In Fiji

We left Whangarei marina and headed down the river ready for our trip to Opua. We spent the night in a lovely anchorage near the mouth of the river but had to leave the following morning as the forecast wasn't good. We had a good sail up to a bay called Tutukaka which was very protected and very pretty. The following day we had to motor up the remainder of the coast into the Bay of islands. Once we were into the islands we had a great sail to an anchorage where we met up with friends Michael and Barbara from Astarte and Matt and Jean from Superted V. Barbara cooked us all a wonderful meal that evening to celebrate Mike's 60th birthday.

The following day we headed into Opua marina to begin our preparations for leaving NZ. Unfortunately, on the way north our engine battery had stopped working so we had to order a new one from Auckland. We then caught the coach back to Whangarei and collected our car which we drove to Opua and sold back to Phil the following week. While we had the car we took advantage of it and headed out to a vineyard near Kerikeri for a Sunday roast as another birthday celebration. Probably the best meal out that we have had in New Zealand and very enjoyable and relaxing!!

One of our last jobs to do before we left was to change the impeller in the water pump on the engine. It was very reluctant to come out and took Mike a few hours to remove. With this successfully completed the new impeller was installed and the cover replaced. Unfortunately, the last screw on the housing sheered off as it was being tightened. To remove it we had to remove the water pump but what we also discovered is that we could not remove the pump without removing one of the engine mounts! We borrowed a jack from Seapower and achieved this. After we had removed the sheered screw we decided to have the pump serviced while it was removed. So a 2 hour job eventually took 3 days!!

In the mean time we collected our meat order from the butcher in Kawakawa. We had ordered it on line as the butcher vacuum packs and freezes all the meat before you collect it. When we collected it we realised we had massively over ordered and have been struggling to keep the quantity of meat frozen in our freezer ever since. We need to become major carnivores to reduce the amount we have and to reduce the strain on the freezer. That said, the steaks are wonderful!!

Finally, all the chores keeping us in NZ were completed (I say this as all the chores on a boat are never done!) and we left NZ on Monday 29th April. The first 2 days of the sail we had fairly light winds and it broke us in gently to sailing again after 6 months stationary in NZ. The next day we had strong winds and the sea was very lumpy and uncomfortable. We had good winds for the next few days but the seas continued to be uncomfortable. After one day of no wind when we had to motor for 24 hours we then had fairly strong winds and uncomfortable seas for our last 2 days into Fiji. One highlight of our motoring day was that we caught our biggest Mahi-Mahi ever. It was 54 inches long and about 25lbs!

It was very cold on the crossing to start with and we were about 7 days at sea before we could abandon the thermals. We also had a passenger for most of the trip. On our second day a small yellow/green finch landed on the boat. He stayed overnight and the following day another one joined him. We gave them water and rice and they seemed happy. The following day the original finch drove the other one off the boat. He then continued to stay with us for 6 days. He would roost at night and come into the cockpit in the morning ready to be fed. He was incredibly tame jumping all over us and when he got the chance heading down below. The down side was that we spent lots of time cleaning up his pooh! We were hoping he would stay until we were close enough for him to fly to Fiji but he flew south the day we had no wind. Unless he found another boat he probably would have died as we were 900 miles from NZ.

The trip to Savusavu in Fiji took us 10 days. It was not an enjoyable sail, just one to be endured. When we arrived in Savusavu we were guided to a mooring ball at the Copra Shed Marina. They organised our clearance and brought Health, Immigration and Customs to the boat before we were allowed ashore. We then spent a few days cleaning up the boat, packing away all our warm clothing and finding our feet. We did struggle with the heat but are now getting used to it again. The humidity is very high and we do get a lot of rain at the moment.

The first week flew by working in the day and socialising at night. Friends on Superted and Victory had arrived before us so we spent a few nights swapping stories of our crossings in the marina bar. Our crossing was good compared to theirs as they were in 50 knots for over 2 days! Then we moved out to an anchorage off a resort 3 miles away. We had a few days swimming and snorkeling which was lovely as we had not been in the water for 6 months. We also had to spend 2 days cleaning our hull as the coppercoat anti-foul we had applied in NZ does not seem to be as effective as we thought it would be. We are told it will improve!

We came back to the Copra Shed to meet up with friends on Astarte who had just arrived in Fiji and our friends Chris and Dave from CD, who we had toured the south island of NZ with. We have been stocking up ready to start our trip out to the islands and hope to leave the marina again tomorrow (25/4).

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