Position           017:33.50S 177:29.88E

Date                1745 Tuesday 8 July 2014

Distance run from Vuda Marina – 13nm

With the final touches to be done to the water maker installation Elizabeth, Alice and Stuart took themselves off to the market in Nadi for fresh produce shopping.

The market has a wonderful selection of fresh fruit and vegetables, some more familiar than others.

Even Stuart was involved, the Skipper was gainfully employed elsewhere – no surprise there then.  Actually he was entering 166 waypoints from information received from Curly of Savusavu fame and which provided detail guidance for transiting inside the reefs, particularly of Viti Levu and Vanua Levu.  This was achieved by entering them into a spreadsheet and using a conversion utility turning this information into a GPX file that could be imported directly into Open CPN on the PC and with the latest version of the Raymarine Lighthouse firmware (10.4 for those that have got this far and understand) installed on the chart plotter (the software being brought out from the UIK with Alice and Stuart), into the chart plotter.

Post lunch and we eventually managed to get away.  I had deliberately not run the water maker in the marina to avoid any possible contamination of the new membranes.  I ran it up when we were5 miles from the marina and found that there was a leak from an end cap.  It was not too bad and by attaching a bucket under the leak it was possible to catch all of the water – about 3 hours running the water maker for a bucket full.  We certainly did not wish to return and start again, if it could be avoided.

Motoring through Lautoka Harbour we found a sheltered spot in Vitogo Bay and settled down for our first night at anchor.