 |
| There's not much to see our there but this was pretty |
We're back! We arrived in Savsavu, Fiji, safe and sound on Thursday morning after wallowing around the Koro Sea for a couple of days with extremely light (or should I say NO) winds. There has just got to be a point when one has to face the facts; if there is no wind, there is no sailing regardless of how much canvas one puts out.
Overall, our trip up from New Zealand was fortunately fairly uneventful and we arrived in Savusavu dropping anchor right beside our good friends aboard Cooee Too, Bronte & Helmke, who had come down from Tuvalu to meet us before they return to NZ later on. They'd arrived the evening before having succumbed to the iron jenny before we did. It's so fabulous to meet up with them again and, hopefully, to do a bit of exploring together.
Obviously something HAD to go wrong and this time it was the outboard motor. Once we'd settled and had a good day's rest (after a dinner of Helmke's amazing sushi), we dropped the dinghy from its resting place on the foredeck and then installed the outboard. Paul pulled and thrumb, it started first time but died as few seconds later. And, damn, that was the last time it even attempted to start. All the usual and obvious checks came to naught - it turned out to be a faulty CDI unit which means trying to fly one in from somewhere. We're still investigating where that somewhere is. In the meantime, Paul worked on our little 3.3hp Johnson and actually managed to get it running; the first time it's been used for at least a couple of years. At least we have transport again, albeit a tad on the slow side.
Other issues aboard Calypso were: the demise of one toilet, the death of our chart plotter, the $*&%@ water maker, breaking one lazy jack, a severely damaged spinnaker halyard, VHF radio command module has taken a hiatus - the list goes on and on. It's early days but Paul has already fixed the water maker (not without a few anxious moments & a few 4 letter words I might add), has almost reinstated the loo and, at least, got us mobile with the little outboard. The chart plotter is a bit of a concern as we certainly can't afford a new one and ours is so old it's highly unlikely to have spares available for it anywhere. So right now, no chart plotter and no radar - not good.
On the brighter side, we're hoping to trundle on over to the Lau Group of islands just south east of here, an area which wasn't readily open to cruisers in the past as they wanted to keep it untouched. Looking at Google Earth, the islands and atolls look wonderful - can't wait to get out there to have a look-see.
 |
| Dinner in the form of a mahi mahi |
 |
| Giving the eyeball toast |
 |
| Back aboard Cooee for THAT sushi |
