September 18, 2007

R&R in Savu Savu
I would like to add a third “R” to the title. As well as rest and relaxation there’s been relief. We’ve been pretty busy the last two weeks, which is why I haven’t written a letter to our F&F (friends and family). But things are shaping up well now, and there aren’t any more excuses….it’s time to fill you all in.
The most pressing reason for our insane dash to town was that we didn’t want to go north, even further from reliable supply routes, without rectifying some deficiencies to my preparation of the boat. We’ve gotten pretty reliant on a laptop computer for quality of life, as have most cruisers these days. We navigate with it, and need it to be able to do onboard email, and it’s a requirement for managing our photographs. The reporting and web page (www,seegoodstuff) would suffer badly if it failed. So I had a backup when we left Auckland. But I managed to blow up the power supply on it before we even got to Opua to check out of NZ. After chasing a couple of false leads, I asked Phil to see what he could find on “Trademe”, the NZ equivalent of Ebay. While he was at it, he located a new autopilot, so we have a backup for that, and also a connection cable for the emergency GPS to interact with the navigation computer. He did all this while we were communicating by the onboard email, but we couldn’t get it, or pay for it without coming to town. In addition, the windlass I’d settled for in NZ has turned out to be totally inadequate for recovering the anchor if it’s set in deep water. I needed to use the internet to find the one that would work for us, and then get it ordered and shipped. So we were in a bit of a hurry. The visa runs out in mid October, and ready or not we’ll be leaving Fiji.
I’ve spent a good bit of time in the internet places here since we arrived, and it’s paying off. You can get a lot done with a broadband connection. Phil’s package arrived 2 days ago, and the laptop is being programmed for its primary uses. The windlass has been located, and arranged for, and should leave Australia Monday, so late next week I should be installing it.
Other issues of concern; you may recall that I broke the windvane self steering on the way from NZ, so we have to rely on the electronic autopilot, or hand steer. Two weeks here have allowed me to do a little redesign, and gather materials, and with any luck at all, the wind vane will steer better than ever when we leave. Also you may recall that I was pretty disappointed in the deck nonskid surface. Now, there’s an interesting story.
I just can’t resist striking up a conversation with another multihull sailor, and there were three catamarans and two trimarans in the creek when we arrived. We met the first catamaran owners, Richie and Julie the day after we arrived, and quickly wheedled an invitation to have a look over their boat. When we came to visit there was a Fijian man, Semi, finishing up two punishing days of cleaning and buffing out the underside of the bridge deck and inner hull sides. He had undertaken this in exchange for a spare outboard motor Richie had, understanding that it needed some work. After a short conversation, and recommendation from Richie, I suggested to Semi that I’d get the motor going, and we’d figure out what he could help me with in return. I had him bring the motor over the next morning, so I could show him how to work on it and care for it while I got it done. When he arrived, we showed him through Sequester, and when he saw my guitar his eyes lit up. Soon I was cleaning the carb, and he was playing Hotel California and telling us about teaching the church youth music program. I told him part of the payoff for motor work would be a couple of guitar lessons. It was a good start. Then it occurred to me that he could help me fix the deck slickness problem. The problem, I guessed, was that the paint containing the texture particles was high gloss. It needs to be flat, no gloss at all, to hold the skin of wet feet. The way to achieve that without taking off all the texture, I figured, was to scrub it with stiff brushes and sand. The shore of the creek has a mixture of coral sand (not very hard or sharp) and volcanic rock sand (perfect!!!). I got a couple of brushes and a pail of sand, and made a date with Semi to help work over the whole deck. In the course of things, he also made a date to bring his wife and kids out with a package of Fijian food for our lunch. Sounded like fun. It was.
On the appointed day, he showed up (late, as expected from any Pacific islander) and we were soon doing our best floor polisher imitation, with black sand coating the whole port side deck. It was quite a mess, extremely hard to rinse off, and penetrating every hatch opening, but the difference in traction with the shine of the paint was dramatic. As lunch time neared, we were done with the port side and most of the cockpit. I sent him to get the family in the dinghy, and kept trying to clean up the sand. Over an our later the dinghy came back down the creek with Semi, his wife, their 8 year old daughter, and three 4 year old boys. There were relatives in town for a funeral, and the two cousins had come along. Karen was soon playing with a bottle of bubbles and some balloons with the kids, as we gave Litia a tour of the yacht. She’d never in her 30 years seen any boat like this! We had a nice, relaxed lunch while the kids played on the bow nets, with the 8 year old trying her best to exercise total control of the boys lives, and them having not one bit of that. Then Semi did the typical Fijian thing, which I should have expected after being in Thawaro for 2 months. He handed out brushes to all the kids, and gave them instructions (in Fijian, as they know NO English yet) and soon we were all spreading and scrubbing sand into the starboard deck. Fijian children are part of the family, and do what the family does. They were soon obviously having more fun scrubbing decks than they’d had with the bubbles and balloons. It was quite a circus, to keep them from scrubbing the gloss off the cabin sides, and control how much sand and rinse water got into the cockpit and cabin, but it made a great afternoon’s entertainment. At the days end, I was unwilling to load all of them with myself into the dinghy to take them ashore, so I got in the canoe with the girl and one boy, and had Semi tow us with the dinghy to the dock a quarter mile up the creek. The procession had a distinctly Fijian look to it, with the giggling children playing in the water and yelling at each other as we wended our way among the moorings.
Between boat projects we’ve managed to meet and dine with several other cruisers, some of them people I’ve talked to on the radio over the last few years. Helping run the Rag of the Air net has been good fun in any case, but there’s a bonus when people recognize our boat name and come over to say hello. We’ve had some enlightening discussions of places we’ll be going, places we’ve been, places to avoid, boat gear, handling techniques, favorite entertainment…..the company would be hard to beat. We’ve been introduced to the work of a cruiser/singer from Canada, Eileen Quinn, who has captured with great humor and musical verve the trials and rewards of the modern cruising sailor’s life. We were loaned a DVD set of the BBC documentary, The Blue Planet…. absolutely the best, most educational and entertaining overview of the oceans that we have ever seen. Every middle school on the planet should be showing this to their students.
Savu Savu is giving us balance. The boat jobs are getting done, but we’re also doing some snorkeling, visiting, reading, and resting. We’ve discovered Skype internet calling, and are working our way through calling many of the people we miss from this part of the planet. Photographs are on the way to Brother Bill, for posting on the web page. We have another three weeks or so before we start looking for a weather window to depart, and we’ll be ready to move on by then. But this is going to stand out for a long time as a very good interlude. This may well be the best town in Fiji. Ted