A word in edgeways

Serendipity
David Caukill
Tue 28 May 2013 20:34

Wednesday  May 29th , Port Denarau Marina, Western Division , Fiji  17:46S  177 23E 

Today’s Blog by David  (Time zone BST +11; UTC +12.00)

 

For the last month, so keen have the crew been to demonstrate their journalistic skills (15 blogs in less than a month – famine to feast!), to refresh their Astronavigation skills and to keep the ships accounts up to date, (itself no mean endeavour with Daryl i/c procurement!),  that access to the chart table -  for the routine minutiae such as navigation, pilotage of the vessel, communication with the authorities and so on - has been hard to come by.

 

Monday’s passage here from Mana is not high up on the list of passages I want to repeat.  Yachts and lightning do not mix well and anyway,  I haven’t seen so much rain in such a short period of time outside Africa.  Despite the bimini, we were all (well, other than Kevin as Richard has already reported) completely drenched:

 

 

We did arrive safely, and the Exide Bunny hopped off to catch his flight leaving Daryl and Richard to clear up after him. This they did cheerfully and took the opportunity of a brief respite that afternoon in the downpour to ensconce themselves in a luxury apartment locally to await their flight on Tuesday.   

 

Meanwhile a very soggy Aussie, (his words) stopped by to drop off his luggage and returned to the café ( to wait  while his room was serviced – we’re going to get along fine, I can see!) and then Terry and Lenie and Ted Bainbridge (the soggy Aussie himself) arrive that afternoon.  

 

Terry and Lenie are Serendipity veterans (New Caledonia to New Zealand);  We met Ted,  the co-owner of Glamorous Gallah,  on the World ARC where we had a good laugh from time to time  and he has joined us  to pilot us to his native land!

 

Monday evening we all got together for celebratory dinner before we said our farewells to Richard and Daryl – it seems only just  before it was too late!

 

 

 

So – here we are again. We could be fully provisioned by tonight, but probably not until tomorrow because we are waiting  for that “weather window”  - a window  which has  already moved back a day since yesterday as the South Pacific Inter Tropical Convergence Zone has stalled over Fiji and is not expected to clear until Sunday.

 

So present plans are to go to Lautoka  on Friday to arrange check out from Customs etc. with a view to setting off for Vanuatu  at the weekend.