2/8/10 - 12.00 UTC - 17.37.2S 177.20.63E
Flying Cloud
Julian Nichols
Mon 2 Aug 2010 22:22
It was definitely time to clean the boat! After 1.5hrs of work, we were rewarded with a snorkel on the outer reef and a great turtle sighting.
Unfortunately in the cleaning process I had discovered that the freezer had lost its effectiveness and the food left had mainly gone off - the Chicken did not smell good and Harry took one for the team by cleaning up.
It forced us into a pit-stop back at Lautoka, to restock with some food, get some Kava root, and find some pipe lagging for the freezer pipes (which had obviously been removed during the NZ re-fit (there is a real cost in not being around when a boat is put back together!). The great thing about Lautoka is that you can get anything and everything - particularly engineering and electrical products.
After a quick pit-stop we left bound for the "daytripper" island of Tivua. As it was early evening there was no chance of any daytrippers being left, and it looked great for a beach bonfire and BBQ. We did a quick recci ashore to discover 3 "caretakers" - Henry, Cookie +1. We offered to share some food if we could do a bonfire and BBQ on the island - perfect.
Tivua is almost impenetrable due to the surrounding reef, but with the aid of the handheld GPS we made it in and out and had a great time. We even helped in 2 germans who had made their trip to Fiji via the Northwest passage - totally nuts!