After Debra and Sandy left us we stuck around Vuda Point for a few more days. I had laundry to do and needed some fresh provisions. Unfortunately only one washer and one dryer were operable, and with the number of folks trying to get to these machines I managed to get just one load of sheets washed. On Monday, I rode into Lautoka with Sally (TDM) & Kathi (Bold Spirit) on the public bus. It cost F$1. We wanted the experience of riding with the locals. Once in town, we hit some clothing shops - Sally had a dress tailor made in 3 hours for F$25! That's about USD$11, while I purchased 2 skirts off the rack for a grand total of F$9 - amazing. We had lunch, hit the market and the bread store and then caught a cab for the ride back to the marina. The price of the cab was $15 - a bit more expensive than the bus but easier to transport purchases. The main reason I paid another visit to the market was that after our fresh fruits and vegetable purchase with our guests a few days before, I'd rinsed the bugs off and had left our produce in the cockpit to dry out over night. Big mistake. I underestimated the voracious and aggressive nature of the local birds that, while we were unawares, raided our goods and then dive-bombed the boat leaving their droppings all over the place. Most of the groceries did not survive the attack. In fact while Destiny was in the marina, rinsing the bird-doo off the boat became a daily necessity - not a pleasant ordeal at all. Other than that and the fact that we had to crawl over the bowsprit onto a little wooden deck about as large as our saloon table when getting on and off the boat, we found that we quite liked this marina. The amenities were very good. But we missed Musket Cove and our friends there so on Wednesday morning, along with The Dorothy Marie and Bold Spirit we set off for Malolo Lailai.
It was nice to be back "home" in Musket Cove. They do make life easy there for us. We spent a few days bonding with our friends again. I managed to get another load of washing done there, and the weather was beautiful so we finally got the chance to do some snorkeling in the area. World-class stuff. Tourists pay good money to get to go to these spots we can access in our dinghy. At low tide we can walk around on large sandbars out in the middle of the large bays, picking up shells and watching the starfish slide along the sand. It is quite a wonderful experience. We really like Musket Cove and could just have stayed there forever but we came to see Fiji and had a lot of Kava to dispense. Jaime and Christine (ML) would be leaving at the end of June to travel home to California for a month and wanted to do some cruising up the Yasawas before they left Fiji, so we made a plan to head out with them at the next good weather window. That happened to be Sunday, June 14th. We readied ourselves, bid farewell to Baraka, Bold Spirit and The Dorothy Marie (TDM) and then as we were about to cast off the mooring we managed to convince Glen and Sally of TDM to come with us, making our way up to Waya's Octopus Resort arriving just in time to settle in for the night. A very rough, uncomfortable night. In fact it was so unpleasant in that bay that we weighed anchor just after breakfast and went searching for a better spot up the way.
----------
radio email processed by SailMail
for information see: http://www.sailmail.com
No comments:
Post a Comment