We are now headed back toward Vuda Marina where we may make a brief stop to do some re-provisioning before heading out to the Mamanuca Islands, Musket Cove. It depends if we can pick up some fresh vegetables somehwere along the way. Our plan will be to stay in Musket Cove a few days before checking out of Fiji in the port city of Lautoka and heading off to Vanuatu.
Tuesday, June 7, 2011 - Baked Brownies
In anticipation of our dinner with Tui's family in Matakawa Levu Village on the opposite island from our anchorage, I decided to bake some brownies to bring over for dessert. I spent most of the morning on Skype with Adobe Software talking to a very nice man in India who led me through some pretty complicated procedures to get my licensing to work again with my design suite software. When my old Mac crashed and I migrated all my software and documents from my clone drive to the new Mac, the Adobe stuff didn't work right anymore. It's taken several weeks to fix this particular aspect of the migration. Anyway, it was all a success. It's quite amazing that while I am in Fiji, a man from India can take remote control of my desktop through a Skype call, and get the computer fixed up.
After brownie making and computer fixing, we decided to go for a dive on the reef shelf at the end of the island. It was our second dive without an instructor. There was a gentle downward slope that dropped down to 18 meters. We saw some beautiful soft corals, huge clams, puffy stars, purple stars, parrot fish, lion fish, and powder blue damsels. At the end of our dive, we were feeling more confident with our skills and our equipment. As we were leaving the dive site, a man was waving us down on the shore. His name was Sosi. He had heard that we had reading glasses and was wondering if he could have a pair. Dr. Russ and his eyeglasses are a big hit. We told him, we would come back the following day and bring him a pair.
After our dive, we scooted around the anchorage to welcome a couple of new boats, Verite and Pickles. We haven't seen Pickles since we all went to the Nuapapa School in Tonga together. It's nice to see familiar faces. We returned to the boat, took showers, gathered our gear, turned on the anchor lights and headed toward the opposite shore. It would be dark when we returned in our dinghy. Fortunately, the wind was almost non-existent our ride was very smooth across the lagoon. Tui and his niece Kuna met us as we pulled our dinghy on the shore. He welcomed us and reminded Russ as we headed toward the village to remove his hat.
Tui introduced to a few of his neighbors as we walked toward his home. When we reached his home, we met his family, his parents Ralulu and Livia, and his wife Kelera. We took off our shoes, or I did, Russ has gone so native he doesn't wear shoes anymore. We walked through the kitchen to the living room where we sat with Ralulu and Tui and learned about their village and Tui's school days. He had once attended the Somo Levu Catholic Mission School that we had visited a few days earlier. From his home to the school was a daily walk and swim. It would take him over an hour to get to school, 20 minutes of it was swimming across the bay with his school uniform held high over his head. While we waited for dinner, we brought out a few gifts for the family. We gave Kuna a balloon and a wind up music box,
We enjoyed a lovely meal prepared by Kelera and Livia. We had snapper in a coconut sauce, skip jack wrapped in Taro leaves in a coconut cream, breadfruit, and kasava root. Everything was delicious. The family and people in the village grow all that they need. After dinner, we returned to the living room where Kelera spread a cloth on the floor mats and set up after dinner tea with fresh sliced bread and brownies.
Kelera, Tui, Tui's cousin, and Kuna (the young people) sat up while we were instructed by Ralulu that the older people lay down on their stomachs. We were given some pillows to make this easier. It is a little challenging to drink tea from this position, but we got used to it and had a great time.
Livia presented Russ and me with some jewelry that she had made. Russ's necklace is made from shark's bone and mine is made from hematite. Tui said he, Kelera, and Kuna would bring us some fresh scone bread in the morning before our shark dive. We said our goodbyes and headed back to our boat. The water was calm, the moon was shining and the sky was filled with stars.
Wednesday, June 8, 2011 - Shark Dive
We were up by seven and the tea kettle was boiling just as Tui, Kelera, and Kuna arrived at 7:30. They brought a basket filled with papaya "popo", limes, and the brownie container filled with a moist scone bread. We enjoyed a nice breakfast with them before we said our goodbyes. The Ralulu's headed back across the lagoon and we headed toward shore and the dive boat.
The Wednesday morning boat was filled with divers. A university class, organized by the University of Utah, was aboard the dive boat. About 15 students had taken the open water diving course and were earning credits in sustainable, ecologically friendly tourism. The shark dive was the grand finale to a weeks worth of learning and diving.
Everyone was just a bit nervous about this dive, who wouldn't be, diving with sharks? When we got to the dive site, we were instructed to descend down the buoy line, then swim to a horizontal line stretched between two coral heads. We all wore enough weights to sink us to the bottom so that we could stand easily and not drift away. We formed a wall of human bodies behind the line.
Once everyone was settled, the dive masters started bringing down big garbage cans of fish parts, chum, which they emptied out about 15 feet from where we were all standing. Before they even emptied the cans, thousands of fish were gathered for the feed. We saw wrasse, bass, snapper, and lots of little fish. After the chum hit the ground, a frenzy of feeding began. Pretty soon the sharks started to circle. First the black tipped and white tipped reef sharks appeared.
We could tell when the big boys were coming because the smaller fish would split off and away from the chum like a synchronized swim team. The lemon sharks were huge. I'm guessing they were at least six feet long and weighing 250-350 lbs. Some of the other divers with under water cameras have promised to send us copies of their photos or links to their photos, but in the meantime, here is a photo from Wikipedia:
There were a couple of times when I nearly swallowed my whole regulator. The big guys would pickup a large piece of fish they couldn't quite get with a single swallow, and toss it about a bit until their jaws could get it positioned for a gulp. As they would do this twitchy little dance with their teeth flashing, they would swim right towards the human body line and would get within a couple of feet of us before turning.
Fortunately, the sharks really do prefer fish, and if there wasn't enough dead fish for them, there were plenty of nearby appetizers with fins, dorsal not swim fins.
Our dive and shark show lasted for about 40 minutes and then we headed back up to the dive boat. All in all it was very exciting, and the best part....we lived to tell about it. We returned to the boat, ate lunch, and did some reading. Russ took the dinghy to shore to deliver a pair of eyeglasses and to drop off some garbage. We returned later in the evening for a glass of wine and dinner with new friends, Denise and Thomas. We had lovely last evening at Blue Lagoon.
Thursday, June 9, 2011 - Goodbye Blue Lagoon, Hello Soso
We got up early and started to stow things away for our departure. Our plan was to hang around until at least 10:00 in the morning when the sun was higher in the sky, better to see reefs. We heard a boat approaching around 8:00 a.m. and thought it might be Tui, but it was Sosi and several other men from the resort. They were bearing departure gifts from Va and her family. She sent out a beautiful bouquet of flowers, a coconut bowl and woven stand that she had made the night before, a bag of limes, and lemon leaves for tea. I think she thought that we would be leaving without coming to shore again.
Once we had almost everything ready to go, we went into shore one last time. We needed to pickup our dive gear at the dive shop, pay our dinner bill from the previous night, and say our thank yous and goodbyes to all of the lovely people at Nanuya. And of course, we wanted to stop and say good bye and vinaka to Va and her family. Va was delighted to see us, and we both had tears in our eyes as we gave each other parting hugs. Yes, we would definitely come back to see her if we come back to Fiji. As we left, she wanted to give us one last gift, a beautiful snail sogasoga shell.
We lifted the dinghy up on the davits, weighed anchor at 10:20, and headed south towards Naviti Island and Soso Bay. We had met some other cruisers in Blue Lagoon, Ernesto and Vera on Libertee, who had given us some good waypoints for the eastern side of the island. Worrall Wind spent the rest of the morning and early part of the afternoon playing connect the dots until we threaded our way through the reefs to Soso Bay on Naviti Islands.
This bay is not as protected as Blue Lagoon and the wind has picked up a bit blowing in some clouds. As I write this blog this evening, we are getting gusts up to 20 knots and we are bucking about a bit. We were planning on just spending on one night here, and heading out early tomorrow for an all day motor sail to Musket Cove, but it looks like that won't happen now until Saturday morning. We went into shore this afternoon to bring kava to the chief and do a sevusevu with him, and were invited to come back tomorrow to visit the village and school. Somehow, we can't pass by a school without a visit.
The Chief and his family were thrilled to receive the kava as well as several pairs of reading glasses for the elders. As we were leaving the village today, a man came up to the shore in a boat and called us by name. "Do you remember me?" he asked. Of course, we did. It was Leve, the man who called his ancestors the Manta Rays and made it possible for us to see at least one. He is now an old, new friend.
Friday, June 10, 2011 - Naviti School, Village, and Popo Scones
This morning we motored over to the village in our dinghy so that we could visit the school. Taru, one of the chief's granddaughters escorted us to the school. Two of the teachers were either ill or out of town, so classes 3 & 4, 5 & 6, had no school. Class 1/2 was in session as was class 7/8. We spent an hour at the school visiting the two classes. The school in Naviti is one of the best equipped schools we have been in.
The children in class 7/8 ranged in age from 12-14. They were working on geometry and coordinates. Talking latitude and longitude with them fit right into their studies. And as usual the globe was a big hit as they found their island. Just like American tweens, the boys were pulling their pens apart, poking one another, and were balls of energy confined to a classroom. The girls claimed that they worked harder than the boys and from the looks of it they were much more attentive to their studies.
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| Class 7/8 in Naviti |
The children in class 1/2 were very sweet. They too loved the globe and sang several songs to us.
After our visit to the school, we walked around the village with Taru taking photos of the church and buying some bananas and papaya (popo).
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| Taru and Russ in the Methodist Church |
A larger group of visitors was expected after 2:00, and we were invited to return to the village in the afternoon as the ladies would have their handcrafts on display for sale and the village entertainers would provide some entertainment. Russ and I returned to WW for lunch. I took a short nap as the southeast tradewinds blew through the boat.
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| Preparing for Lunch Party in Community Hall |
After our entertainment and the large tour group left, Russ and I hung around and got a lesson from Taru and her Aunt Aggie on how to make papaya scones (cake). After you husk a coconut, you grind up the white meat, mix in a bowl with soft papaya, add water and squeeze out the milk. Pour the wet coconut/papaya through a strainer to separate out just the milk.
The coconut/papaya milk is mixed into a dry mixture of 4 cups flour and 8 teaspoons of baking soda until a sticky batter is made then spooned into a buttered pan. We were given a pan full of batter to take back to the boat and bake. Taru had been such a gracious guide to us all day, we were happy to give her a ride out to our boat as she had expressed an interest in a visit.
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| Taru and Roz |
Tomorrow morning we will take bake the cake pan with half of the cake for Taru and her family along with some photos we have taken of them. We were planning on heading to Musket Cove but are now planning a return to Vuda Point tomorrow. Apparently the buoys are booked for an incoming NZ race group.
Saturday, June 11, 2011 - Goodbye Naviti - Back to Vuda
We got up this morning and prepped the boat for a long day back to Vuda Point. The sky was clear and we had a nice breeze. Before we hauled up the dinghy, we motored to shore to say goodbye to the people in the village and to return the cake pan. We had printed off some nice photos of some of our new friends and wanted to give them as parting gifts.
After our goodbyes, we made our way back to the boat, raised the dinghy and weighed anchor by 9:20. We were on our way back to Vuda. We motored, we sailed, and we motor sailed all the way back, following our waypoints like a faithful dog with his nose to the track.
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| Have you got a Big Mac to go? |
It was a beautfiul day. Our only surprise was the little man in a homemade corrigated metal canoe who paddled like crazy to intercept us a couple of miles off shore. We were undersail moving about 6 knots, but his intent was to catch us. We slowed the boat and pulled into the wind so that he could paddle along side. Had Russ and his eyeglasses traveled this far? No, but did we have any food he asked? He had been out fishing all morning, hadn't caught anything, and we looked like the drive through window of a fast food restaurant. We happily handed over some crackers, cheese, cookies, bananas, and water. He was very cute and most appreciative.
We returned to Vuda about 4:00. The marina office was closed, but our friends on Trim said there was a space open next to them, so we glided in, tied off, hooked up the water, plugged in the electricty, took showers, and headed to the bar! Nice to be back in port for a few days.
That's it for now.
All is well with the 2 Sail R's on Worrall Wind
