May 11, 2010 – SavuSavu & The Copra Shed Marina

We spent much of the morning struggling with internet.  We had purchased our Wifi access the previous day and were reminded we are back in the land of …"if you want Wifi you gotta pay – dearly".  We purchased the maximum 30 hours for the ungodly price of $150.00.  Now we have GOT to remember to logout whenever we finish being online or it will be an expensive "oops!".  And although the salesperson told us, "Yes, yes of course you can pick it up on your yacht, No problem. We have very good signal.  Good antenna."  No we can-not.  Because I had to find something to complain about that is it.  We just stuff our laptops into the dry bag and tote them to shore in our dingy. We were spoiled in New Zealand being able to get the signal just about anywhere through our Vodafone "stick". I had intended to go through our clothing and sort out the summer stuff from the winter stuff and to put away anything that has more than a short sleeve.  But we got distracted.  It is hotter than blue blazes here.  Everyone is commenting that the heat seems to have intensified.  Five minutes out of the shower and the profuse sweating begins.  Your clothes stick to you as you are putting them on.  I guess I grew up in this kind of heat but don't remember it being so intense because we were always in air-conditioning.  Here you just have to live with it.  We will acclimate eventually. After all we left NZ wearing double layers of sweats, so it will just take a bit of time to adjust. We are moored just about 100 yards from the dinghy dock at The Copra Shed Marina, run by a wonderful young lady named Dolly.  Her husband, Robin is chef at the café in the same building.  The set up here is quite convenient.  Within one building are a small chandlery, a boutique, a Wifi office, a yacht club (with bar and restaurant), a café, a real estate office, and a tour-booking office.  Dolly is arranging for our parts to be shipped to us here.  She will also arrange for our laundry to be picked up and washed, dried, folded and delivered back to us for $9 per load.  We can rent cars, mopeds, bicycles and watercraft.  There is a large grocery store across the street, and "downtown" is but a few steps away.  The town is only 3 blocks long, yet it has several stores (clothing, food, hardware, gifts, crafts), and a modest fresh market.  There are a variety of restaurants as well.  All in all we have found ourselves stuck in a good place.  So for 3 – 4 weeks, this is home. Cop Out (Ken and Wendy) arrived yesterday, along with a couple of other boats.  The yachts we know here are: Ivory Quays, Cop Out, Liberation, & Lady Kay.  The majority of our cruising buddies who are heading here are either still stuck at Minerva Reef or in New Zealand all awaiting a good weather window for departure.  Quite by accident we made some new friends yesterday, a German couple named Carmen and Ralph aboard a catamaran named "Relax".  We were leaving the yacht club when Bill from IQ asked for a tow.  Apparently their dinghy motor had quit on them.  So off we go to tow them, then our motor quit. We had gotten only half way to their boat and were adrift when along came another couple in their dinghy asking if we needed a tow.  So we tossed him a painter and started a little conga line of dinghies back to the boats.  It was one of those times we laughed until our abs cramped but you would have had to have been there to appreciate the comedy.  Anyway, we visited with Ralph and Carmen for a while learning that he is a retired fighter pilot with the German air force and more recently retired from Lufthansa Airlines where Carmen still works as a flight attendant.  What's more is they are friends with our buddies Glen and Sally from "TDM", and Dave and Nathalie from "O'Vive!"  Small, small world keeps turning around us. Frank set to work on the dinghy motor and after a little over an hour later, he quietly came into the cockpit.  I ask him if it is fixed.  He said, "Yes".  I asked him what was wrong.  He said, "I'm not telling you".  Of course I pressed him.  He knows better than to tell me something like that.  He said, "I am too embarrassed to tell you!" Eventually he sheepishly confessed that when he had hooked the motor back onto the dinghy after our passage, the fuel hose got attached backward.   He asked me not to tell anyone.  I didn't. However, at happy hour later on, lubricated by several .5 liter Fiji Bitters (beer), he made a voluntary full confession to the gang gathered around the table.  They found it uproariously funny as did Frank.  Such are Man Rules.