November 12, 2023
Last night was not a good sleeping night, Blerg. The anchor chain got wrapped around the float (we had on it to prevent dragging on coral below us), which meant lot of noise and banging. I actually woke up thinking our bridle had broken, so I surprised that it was only the float issue. We decided to make a change…
November 11, 2023
Where we are anchored on in a cove of a private island with a coconut farm on one side and a fancy five-star resort on the other side. The cove is on the backside and has a little bure (cabana) that resort guests rent as a private beach experience. They drop them off with a long boat and guests get…
November 10, 2023
Big winds were forecast so we wanted to get moving to prevent getting pinned down for a few days. The plan was up at 4:00am for the 50-ish mile passage to Matagi Island (a small horseshoe shaped island with a fancy resort (opposite side of the anchorage)). Like clockwork, both Carl and I popped out of bed and jumped right…
November 9, 2023
Boat chores ruled the morning, Carl jumped into splicing the screecher halyard (sheathing was cut) and whiping the end of 7 lines. I took care of laundry (sheets and some clothes, gave a deep clean to my bead (bathroom), and caught up one some work, work). Yesterday we figured out that if we placed my Cell Hotspot at the top…
November 8, 2023
It was a beautiful morning and soon the paddleboards were in the water, as we headed to a farm and lookout spot 300 feet above us. Reaching a dock, we started the climb up 270 odd stairs. Other than a few loose and rotten boards, that we managed to avoid, we were soon on the top of the hill and…
November 7, 2023
The sun rose as we slowly clicked off the miles to enter the pass of the next atoll, Vanua Balavu. After what seemed like an eternity, around 8:45am, we reached the calm interior of the atoll and with that I headed down to make my breakfast. Eating breakfast I noticed I had cell signal so with Carl’s help I spent…
November 6, 2023
A lazy-ish morning while we waited for high tide gave me a chance to soak into my brain the colors from the green vegetation to the explosion of shades of blue. I tried my best to lock it into my memory banks. Around 11:30am it was go time, so off we went. Getting through the pass was smooth sailing due…
November 5, 2023
Bread making was interrupted by…drum roll please…a water leak. Never something you want to have on a boat, in this case it was fresh water and coming from the carbon filter for the kitchen sink. Second only to painting, my least favorite job is plumbing. But fresh water being important it was time to dig in and resolve the issue.…
November 4, 2023
For a few days we had been watching the weather looking for a good window to start our progress north. The coming Monday or Tuesday were looking the best. And this morning the big decision of the day was whether to move to an anchorage near the pass. After the excitement transiting the pass on our arrival, we wanted to…
November 3, 2023
Whew what an exhausting day, in the best way. The plan was to float the incoming tide between blue pool 1 and blue pool 2. So 9am we took the dinghy to shore for the short walk to the pools. Getting to the river connecting the two pools we could tell the current was ripping! It was hard swimming to…
November 2, 2023
Can you say Deja vu? We pretty much did a repeat of yesterday. This time installing the Triton on the starboard helm station. With our experience from yesterday we shaved 90 minutes off the project, and while unseen, made the cutout opening very nice. Around two we pumped up the wing and headed off to go foiling. I had a…
November 1, 2023
We had unexpected rain light overnight which gave everything a nice rinse and along with it the strongest winds we have seen in weeks. It was really honking. But for some reason our anchor spot was in a more calm area than both north and south of us. Those areas were covered in large whitecaps. Win number one for the…