Wagon Train
17 June 2009 | Fiji
Mike
June 2, 09
New Zealand is getting colder by the minute. Winter is wrapping it's icy fingers around my neck and blowing cold air up my pants legs. Time to go, or be stuck for the winter.
I like New Zealand, but it's not a place I'd want to live. Too provincial and a bit too racist for my taste. It's not my country to criticize, but they might consider scraping some of the sheep shit off their boots.
Getting out of town for the tropics is always a balancing act between the winter gales down south and the tropical disturbances farther north. Either one can ruin your day. You just pick the best weather window you can find and go. Better a door than a window, but you take what you can get.
June 6, 2009
Day four of our passage to Fiji from New Zealand. So far, it has been remarkably unremarkable. A lot of motoring in very light wind on a passage that has a fearsome reputation for eating boats.
Putt-putting along under motor and/or bobbing slowly along under sail is really boring even if there are eight or nine other boats within radio range to talk to. Passage making isn't what I'd call sailing. It's more like a wagon train, slowly working its way across the Blue Plains of the Pacific. If water wasn't molecularly challenged, or we were more deified, we could almost get out and walk along beside the boat, just like the pioneers did along side their wagons on the Oregon Trail. There is a boat out here, by the way, named Blue Plains Drifter.
June 14, 08
Anchor down in Lautoka. We're cleared in and off for town. Lautoka is nothing to write home about but we've been in worse places. We'll provision, get our Outer Island clearances from Customs and be on our way to Vuda (Vunda) Point, then Musket Cove on Malolo Island, just across the Bligh Waters from Nadi (Nandi) on Viti Levu. ( Veetee Lavoo) It's like French. Nothing is pronounced like it's spelled. Drives you crazy.
On second thought, we'll be in Vuda for a few days. Problems with the solar panel output. Solar is our only, besides the main engine, power generating capability. Without that... no ice! No cold beer! Horrors! Life as I know it would be over!