Festival of Colour and Fruit Flies

Saturday night at the Dock
TheTown Council of Savusavu celebrated the Hindi Festival of Colour on Friday with a holiday event in town.  A Red Cross tent top provided cover outside the market and Council offices for performers and speech makers.  I made a camera video to capture some of the music.  All manner of East Indian food was offered the crowd as well as cups of Tang orange drink.  (The real thing is quite expensive)
One young man gave me a coconut shell of Kava which is a gritty drink somewhat tasteless, almost like drinking mud.  But if offered Kava it is rude to refuse it and don't even screw up your face as it goes down.  Many of the boat crews later met at the Yacht Club open deck for beers and as time wore on, we had dinner there.  I tried the Mongolian Chicken on the suggestion of others - rather spicy.  However, while I deserve to be sick what with the different food, drinks and the heat, I remain just fine.  Perhaps it is the onion and garlic that Lynda puts in every dish.

I talked with a police Sergeant at the Yacht Club as he saw the last of the Princess Danae cruise ship passengers depart in their launch.  I told him how much I enjoyed hearing the Police Choir singing in the morning.  The police station and barracks is acroos the road from this boat slip.  He explained that the duty officers of the day sing a devotional at 7:00 am and follow that with favourite tunes at 7:30. All in Fijian of course but it sounds wonderful.  I am invited to drop in at 7:30 Monday to Friday.

However, this morning after a rather sleepless night, I realized that the net of fruit hanging over my narrow bunk-seat was dripping a sticky goo on me and the sheet I had just washed.  The net is also full of fruit flies which visit my clothes on the shelf behind when they tire of gorging themselves.  I have been seeking a better bunk arrangement since I boarded this boat and have requested that the fruit be placed elsewhere but it has remained as the captain likes to have it.  So this morning after a night of little sleep, I made my objections most forcefully known.  Lynda later shared with me her earlier diary entry which said, "Don will either slowly change Jim's ways or they will come to blows", well blows we did.  Jim's response was not an apology but just "I hear you".  I took my towel and soap to the outhouse shower to wash off the goo and then re-laundered my sheet.  Good thing is that things dry quickly in this heat.  By the time I returned to the boat, the aft quarter berth was cleared out of Jim's junk and while a tight claustrophobic place, with drain pipes and wires belonging to the broken auto pilot, it has a thicker mattress and no fruit overhead.

The house batteries have failed their over-night charge test.  Jim does not want to buy new house deep cycle batteries here but rather he wants to buy them in the States and have them shipped here in a container with other boat things he needs. This means, for now, we will have little power at night when at anchor until the sun powers the solar cells in the morning.  We now have a working, and separate, engine starting battery.  The fridge, wheen asway from shore power, must remain off overnight which is not good.  I will miss the cooling effect of the cabin fans at night.  But the solar panels require a voltage regulator as the previous one is broken.  Jim knows a fellow named Michael who has lived aboard in the harbour for 7 years.  He has a manufacturing - export business here that produces LED lights for boats.  His wife Kendra runs the shop on shore and their products look good.  They enjoy the blessing of the Fijian government because they hire one Fijian to do the labour, the daughter of the government agent.  But Michael says she is very good.  Michael is an ex Silicon Valley emmigrant who abandoned his old world to grow a bushy beard and live on a mooring buoy in Savusavu Bay.  Very bright guy, I think, as Jim and I talked to him from the dinghy while we held onto whatever parts of his boat looked like they would not fall off in our hands.

Michael is to produce the regulator Monday and we must not sail without it.  The present method of controlling voltage by watching the meter and throwing a towel over the panels when it goes over 14.5 volts will not do while busy sailing.

I visited Vin on "Thetis" this morning to return the pump we borrowed to get the oil out of our bilge.  Thetis is a 40 foot Hunter, 1996.  Very spacious inside.  Vin and Annetta have been cruising for 5 years and plan to settle in Thailand.  He is Swiss, she is German and they have together been very successful in international business.  Vin gave me a boat tour but he too is having boat problems.  It seems the last mechanic to work on the Yanmar engine somehow stripped the screws that adjust the valves.  The result is no engine.  Their fridge is cooled by a presure pump on the engine, it is not 12 volts.  So no fridge.  The batteries are slowly running down so Vin was hooking up a gas generator to run a battery charger.  Good learning for me!  It will take two weeks to get the screws Vin needs from Yanmar.  They will only ship to Australia.  Apparently Australia cannot ship these parts directly to Fiji, they have to go to New Zealand.

Everything wears out much faster in the topics.  Things rot faster, rust faster, wear out faster.  If you do not keep up with the maintenance and let decay get ahead of you, you could be sunk.

This afternoon the Saturday tournament of "jeu de boules" attracted 10 players.  I wore my red Canada T shirt and was the only Canuck present.  I missed the playoff round of the final four by only 1 point!

Lynda is staying with a friend tonight so I get the big bunk tonight.  Tomorrow we will do the best we can to prepare for Monday.  Then on Monday we must get fresh provisions and check out with Customs.  Even though we are not leaving Fiji, we stiil must check out with Customs because we plan to visit another island.  The cruise to start Monday is to be for one week and should take us to the island of Taviuni and some snorkling.  This cruise will be a test of whether we stay any longer with the boat and if the repairs we have made so far have been enough.

We have good contacts with other boaters who will be not far from us as we sail.  Hans & Dory on Happy Monster will be in a similar area long enough for us to know if we have the power to continue.  There is a "cruisers' net" that meets on the VHF every morning at 8:30.  We get a weather report and news from the other boats.  Social events are also advertised.  The folks in this harbour are either 'permanently at anchor' or just visiting for a few months to wait out hurricane & cyclone season in other parts of the Pacific.  Many plan to move on to Vanuatu in May.

I have typed much of this before, tried to include a photo and the whole program hung up.  So I won't try that again.

Good night from Fiji