Left Fiji
My Way
Mike Kopman
Wed 5 Nov 2008 20:04
We left Fiji yesterday afternoon after a crazy day jumping through hoops for Fiji Customs. I know we mentioned this before, but if clearing in was bad, clearing out was even worse. What made it so difficult was that we wanted to take on duty free fuel, something very easily accomplished anywhere else in the world. It sounded simple too when we supposedly arranged it all beforehand on the phone. We won't go into details here but needless to say it wasn't quite so simple in practice and we ended up wasting almost a whole day on the job.
After this brain-numbing frustration a quiet night at sea was just what we needed, and last night was one of the quietest we've ever experienced. We passed though a magnificenet reef break into the open ocean only to find it was like a lake. There was barely 2 knots of breeze blowing from the south and the water was like oil. The cliched beautiful sunset followed, with pretty much every shade of purple, red and yellow you could imagine, and every type of cloud in the sky, while behind us a HUGE lightning storm brewed up over Fiji. It started as boiling white cauliflower clouds, piling high up in the sky. When the lighning started it didn't stop for an hour and was virtually continuous, with barely a second or two before the next flash. Many of these strikes we could see arcing down to earth but most of them happened inside this mass of cloud, lighting it up from inside like a giant lampshade gone berserk.
When the lightning finally died away we were left in the dark with a clear star-filled sky above and the smooth inky water below us. When the sea is choppy you have a very real sense of it's presence, every lurch of the boat reminding you it's there, shifting, changing, never resting. But this flat, featureless pool felt like a different element altogether. It just faded away to the horizon, barely discernible from the dark sky. Travelling on it felt more like we were travelling through space, suspended in nothingness, going nowhere.
This morning it's business as usual. The sea has picked up a bit and the wind too, though as usual not enough to actually sail at the speed we need! Sarah's just gone to bed and Mike has woken up to start the next three hour watch over a cup of tea. Vanuatu lies a little less than 500 miles to our west.
Lots of love,
Mike & Sarah