"Come on in guys!" (Mana Island, Fiji)

 

Bula Bula!! We’re still in Fiji… and it’s pretty lovely. The sailing is good, the islands and anchorages so far have been beautiful, spacious and close to empty. We’re both quite enjoying boat life for the moment. Our only concern is what the hell we’re going to do next… but read on and we’ll all find out together!

On the way to our current anchorage we passed an island. Treasure Island; palm trees, sandy shore.. like any other round here really. This one however was special for us, as it was the place where we’d holidayed with my mum, dad and Charlie some 15 or so years ago… blimey is that right??!! Time really is flying.

Anyway - bypassed that little patch of memories and came here - to another notable island in our lives.. Mana Island. We’ve never been here before, but have sat glued to a TV every time it has appeared. It’s the set of our favourite TV show ‘Survivor’.

Arriving here, we came through the dogleg pass winding our way through an initially confusing line of marker buoys, and dropped close to the reef just off the beach. Swimming on the anchor, we’d ended up a little too close to a coral bomby or two lurking under the surface, so we reset a few meters further out. We’ve remained here for the last few days, joined by Salty Gingers and Cinammon.

The Gingers have guests aboard: Judith, Graham’s mum, and Trish, his bubbly ever smiling sister - who we immediately warmed to. She too is an avid Survivor fan.

Together we took a short explore around the challenge and tribal council areas ashore, finding small remnants of previous seasons. To anyone else, these would be seen as boring little pieces of rope and painted wood, but to us they’re as valuable as any buried treasure we could have hoped to have found on Suwarrow (but didn’t!).

Julie - as ever - was great at filming the antics ashore and cut us together into a short Survivor style trailer: hilarious!

The anchorage, as Graham described it tonight, is a Jekyll and Hyde affair: Going from benign flat calm, to howling and rigging shaking two or three times a day.

Most of the time this isn’t an issue, but last night, new neighbours - an Aussie family who we’d just met around a sundowner fire on the beach - anchored far too close to us for comfort. As the wind picked up and spun us all around, they were sitting 5m off our bow. We were forced to call them up on the VHF radio and get them to move - felt wretched doing it, but it’s our safety and our boat, so really had to. A very uncomfortable conversation, but move they did. Having left the radio on, after that incident, a little later we hear:

“There is not an emergency, repeat there is not an emergency” both now alert - and expecting an emergency despite the caller’s opening assurances.. he went on:

“Some drunken goose has let a flare off on our boat - sorry everybody”

We had a look around up on deck, but couldn’t see anything. Suspect it was over at Musket Cove, which isn’t far away. We’ll visit there at some stage, but we’re avoiding it until their ARC visitors and the regatta currently underway have finished and moved on.

We also saw Itiki (Linda and Keith) a few nights back - had them and the Gingers over for a pleasant Sundowner session onboard.

What else have we been up to?

Snorkeling the reef - good, but not Rangiroa good.

Borrowed two kayaks from the Gingers and had a paddle around one end of the bay. Oh.. and massages on the beach by some local ladies - more of a coconut oil rub down than a massage, but quite lovely all the same.

There’s a fair number of friendly dogs here, who I’ve delighted in informing that they’re good boys.

…and though it pains me to have to write it, during a sundowner session on the beach tonight the boys (Graham, myself and Omar) were beaten by the girls in a fierce, but short lived tug of war - no excuses: ladies did great - collapsing in a laughing delighted heap when victory was secured …landing on Trish’s foot as they went down. Causing her what is hopefully only a minor ouchy.

Next day we took the tender ashore and checked out the resort. Handed over some ID at reception, filled out a form, and in doing so, we had the run of the place for free.

The accomodation is cheaply built huts dotted around, we followed a path to the designated ‘adults only’ pool area. Along the way seeing many tourists - none of whom returned our smiles .. this in stark contrast to the local ladies and kids we’d just passed walking along the beach outside the resort. “Cheer up! You’re on holiday FFS!”

It’s a very different world to the one we’re now used to: towels on sun loungers, sunburnt bodies and trashy novels surround the pool. I left Chez to relax poolside while I went for a walk along the beach - pristine amazing beauty - and other than me no one there, to me at least it’s bizarre that it’s completely deserted.

Despite the lack of smiling faces we returned the next day - Chez to lounge, me to further explore the beach. Lovely walk, heading the other direction than the day before. I found a few coconuts perfect for husking, which I did on a stick that had been left for that exact purpose. Great fun, and very satisfying, I could have done that all day, but stopped at 5 coconuts. Returned to the resort where we tried out the restaurant’s buffet - omg… just to have even half decent food, in such quantities is a rare rare treat. My belly was well and truely full after I’d demolished two plates worth of:

Grilled chicken, pan fried pork belly and apple sauce, spaghetti carbonara, battered fish and chips and salad and coleslaw - my mouth is re-watering just thinking back on it! Back to the boat, skipping dinner that night!

Upped anchor the next day heading over to Musket Cove (the Gingers having headed there the day before). Motored the short distance, then wove our way through the reef, a cautious path, but wide and quite easy in hindsight. Once at Musket Cove we took a mooring buoy - one of not very many left in the busy anchorage and relaxed for a bit. There’s some blowy weather due in the next few days, so happy to be here, a location that is usually shielded from the worst of the weather. The resort has a couple of bars / restaurants which cater to both the guests and visiting yachties. Another benefit of being here is you get free lifetime membership to the yacht club.. which on the face of it doesn’t mean much, but will hopefully secure us reciprocal rights at other clubs in Australia. Spent some time around the pool with the Gingers - a good time, marred by StGeorge declining my bank card (he we go again!!) - it turns out all the transactions since May have been pushed to the Worldwide wallet card in one go - sending me overdrawn and having to spend a frustrating as hell hour on the phone to sort it out (that’s a summarised version of events.. it really does shit me that they’re so inept and that the onus is always on me to resolve it!) - enough on that particular subject.

For three days in a row we enjoyed the bloody good 13 inch Spicy Prawn pizza at Musket Cove marina for lunch - yum!

Then the forecast wind hit.. a disturbed night (more so for the Captain than me) caused by howling wind and a German catamaran close enough to our bow to talk without raising voices.

In the morning the concerning extent of the issue showed itself - we spent our first hour after rising trying to widen the gap between our vessels: us adding lines and dropping back and them driving forward and taking up slack. We appear to be safe for the moment. Thankfully the person in charge was a calm friendly lady skipper - stark contrast to the last close German Captain we encountered: a death metal playing asshole in Cape Verde. That’s seems a long time ago and a long way away… which it is!

Helped her move to another buoy two days later - she gave us a bag of surplus fresh veggies as a thank you in return.

Quite enjoying ourselves here on our safe little buoy. Cinammon and Mauser are around - caught up with them at the pool today - as I’ve said before, good people who I wish we’d met earlier. Hanging round a resort… It’s starting to feel a bit like a holiday at the moment. In fact, thinking about it, I’m not sure why it doesn’t always feel like that. Maybe we’ve lost our mojo a bit over the last few months - I don’t know, but glad we’re both happy and content just now!

A week later, I can say that the mojo seems back, and that Musket Cove has turned in to yet another sticky place! (Somewhere you get happily stuck!)

We dropped our buoy a few days ago and anchored instead, but here we remain regardless.

…ooh..and big news to finish up on:

I think we’ve decided on a firm plan (well… firmish) - we’re Australia bound! Aiming for Bundaberg in mid November, possibly via New Caledonia, but we’ll see.

Bye for now.