Her first time and she did admirably!  It’s plenty scary going  54 feet up the mast with a boat that’s rocking a bit (even a tiny rock is heavily amplified that high up).  I’m pleased to report there was no panic or screaming.  In fact I think she enjoyed the view.  When I asked her what it was like in one word, her response: “Exhilarating”.  She said she forgot to be scared.  Nice.

View from the top!

She went up to replace our electronic wind indicator.  We have been getting wind direction, but no wind speed.  I’ve tried about everything else to fix it, but suspected it was the windex.  Alas, even with a new (expensive!) unit, the wind is still not showing.  I’m not sure what to do at this point.  The last thing that might be causing the problem is the “black box” that receives the signal and sends it to the instruments, but there’s no way we’ll get one of those in Fiji, so we’ll have to wait till we’re back in NZ.

OK, this has gone on a bit, so we’ll give it a rest.  I can’t quite get all the pictures up because my Mac (the photo computer) has gone wonky. As I get it working better, I’ll put up pictures of the trip.  I wish I could find the OS disk, but alas it’s either buried around here somewhere or I forgot to bring it with.  Another one of those things.  If you don’t have it, somehow you make due ’cause you ain’t gonna find it out here!

Almost forgot a couple others:

Ann drinking Kava while watching the Rugby match at the Plantation Club. Perhaps emboldened by the trip up the mast?

Food vendors at the local fair

Yummy looking food. We were going to go tonight but it's been raining all day. Likely to be more of a mud pit than a fair. It's still on for two more days though

From Ann:
We are finally relaxing in Fiji. We have the engine issue “sorted” and are waiting for the repaired parts to be returned. Bob has miraculously repaired the head, the storage holds are cleaned and dried and repacked AND Bob has downloaded pictures (at least on Facebook for now)! Watch for the upload to the blog.

More importantly we were able to re-live the passage at a cruiser’s potluck last night under less stressful circumstances. There were many funny moments that just won’t translate to a blog but none the less made us smile.

Many of our smiles during the passage came from our nightly entertainment…downloading blog comments and emails. Our boat friends stuck in Marsden were really great about sending many notes. Often they came from appropriately named users as “stuckinMarsden.com” or “iceonthedocksinMarsden.com”. just the user name had us laughing. Heather on Evergreen agreed to let us share a very clever excerpt from one of our favorite emails sent by them soon after they departed New Zealand and well before they found “weather”. The names in quotation marks are the names of our friends’ boats.

“Hi Guys,
We finally got up the “Charisma” to “Slip Away” from the dock. We’re finally “Adventure Bound”! Hope it won’t be like a “Blue Rodeo” out here or else we’ll be “Evergreen” but the “Reality” is we’ve waited long enough that we “Gato Go” since our “Gypsea Hearts” long for some new places to roam. Hopefully there will be a “Bright Angel” looking out for us and the warm “Vulcan Spirit” will greet us in Fiji. We’ll celebrate in “Victory” then, hopefully with you!”

And yes…we have been celebrating with them in Fiji!

Update from Bob: I got an email from the engine guy in Suva. Looks like the: “injector nozzles are seized from the saltwater contamination, but the injector pump looks OK”. He goes on further to say he’s trying to recondition the injectors. We don’t have a firm prognosis or timeline yet, but we’re making progress.

More importantly, we have a date with Eagle’s Wings to go paddle boarding up the mangroves tomorrow morning and we have no major projects right now, so can happily get off the boat and get some exercise! Yay.

Yup, got the head project done today. Y-valve reassembled, hoses degunked and all reinstalled. And bonus-it works!

I’m paying for it though. Even though I only stabbed myself once, there are a lot of sore muscles and I’m so exhausted today, I sent Ann to dinner with the boys from Gato Go who are moored nearby. I’m just too tired to be sociable. But tomorrow’s a new day and one without a major boat project, so we’ll have some fun. If the weather’s good, we’ll paddleboard up river into the mangroves with our friends from “Eagles Wings” who also bought boards in Whangarei.

Also, hopefully the engine shop in Suva will have received the injectors and injector pump by then (it will be Monday here) and I might get some indication from them on where we stand on getting them repaired.

As for the head hose-it took a bottle of acid to clean two, four foot sections. Even then, there were a couple of spots where I finally whacked it with a winch handle to break the clog. Brutal, but if you live on a boat, this is a fairly regular bit of maintanence. About every two years it seems.

Our batteries are getting low without the engine to charge them a bit. Since its partly cloudy pretty much every day, the solar panels don’t quite keep up. Fortunately, Gato Go has generously offered their portable generator. It delivers AC power and plugs into the dock power outlet. If it works as advertised, tomorrow I’ll process some photos and get ’em up.

Till then…

I didn’t know what else to title this.

Gotta take the toilet out...

...gotta leave it somewhere out of the way...

And you always wondered what a broken flapper valve looked like.

Spent the DAY pulling out the head (i.e. toilet) hose. It’s completely clogged. Not with what you think though. It’s a calcium type crud. Apparently uric acid amd seawater makes a strong brew that creates a powerful mineral. So… The hose is solid mineral gunk. Anyway, it’s one of the more brutal jobs on the boat to get it out. It’s deep under the cabinet where the sink is and I can only get one arm and my head (sort of) inside. I got all the hose out and it’s soaking in the water over the side waiting for tomorrow’s exercise of pouring acid in it to break up the mineral crud and then banging it on the rocks over on shore to break it all loose. I just hope I don’t get arrested!

In the mean time, Ann had an equally thankless job of continuing to clean out the food lockers. She had to empty them completely and then clean the saltwater that found its way in, and the mould that was starting to form. Then clean each Can or container to keep it from rusting and then repack the whole thing, while also managing our inventory system. Not a lot of fun. It’s the same on all the other boats that are now straggling in. Everyone has stories about how this year was the worst…and everyone has repairs they are working on, from engines to shredded sails.

The price of entry to paradise.

On another subject-we already miss John and Lisa who flew out of Savusavu Friday morning. Many tears were shed by all, but we’ll see them again for more cruising adventures next year (maybe sooner) when their boat is repaired and ready to go!

Partially disassembled...

Injector pump on its way to Suva

Yup, head down on the engine. I’m getting a real lesson in diesel engine rebuilds here. Here’s a list of the stuff taken apart today.
-fuel lines. Not only the four hard lines but about six other soft ones to the fuel pump, return line, etc
-Four injectors, eight bolts and multiple other stuff to get these guys out
-Intake Manifold. Turns out while there are “only” three bolts that hold down the injection pump, one of them is inaccessible without removing the manifold. This also means dismantling the dipstick holder, throttle cable and air intake filter as well. Not part of the plan.
-Timing gear plate. Once I got to the three bolts that hold the injection pump on, I found that the pump shaft is pressed onto a timing gear that doesn’t come out. You can access it through an inspection plate and see it, but it won’t come out with the injection pump.
-injection Pump. Finally got access to this guy. As above, it wouldn’t just come out. It’s pressed onto the timing gear. I had to disassemble the timing gear box nut and then with hammer and punch, bang the shaft out.

OK, I won’t mention that I had to learn how to identify where “Top Dead Center” is on cylinder #1, because if you don’t somehow reassemble the thing with the same alignment when it comes back the engine will explode…or something probably much worse. All you have to do is get a mirror, slide it along the side of the engine to the hole in the bell housing and look for the little etched mark on the flywheel as you rotate the main shaft with your socket wrench. Huh?

OK, so the whole mess is now on its way to Suva. I have no clue where we go from here. I’m trying not to think about getting the thing put back together.

So…tomorrow, we’re taking a break since there’s nothing we can do now until the parts come back–hopefully in a couple weeks or sooner. In the mean time we’re going to paddle board and then spend the afternoon and evening with John and Lisa (at their Villa) before they have to fly back to NZ on Friday. I promise to get some pictures up in the next couple days. It’s just been nonstop the last few…

Contaminated fuel. It should be "clear" but instead was opaque and milky. Saltwater up the vent pipe.

A borrowed transfer pump made fast work of draining the tank so I could clean it and bleed the fuel lines of the contaminated fuel.

Well, the good news-as they say-is that we’re in Fiji. The bad news is that the entire fuel system has been contaminated with saltwater. Apparently one or more of the waves during the last couple days must have forced itself up through the fuel vent. I know that several slammed Charisma pretty hard. All the fuel is trash. It was a milky white/dirty brown looking mess when I opened up the tank inspection plate. I spent most of today working on draining it and cleaning the tank, while Ann was cleaning out lockers, drying them and cleaning the mold that develops on the wet, salty surfaces. Why do we do this you ask? I have no idea. It is so far from fun right now, I just can’t explain. And the money flows out–turns out I have to remove the fuel injection pump and all four injectors and send them to Suva,which is the closest city with services capable to recondition them. Cha Ching!

I have no idea how to take all this stuff apart much less put it back together, but that will be tomorrow’s problem. For now-sleep. We have had no let up in working on fixing all the stuff that got beat up from the crossing. Interestingly we’re now hearing from some other folks who left a week or so after us and they too are getting hammered by unexpected weather. There will be lots of stories to tell among the yachties in Fiji this year.

Pictures will come in the next couple days as I get sorted out. The key right now is to yank the parts and send them out-then we can chill for a while while we’re waiting to get them back-which I am very optimistically thinking might take a week. If only it goes that fast.

Oh, wait a minute—the head’s still broken. Oh well, we have been taking the dinghy ashore for that business. Requires a bit of planning, but we’re managing…

More importantly, today we celebrated Lisa’s 50th birthday. She volunteered to do the passage with us to document the big year. We think she got the “E” ticket ride, don’t you!