We arrived back in Fiji on Tuesday 4th April.  

The flight was all good and as promised we were picked up by Mr Ali at the airport and are now happily settled into our cottage at Vuda marina.

The first thing you notice is how nice and warm it is 😀

We did have a bit of excitement when we went through the X-ray machine at the airport arrival lounge as the customs people wanted to check out bag full of spares and boat bits as somehow they figured we had it full of food but it turned out to our good supply of various polishes and waxes for all that polishing we have to do !

We wandered over for our first visit to see how Sally had survived the 5months over the wet season.  Luckily no cyclones have visited the South Pacific this season but there is always the threat of bug infestations and a mouldy interior.  To our delighted surprise the boat pretty much looked the same as when we left it with cleans decks and a dry bug free interior - this was not purely achieved by good luck as we arranged for Seleima, one of t.he locals ladies, (actually the wife of LuLu who drives the marina workboat and daughter of Mo who is the TravelLift Driver), who did a fantastic job looking after the boat during our absence.

                                                    Just as we left her 😄

Over the last couple of days we have started to get the boat ready to go back in the water including polishing (lots of polishing 😕), putting back all the gear, sails and canvas that we removed for cyclone season and doing some provisioning as it is much easier to load in its current position.  This has made Mark very happy - he is just trying to work out exactly how much beer we can actually get on board.  

We hope to be in the water in about 7-10 days time and hopefully will have most of the jobs done by then as we are keen to head out to Musket Cove for a bit and if all goes to plan wait for a nice weather window to get us over to Tonga otherwise it is back to plan B for us.

More photos and report to follow soon

The Sallies