Suva, Fiji

Now that we’re here, our first tasks were to go in search of batteries and to remove the windlass.  As we’d not seen any smoke coming out of the anchor chain locker itself, we were living in hopes that it was something else and voilà, there appears to be no damage to either the windlass or the solenoid; it was the heavy duty cabling leading from the batteries that had chafed through and caught on fire. How we didn’t go up in flames is an absolute miracle!  Inside the panelling along the port side of the forepeak, the wood is burnt black and the cabling a melted mess. Just there is a shelf with paperbacks and several packages of kava (very dried roots) so we can thank our lucky stars that we still have a boat.  Paul has already bought the replacement cabling and will check everything connected to it as the wires to the nav lights were also burnt out.

The burnt  panel

There is, believe it or not, a huge battery factory here in Suva, just up the road from where we’ve anchored.  The Marketing Manager arranged to collect us to see what they have to offer and he and another chap actually came aboard to see our current set up.  We’ve never seen two more terrified faces as they boarded our dinghy to get to Calypso in mirror-like conditions. Both Indian fellows and their faces were white, not to mention the knuckles on their hands as they clung for dear life to the rungs of the dinghy.  But, extremely helpful and they ended up lending us a couple of batteries until things were sorted out. We even got a tour of the factory which fascinated Paul but me, well Yippee!

Cooee have gone!  One minute there was no weather window for them so we were making plans for at least another week of activities and the next, gone.  Suddenly things changed and if they went right then, they had the best opportunity for quite a while. So, we rushed into town for them to clear out, pick up a few veggies, had them over for a farewell dinner and, sad to say, they sailed off into the night.  We’re going to miss them terribly and can’t say enough thanks for their company, the fish, the welding, the help & advice, all those fabulous meals and sojourns together.  Cheers, we’ll see you in Cape Town.

Now that we’re back in Suva, we couldn’t wait to see how Peter of Troutbridge had managed over the past year.  If you recall, poor Peter put Trouters on the reef as he was heading into Suva just over a year ago. After many days of heavy work, he was able to get her hauled to the Royal Suva Yacht Club and place her on the hard to access the damage. Not a pretty sight; the keels had been ripped off and a good proportion of the boat had spent several days under water when she flipped. 

Over a year later, she is still not quite ready to set off but she now seems seaworthy albeit a bit Spartan.  Apart from the hulls being holed and all the internal water damage, all electrics, electronics, fridge, stove, furnishings have been lost.  He’s done an amazing job on a very limited budget but she’s afloat and, hopefully, we’ll be seeing him along the route to Australia.  Whenever we get down over things going wrong, all we have to do is think of a few others, Peter included. 

If ever you wanted to read a story of endurance, check out his blogsite at http://blog.mailasail.com/troutbridge to follow how it all happened and how he managed to save her. Quite a tale.

The major job of converting our companionway into a battery compartment is almost complete and, at this stage, we have three out of the five new ones installed which means that we can actually turn on some lights at night, hooray!

Dravuni, Kadavu

 

Eventually it comes time to move on and say farewell.  We took a hike over the hill to the first village, said a sad goodbye to everyone, then strolled over to the second one to do the same.  Our time on Oneata had been absolutely wonderful so it was with heavy hearts that we said our farewells.  We had decided to leave in the morning to head for Kadavu (pronounced Kandavu), an overnight trip.

 

Setting off around 8 in the morning with two challenges: firstly as always, if there are two or more boats heading in the same direction, it’s a race!  Secondly, let’s see who catches the most fish.  The final score: one / one.  Cooee arrived at our chosen destination a couple of hours ahead of us but we caught more fish.  It turned out to be a rather rough passage – one of those we’d prefer not to repeat too often but we arrived safely at the island of Dravuni, another very pretty spot.

Preparing cassava

The following morning, we went into the village to meet the chief to perform sevusevu.  He had gone to a church meeting on the main island of Ono for the day with all the ladies so the mayor, Isaac, welcomed us in his stead.  While the ladies were away, the men were working together to make the food for the evening meal, grating coconut and cassava in preparation.  We were invited to join them for their kava drinking ceremony that night.  The entire village was there and Bronte met some of the younger guys and was able to make arrangements to go spear fishing the next morning.

 

Our time there was fairly relaxed just socialising, fishing and abit of hiking up the hill which offered a wonderful view around the northern reaches of Kadavu. But the weather was a tad rough for a while which kept us confined to our boats during those days. However, we did join in the church service one Sunday which, of course, was followed by a fabulous lunch spread with one of the families. 

For a bit of a change, we spent a few day anchored at Namara, an uninhabited island nearby where the snorkelling was quite good but we were running out of food and Cooee needed to start thinking about fuelling up for their return trip to New Zealand.

Unfortunately, (isn’t there always something in this category) while we were lowering our anchor at Namara, Calypso was suddenly filled with smoke in the forepeak.  We instantly shut everything down but the smoke was so thick we couldn’t see a thing.  It just had to be our windlass – damn, damn and double damn!  As I write this, it is weeks later and the smell is still strong.

This and the fact that we were really living on borrowed time with our batteries confirmed it, we had to get to Suva to try to sort things out.  The trip to Suva was just over 40nm and the day gave us perfect conditions.  And now comes another “unfortunately”. We had lost our chart plotter in Minerva so were reliant on our handheld GPS and computer but both these died on this trip so we arrived amid the reefs of Suva blind.  Fortunately (yeah there are some of those as well) it was a calm clear day and we could easily see the reefs.  We pulled into a little bay a few miles from the Royal Suva Yacht club where some kind sole has placed a few free mooring buoys- a Godsend when you have no windlass.   And a much prettier spot than the grubby harbour of Suva.

PHOTO GALLERY:

 

Oneata village kids say goodbye

Grating Coconuts

Kava (again!)

Paul & the chief

Dishing out the goodies prepared by the men

Pounding the kava

Another Springbok supporter

Cooee & Calypso at anchor

Lunch after church

Bronte's grouper - this one fed an entire village

Found this banded snake eel in our dinghy

In the distance, you can make out the outer reef

And crystal clear waters

Three little piggies....

So Shy

Vakananumi Ni Vatu

Oneata has a rather unique special celebration called Vakananumi Ni Vatu (try to pronounce that one) which takes place on the 9^th July each year and we were fortunate enough to be there and receive an invitation to join in.  This is a huge religious event marking the arrival of the first missionaries to Fiji back in 1830.  Three apparently arrived in Oneata first and at least one is buried there (there are rumours that at least one of the others was eaten).   

The start  of the procession

Both villages joined in a procession to the hallowed grounds singing in unison as they walked.  A special church service was performed and this, of course, meant another big feast.  This time, the food included some boiled pork which, surprisingly enough, was really very nice, accompanied by the inevitable boiled cassava, boiled sweet potatoes, boiled fish and boiled spinach in coconut milk. All this was followed by a banana and custard dessert (probably boiled) but quite delicious.

H and I carried on our own tradition of providing a loaf of bread or salad or cookies for each of these events, all of which were gratefully accepted.

Mary in her 'after' outfit

This is a day of dusting off the very best of Sunday best.  The school children all wear their uniforms and the adult women are primarily dressed in white.  Men wear full suits and ties (suits in Fiji have sulus instead of trousers) and the little ones are dressed in all the frills and fancies.  Someone neglected to tell us that we should try to wear white but no one seemed to mind.  Just as well, I can’t think of anything we have aboard Calypso that is white – grubby grey maybe, but white, no.  However, once the religious aspect was over, all the most colourful outfits were brought out, many new outfits specially made for the occasion.

After lunch, a few of the chaps played cricket which was then followed by a kava drinking ceremony.  Kava, if you remember from our visit to Fiji last year, is a drink made from the root of a shrub akin to the pepper tree family. This is then dried and ground, mixed with water and drunk in copious quantities throughout this part of the world.  All villagers seem to love it and get quite ‘high’ on the stuff.  Most of us pelagis (foreigners) find it somewhat distasteful. 

This particular ceremony was, we discovered, also a fund raising for the church.  We were absolutely amazed at how much was raised on this occasion especially as B and H had told us about the school fund raising prior to our arrival and the amount achieved then.  Heaven only knows how they manage to come up with these amounts but they are extremely community-minded people and have no qualms about giving all to these causes.

PHOTO GALLERY:

The school mistress & her husband

Una in a traditional tapa costume

 

The minister & his family

The kiddies at lunch

Preparing the kava

All the colours at the fund raising

We're not doing anything, honest

H & Mary drinking kava

Anyone for cricket?

Looking ever so professional

Life on Oneata was a joy.  The anchorage was a tad rolling at times but spending time with the locals was worth this small discomfort.  We joined the villagers for their church service one Sunday which was followed by a big lunch consisting of fish, sweet potatoes, cassava and their version of spinach done in coconut milk.  We were always invited to lunch whenever we visited one or other of the villages, in fact, we got the impression that they’d love us to visit every day to eat with them but, we had to confess, boiled fish, boiled root crops and boiled spinach loses its appeal after a while.

 

Thursday is cricket day.  All the younger chaps from both villages gather on the village green to enjoy a full day of the game and some are darned good both batting and bowling.  In fact, two play for the Fijian Under 19 team and one plays for the national side in Under 21 and is off to South Africa shortly for a three month tour.  Amazing when you realise just how far from any sort of town/city life these islands are. 

The village green lies in the centre of the homes and church and that means that some of them are within the cricket boundaries making for very interesting scoring.  With this and the many piglets, dogs and chickens running freely across the pitch, the game is far from boring.

 

Each village has its own church but there is only one school.  Helmke and I were asked to take a group photo of all the children in front of the schoolhouse which was a fun thing to do.  Extremely well behaved and polite, they stood patiently while we took literally dozens of photos just to be sure.  Afterwards, they lined up for their lunch, something the villagers take turns to make each day.  Afterwards, we could see them all standing in the school yard cleaning their teeth.  As a whole, the older villagers have terrible teeth but it looks as though this problem is being addressed with the younger ones.

The  "official" school photo

Fishing wasn’t as good as we’d hoped.  The guys went out spearfishing on several occasions but

either didn’t find much or, in Bronte’s case, every time he shot something big, the sharks took it from him.  Before long, the sharks were becoming a major issue; one actually bumped him which was a close encounter of the unwanted kind.  So one day Bronte decided to take Cooee out trawling in the hopes of catching something big.  The idea was to follow the outside of the reef around the atoll in the deeper waters but for some crazy reason, all the bites were within the boundaries of the atoll. When Paul & I first arrived, we caught and lost something huge just after passing through the reef’s opening and almost in the same spot, Bronte caught a huge Spanish mackerel or waloo as they call it here.  Apart from that, we really didn’t manage to pick up anything else but this was big enough to keep us in meals for a while and absolutely delicious too, especially as it meant another one of H’s sushi evenings.

Bronte doing his smokin' thing

On another occasion, we went quite ’native’ after the guys managed to bring home a few medium sized fish that we decided to smoke.  B & H had learned how to make a palm-frond smoke house while they were in Tonga so we set about preparing one.  It took almost the entire day to build and then smoke the fish but they were delicious and the smoke house was a masterpiece.  

PHOTO GALLERY:

Cricket fielders of the porker variety

The church on the village green

 

Aspiring cricket star

 

Dad, when can I play?

 

Paul fielding

Unusual field obstructions

The team

Preparing the smokehouse

Even I managed to do some weaving

Muffins in paradise

 

The students lined up for lunch