Oh, it can blow out here.
25 July 2012 | Lautoka Harbor
Cloudy
Let's get caught up on the last few days. Here's the pictures of the rolls I made.
On Monday, the weather converged on our bay bringing more wind and a bit of rain to the mix. With the wind still out of the Northeast and it being overcast, we decided to spend another day here. Being pretty well boat locked, we decided to do an inventory of all the food in the boat.
We started under the starboard settee cushions and worked our way around. I pulled things out and Tracy wrote it all down. Her writing is far better than mine and if we were to be able to read it when it was done, it was far better for her to do the writing. We started about 0900 and other then a short break for lunch, we continued on till close to 1600. Boy, do we have food on our boat. We did come upon a few surprises. Two quart size jugs of actual maple syrup. Not the fake Log Cabin stuff, but real, honest to goodness Maple Syrup. Neither of us remember buying and bringing it on board so we don't know it that's simply age thing or maybe they were left by the last owner. We found them in an out of the way place stuffed into a deep corner. The other thing we found was five bottles of "$2 Buck Chuck"(Merlot). For those of you unfamiliar with fine wines, this is wine sold by a chain of"health food" stores called Trader Joes all along the west coast of the US. I think we purchased this when we were in Tucson before leaving for Mexico. It was buried way down in the bottom of the bilge. We uncorked a bottle yesterday and now we remember why it only sells for $2.00. Boy, it was a bit hard. I guess we have gotten used to the $6.00 bottles(cheapest wine available here) we can get here in Fiji.
It took all day, but now we have an accurate list of what we have and what we need to buy when we are back in Lautoka.
Tuesday, we upped the anchor and headed back to Navadra for a day or so. It was cloudy but the wind(still out of the Northeast) would push us along toward where we needed to go. We motored south till we were clear of the pass taking us south of Manta Ray Island and then put up the sails. Up went the main for the first time since we came to Fiji last October and out rolled the genoa at the bow. We took off doing 5 knots in a 6.5 knot breeze. That lasted about an hour and the wind died to maybe 2 knots. On came the engine and in went the genoa and off we went again with just the mainsail and the engine to move us along. We left our anchorage at about 0830 and pulled into Navadra at 1345 covering a distance of 27.5 miles. About 5 miles per hour. There was another boat here in the anchorage but as we were setting our anchor, he was pulling up his. We would have the place to ourselves!! What a treat.
We put on our suits and snorkeling gear and dove into the water. We took off for the reef that runs along the side of the island. A good snorkel beach with lots of fish(more than last time) and loads of coral. As we returned to Zephyr, another boat(Amigo) pulled into the anchorage. Rats! We were no longer alone.
Last night(Wednesday morning actually) it started to howl outside(about 0315) and then the rains came. Both of us were out of our bed and on the way up to the cockpit. Winds started in the high teens and grew from there. We had gusts up to 53 knots at one time with constant winds in the high 20s to mid 30s with horizontal rain lashing the anchorage. There was no moon and no stars and pitch-black outside on deck. The only reference we had were the lights from Amigo sitting about 200 feet from us and what we could see on our Gramin Chartplotter with it's GPS. With it being so dark and with so much rain, we couldn't see any of the islands around us. It can be VERY unnerving sitting in your cockpit staring out and seeing nothing but BLACK. When the night started, they were off our port side. Now, they were off either our starboard side or our stern. The wind had shifted from the Northeast to the South to Southeast. Mother Nature was ticked and she was letting it all hang out. I will never again complain about having a second boat in an anchorage. Amigo was our only point of reference as the storm pounded us. It was very reassuring having their light nearby. The rest of the island, even the big rock south of us was invisible due to the huge amount of rain we were getting. We even fired up our FLIR(new generation of night vision scopes) and it was of little help. We could make out Amigo in the lens but no islands. The rain had wiped out the view. Both of us sat in the cockpit(in different modes of dress) and waited out the storm. I finally went below and put on my foul weather gear and set up our DuoGen so it would "furl" itself if the winds got worse. It was screaming as the winds blew through it's blades on our stern during the big gusts we got. By just after 0600, morning light was getting better and we could see the islands and what was happening around us. Our Rocna Anchor had done what we had been told it would do. Hold us in place in all types of weather. Reassuring as we were surrounded by reefs on all sides
The forecast for the rest of the day is more rain and more wind not letting up till tomorrow(Thursday). We need to be in Lautoka by either late Thursday or early Friday so we can get on with procuring our Visa extension. It doesn't take long but, depending on the agent, it's either easy or a bit harder as to what paperwork they require. We'll let you know.
Update: At 0900, Amigo(second boat in the anchorage) pulled up their anchor and set off West. Only guess was that they were headed for Vanuatu. In the midst of a storm like what had just passed. Go figure. With them out of the anchorage and our only visual reference, we decided to pull up ours and head back to Lautoka no matter what the weather was. The forecast was for continued winds in the mid 20 out of the Southeast and more rain. The advise from the forecaster was that if you are anchored, stay there till Saturday. After what we had just gone through, that's not going to hold water. We upped the anchor(only stuck on a head of two of coral on the bottom) and headed out about 1030 for the 27 mile trip. As we rounded the headlands off Navadra, we got slammed with winds back in the mid+20 knot range and 4-5 foot waves right at our bow. We were getting slammed. Our speed dropped to 3.5-4 knots and off we went knowing that we had a long bumpy ride ahead of us. We'd made the journey before so we had good safe tracks on our chart plotter so we could avoid any reefs between the island and the mainland. We pulled into Lautoka at 1650 safe and sound. A bit battered but just fine. The winds when we got to Lautoka were just about zero. Go figure!