Posted by John
We stayed in the Vuda Point Marina for a week. With no finger piers between boats for access, we learned to time climbing on and off with the tide. We climbed on and off from the bowsprit. There’s a hefty tidal range, so waiting for a mid-tide was the easiest, but not always convenient. For most of the week we waited for our cruising permit. Why ours took so long we don’t really know. It was supposed to come to the marina office by email, but the internet in Fiji has been messed up intermittently since we got here. We finally received one directly from the customs people when they came to check-in more boats on Monday. The permit is required to move the boat around within Fiji waters.
Once we were finally popped free from our spot in the marina, we took the boat around the corner to Saweni Bay. It doesn’t have the amenities of the marina, but it doesn’t cost anything, either. It also has a nice beach. We got together with several other boats we’ve met over the last two years: Me Too; Windrose; Terrapin; Mezzaluna; Enough and Spill the Wine. Plus a few others we hadn’t met yet, including one whose blog we’d been reading before we left home. We all took our dinghies to the beach, built a bonfire, and had a Fourth of July barbecue, organized by Clay from Me Too. We shot off sky rockets while singing The Star Spangled Banner. Robyn finds it somewhat ironic that, so far, her two most memorable Fourth of July events have been outside of the USA.
We wanted to visit Musket Cove, a resort on an island about fifteen miles away but within the Fiji reef system and, therefore, lacking any ocean swell. We heard that the whole place was jugged up with boats participating in the ARC Round the World Rally so we waited a few more days until they departed for their next destination. Although Windrose had reserved two spots in the little med-moor marina, we decided to anchor out rather than deal with another difficult-to-access-the-boat situation. Unfortunately, we had to anchor too far out, with too much fast boat traffic and choppy water to row all three of us all the way in. Our outboard needs a new carburetor, apparently because it sat unused on the deck in New Zealand for too long, and by the time we tried to clean out the carburetor, the screws were frozen in place. So we watched resort guests arrive and leave by seaplane, helicopter and ferry boat, and we rowed around the shallow reef towing a snorkeling Robyn behind. It was actually a very nice place to spend our last night on the boat.
After two nights anchored in Musket Cove, we returned to Vuda Marina, arriving ahead of the scheduled time of our haulout and placement in the cyclone pit. We tied to the buoy in the center of the circular marina and waited. When they appeared to be ready, we started the engine and got all set to release the mooring when they gave the signal. But then they towed a big, heavy, wood-hulled ketch over to the lift, and took it out instead. It broke the travel lift. We weren’t going anywhere for a while. They let us stay tied to the buoy.
We moved off the boat anyway, hitching a ride to shore with a marina employee and spending the night in one of the marina’s little guest cottages as we had planned. It’s kind of our halfway house, I guess, as we ease back into a life on shore.
That was Tuesday. It took until Thursday until they were ready to haul us out. We were taken back out to the boat—still in the center of the marina—around 7:30 in the morning. We backed into the travel lift. A diver dove beneath the boat to place the slings in the proper position, then tied them together underwater, as well as above the water, and after lifting us a few feet out of the water, they placed even more horizontal strapping to keep the sling from slipping up the sloping keel. Compare this to the yard in Opua, where we were asked to put little stickers on the hull to show where we wanted the slings placed.
We still have a lot to do here in the next couple of weeks to secure everything before finally leaving for home, but the boat is now stuck in a hole in the ground, and we are no longer living on it. Although, I’m pretty sure something will try to move in and make a home while we’re gone. This is the tropics, after all.
