Saturday, August 28, 2010

Arrived in Savu Savu, Fiji!

I am online for a short bit, so i thought I would leave a quick note... Pics to come.

It was a pretty uneventful four day passage from Tonga,  not too much wind so we had to motor sail most of the way. It was about 430 nautical miles underway, the last 24 hours were actually within the Fiji island group.  The islands here are really niced looking, and a true pleasure to be sailing inder poled out genoa and reefed maisail, moving along at six knots in deep blue waters. Even the flying fish came out to play!

Checing in was a pretty slow and expensive process, and we wound up paying 16 bucks in duties for the 16 cold beers in our fridge. Plus another sixty bucks for the 21 bottles of wine in our stash... Oh well, gotta be open minded about this.

Plus; Fiji is under a modified marshall law. The government is in the hands of the Military at the moment, will not be changing for the near term. I don't have a problem with this, but it makes travel throughout the island group to be a bit tedious. We will have to check in with Customs and Immigration at every stop.

The good news; Everything here is wonderfully priced, just like it was 1985. A beer at the club is about $1.50 US for a .375 Liter beer. A large pizza is about seven american bucks. JOY!

There will be photos from the past couple islands coming up tomorrow.

By Friday, we are going to be at the big island, stopping by the city of Nadi (pronounced "Nandi")to pick up our newest crew, the Spousal Unit! After that we shall sail to Musket cove and check out some of the nice anchorages for beer, wine and barbecues.

Thanks for your patience on my delayed entries. Out of the last thirty days there has been about fourteen days of sailing and travel to three distinct countries, all with little or none internet access.

We must all embrace the suck, right?

It is really a terrible drain on little ol' me having to travel in the South Pacific.

Have a great weekend, everyone!

3 comments:

Buck said...

It is really a terrible drain on little ol' me having to travel in the South Pacific.

(sigh) Well... just keep on keepin' on, Darryl. You'll survive. ;-)

LL said...

I think that I might have sacrificed and drained the beer in the fridge before making landfall. In fact, if you do this run again and invite me along, I'll be the OFFICIAL beer drinker for the cruise -- to deprive customs of the joy of levying a duty on you...

It still sounds like a lot of fun.

(green with envy)

LL said...

I noticed that there were no takers on having an official beer consumer onboard to keep you from the sin of deep-sixing the good...

darn, well I tried.