En route to Fiji
Anastasia
Phil May and Andrea Twigg
Sat 9 Jun 2012 08:04
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18:33.8S 174:46.7W 44 miles covered, 382 to
go.
We have just left Tonga on our way to Savu Savu in
Fiji. The trip from Tonga to Fiji is one of the more complicated because
we have to cut through a reef that is 60 miles wide and quite poorly charted, so
we have to plan to hit it (not literally) in the early morning so we can be
through it by nightfall. You would think that in this day and age we could
just have a satellite image overlay on our chart plotter so we could see
the shallow water approaching without having to peer off the front of the
boat. No such luck, but the ARC did give us a list of coordinates for 60
uncharted reefs to be avoided. I am not sure whether it is good to know
where the 60 uncharted reefs are, or to know that our chart plotter is missing
at least 60 reefs. Actually the route we are planning to take
is a commonly used and wide passage and I do not think we will find any
unexpected obstacles.
Last night we anchored in a bay for one final
snorkel in Tonga and Herve invited us onboard Ruby for aperitifs. Herve
and Jacques are currently accompanied by their wives, Margaret and Regine and
they served us with rose wine from Provence together with pate, dips and
sliced truffles (Herve is a truffle grower). Anastasia may be the
disco party boat, but Ruby is definitely the gourmet party boat.
Finally, a correction to a previous blog. We
received an email from "Rebecca Edwards, Head of Physics, Wells Cathedral
School" informing us that the transit of Venus actually
happens twice a century and in fact it happened about eight years ago.
Thank you, Ms Edwards, for helping us to maintain the accuracy of our
blog. And it is obviously good news for all you youngsters at Wells
Cathedral School, because if you missed it this time then you might just get to
see it in about 92 years.
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