We were too traumatized, and too focused on navigation on Tuesday to look at the scenery much, but after a night in Mbua Bay we started to settle down and look around. We've gotten much better at pre-planning routing and using the electronic navigation devices we have on hand.. Karen figured out how to place waypoints into the GPS, and use the "go to" function to get a course and distance. Without doing that before we get under way, there's just no time to adequately find directions between reefs. I can't imagine trying to do this without at least 2 people on board. One of us is always in the cockpit, and one is almost always either scanning with binoculars for markers (which may or may not be where they're shown on the charts), or plotting our exact position on the paper chart. Even with two of us, it's a lot easier with the autopilot, so we weren't pleased yesterday when it went crazy and started steering erratically. This morning I decided to have a look inside and found it had water in it, which was splashing up on the drive belt and shorting out the signal circuit. It hadn't gotten to the motor yet, so I cleaned it all up with cotton swabs and tissues and reassembled it, and it seems OK. But it didn't do it any good, and it's SUPPOSED to be waterproof. At least it should get us to Also Island.
This part of the island group is quite sparsely settled, so we just see an occasional smoke plume from a little village, and maybe five or six small fishing boats a day. We were flagged down by an 18 foot skiff with 10 people aboard this morning, to see if they could buy a gallon of gas for their outboard motor, as they were getting down to fumes on their way to another island to work a farm plot. They only had a couple dollars with them, so I just gave them 2 gallons of premix, which made them very happy indeed. We had an excellent day, able to sail 90% of the time as we came across the top of Vanua Levu. We would lose the wind at times in the shadow of high mountains, but just a short run of the motor would get us back to sailing. We got further than we'd expected, and picked out a nice bay to anchor at about 4:00 PM. As soon as we got the hook down, a skiff came alongside to invite us over to their village, nearby. They had been fishing and saw us on their way home. We thanked them for the invitation but begged off saying it was pretty late in the day. They understood, visited a few minutes, then gave us a nice big fish for dinner and headed home themselves. I thought later I wish I'd offered them some fuel too. It's probably a hassel to get out here in the weeds, and they rely on their outboard motorboats for all transport, as well as fishing.
The wind has come up to a pretty stiff breeze tonight, for the first time since we arrived in Fiji. Sort of hope it comes down a bit by morning, but for now it's charging the batteries nicely with the wind generator spinning away. We're well fed, getting some rest, and planning for the days run tomorrow, in a fabulously green, lush bay in the middle of nowhere. Saw the "green flash" at sunset, and the sky is brilliant with stars. It's a nice place to be....Ted
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