Earning Some More Cruising in Fiji

After a week in the town of Savusavu, and completing our dive course, we are ready to get back out and do some sailing/cruising around Vanua Levu. Although it sounds like we are always having fun, I wanted to point out that every day we still have chores and work going on in order to earn our right to get out there. We spent a day yesterday preparing to head out which involved: going to grocery stores for provisions; filling the gas tank for the dinghy; getting clearance for our cruise with customs; paying the marina; final paperwork with the dive master; taking in trash; and other things. I also went to a local barber to get a haircut. This was amazing: the haircut only cost $2.50 Fiji (which is about $1.25 US)! Wow! Super inexpensive haircut! Of course, it wasn’t fancy – but, the hair is definitely shorter.

The photo above shows me doing a particularly nasty job a few days ago. A pump which handles the processing of our holding tanks for the heads needed maintenance. So, I had to stick my head down in a bilge and service this particularly nasty pump. It involved taking the pump apart; replacing gaskets, bolts and impeller; cleaning up the remaining parts; cleaning up the area; re-assembling the parts; then finding I missed a part; liberal amounts of cursing; taking it apart again; dropping parts in the nasty water; cursing; finally re-assembling it again; and then cleaning not only the area, but also every tool and part used in the process using disinfectant; and re-washing my hands at least a dozen times. Yuck!

Today we are heading out back to Viani Bay (50 nm east of here). We hope to join up again with some of the other cruisers who left last week. Some were there for sure yesterday based on some E-mails and blogs we checked. If we miss them there, we’ll just continue to move on and hope to catch them a few days later.