Thursday, September 8, 2016

Fiji - Land of 1,000 hazards

9 Sept:

We left Savusavu yesterday morning on the way to Taveuni. That is, until we snagged a semi-submerged bottle and rope. This gave us great pause. We dropped the anchor (in the middle of the mooring field.) The next step was to avoid hitting any of the moored boats. At least not hard! We ended up next to Doug on Mango. A few lines and a few fenders and we were safe. Of course our anchor chain was wrapped around Mango's mooring line. Using the stern steps on Mango Al dove down and cleared the line. We motored out of the harbor only to pick up a lot of engine vibration. Since there are no repair facilitates in Savusavu we decided to skip Taveuni and head for Nadi where there are travel lifts etc.

[Aside]
For some beautiful pictures of Tavunei see Elizabeth's blog at http://etheislandenthusiast.com. We will miss standing on the 180th meridian.
[/Aside]

Watching the boats heading east as they rammed into the 5 foot waves, motors churning maybe we didn't miss so much.

But you ask: "Why the land of 1,000 hazards?" The answer. You can not go from here to there. There are always islands, shallows, and reefs in the way. One has to thread their way through them following the approved path because the other routes end in dead ends. So we did until sunset. At which point we noticed some sailboats and a harbor to our right. We turned but could not point high enough to make it to shelter behind the point. We spent a very uncomfortable night at anchor in 23 knot winds and 4 foot waves. Getting back out in the morning (no, the winds and waves did not drop) was a story of its own.

I did dive on Reboot but did not see any obvious problem. There is a lot of marine growth on the shaft but nothing wrapped around it. Since Reboot was bouncing around in the waves I did not investigate further (rule 1). We are now threading our way along the route to Nadi.

Fair winds and following seas :)

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