Musket Cove - 17:46.3S, 177:11.3E

Serenity of Swanwick
Phil and Sarah Tadd
Mon 14 Oct 2019 05:13

On Friday we motored the 13 miles to Musket Cove, in the Mamanuca group in a flat calm and burning sun.  Musket Cove is a resort on Malolo Lailai island which has a small marina and maintains a number of moorings in the bay.  It holds a regatta in September when the place is packed but when we arrived there were a number of moorings free and we were able to chose one between ‘Sea Eagle’ and ‘North Star’.  We had tried to talk to the Yacht Club on the radio, but they didn’t show much interest and when we went into the marina office to check in there was one man asleep behind the desk and two more having a siesta on the floor.  One of the men from the floor pulled his shirt on and came and checked us in, which amounted to little more than saying ‘come back and pay when you are ready to leave’.

The moorings at Musket Cove

Musket Cove marina

When we arrived and switched off the engine we noticed that the water pump was running continually, which means either a tap has been left on or we have a leak.  It didn’t take long to find the water gushing out of the top of the filter under the sink, where a seal had blown inside the filter assembly.  We have been able to top up our water in the marina but can’t replace the filter until we return to the mainland so Phil has taken the filter out of the system and bridged the gap with a spare bit of pipe and we are taking our drinking water from our containers of watermaker water.

Time here has been spent in continuing to prepare for the trip back to New Zealand: checking the sails and oversewing some damaged stitching, going to the top of the mast and checking the instruments and rigging (Phil – Sarah doesn’t do the top of the mast) and servicing the winches.  Phil has also been nursing the outboard engine for our dinghy, which is becoming increasingly unreliable.  We think we will have to replace it when we get to New Zealand, but in the meantime are trying to avoid trips ashore that are too long or in windy weather.

Putting a stitch in the main saoil

We spent Sunday morning with Steve and Kim from North Star – having coffee and lunch ashore with a walk around the island in between.  The views from the hill tops were beautiful, but it was really too hot for walking (Steve and Kim come from Florida so don’t feel the heat like we do!).

The colours of the sea, sky and reef never cease to amaze

Lots of building plots available if you fancy a home here!

Looking across the resort to the moorings

In the last week a tropical depression has developed and is moving south east across the path we would take to New Zealand, and there is another depression with associated fronts expected across northern New Zealand around the 24th and 25th, so we are now looking at an earliest departure date at the end of this week or the beginning of next week.  We have booked an place in Vuda Marina from Wednesday and may well then stay there until we leave, given the difficultly with the outboard engine.