Local Fiji

We've spent some days in Suva, eating, shopping, showering and the like, which isn't that interesting to the rest of the world, but quite fantastic after six weeks at sea. I've been complimented very much on my local jembba dress.

Now we're at Ovalau, Levuka Town, which is the old capital. It's gorgeus, with superbly friendly people and not very visited due to a lack of white sandy beaches. Definitely still worth going here anyway.
Tomorrow morning we're heading to Canggalai, which is a tiny island with a few bure on the beach, run by the methodist church. Supposedly that's were the white beaches are, minus the  crowd of backpackers/horrible aussies.  There's not much to do but snorkeling, playing about on the beach and hang out with the locals.

Bonus info: kava tastes like soapy mud water. We had some with the local charity club at Levuka Club, which is the oldest membership club in the South Sea Islands.

In Fiji!

I'm alive! 43 days at sea plus two days waiting for immigration to let us into Fiji. It's amazing to finally be here hug the beloved one, and eat proper food. Everything is still swaying, and I'm amazed to be here. Update on sailing, Fiji , and everything will come. But first food, sight seeing and spending time with the worlds' best boyfriend.

Tomorrow's the day

Skipper alerted the immigration and harbour authorities, weather's been checked, kerosene oven's been fixed (I accidentally set it on fire), sailsetting's been practiced, extra warm sweater and seasickness pills been bought (and more chocolate) and we just want to leave. 10 o´clock tomorrow morning.

The girl who shouted wolf

Then the wind came and we´re still in Nelson and keep having last dinners and last drinks. 45 knots is to much wind for a new crew.
We hope the tasman storm will die down on Friday. We also hope that Fijian weather wont be too bad, they've had a pretty big storm and some nasty floodings.

There's gotten more crew aboard to a total of sixten, and the additions are Peggy from Holland, Dennis from Germany, Jef (or Jan-Erik as his real name is, though that dosn't sound as cool as Jef), and Hayden from Wellington. They're pretty young in many ways and it looks like it won't just be learing how to sail, but also conducting a psychological experiment of personalities as well. I do suppose we'll be allright, but I also suppose there will be some clashes on the way.

Anyhow, I will suddenly drop off the map, and that means I'm sailing to Fiji. If you want to know for sure that I've gone, check with Jes.

Hoist anchor, sailor!

We're going tomorrow. We're buying the last stuff today, scrubbing the deck, doing man over board practice and muster stations. I got a new cabin mate, Peggy from Netherlands. She seems very nice. I hope we can agree on our tiny space.
We had the last beer yesterday evening and everyone did like real sailors, getting drunk, dancing, flirting, someone ran out on a bill, someone got sick on the way home, someone got punched by a lady friend, someone showed their boat to a french guy, someone got lost and fell asleep on a different boat, and someone is still missing in action.

It's going to be fantastic. See you in a month.

Out to the big blue ocean

The big good bye party

We were told anything between nil and 200 people could show up to Alveis farewell party. It turned out to be a total of about 25 on and off during the night.  We had made four kilos of potato salad, so you can easily guess what we'll be living off the next days before the final departure. The ship ended up looking so clean it almost was too much, pretty much everything is put in the right place, and deck has been scrubbed, saloon and galley vacuumed and all table  and galley tops inside and out washed down.
I planned to take pictures, but realised my memory card had gone missing.

 Instead I drank pear scrumpy and red wine and danced on the deck  - we've made a crew dance as well, and added new disco moves such as haul up the anchor, climb the mast and scrub the deck. We also made the discovery that all of the male crew are quite the playboys with female guests flocking around them. It was pretty funny to watch and I guess that's what sailors are supposed to be like.  Hard working sailors do party hard, but not late - I wet to bed as one of the later at 00.30.

There's a fun story at the end

I was originally planning to write some posts ahead and have them appearing here. It didn't really happen; we've been to busy getting everything ready before sailing. Hence this space will be empty for the next month or so - there is no net on the ocean. I promise to return on Fiji and write fascinating tales of the sea and the islands. Deal?

Oh, the funny story: our kitchen sink outlet got plugged the other day. It turned out to be a dead fish, which had swam in there to gobble on our flushed out leftovers. I pulled it out of the outlet by the tail, sitting on our land raft.