Don hasn't had much luck fishing lately. He goes out in the dinghy every late afternoon and comes back with nada. He would probably have a lot better luck if I let him go out about a mile to the outer reef but I'm scared he'll get into some kind of trouble out there. He could drift away and there wouldn't be anything I can do. There's no one else for miles, except Soschi, and he's afraid of the water. So thankfully, when he leaves Little Bay he stays within view. Last night, in frustration, he left his line and bait hanging off the back of 'Buena Vista' and went to bed. First thing this morning he pulled in the line and voila...a little snapper - perfect for dinner. Yippee. It rained quite a bit last night. In fact the days have been overcast and cooler. To see what is happening, I requested the 'Fleet Code' this afternoon. It's a weather picture that I get via boat email that when you open it and look at it, it's all numbers in blocks. Yet when you click and drag it into a little program called Phys Plot it somewhat magically opens showing a synoptic chart of the weather systems in this part of the Pacific. It covers the area from Australia over to French Polynesia and from just north of the equator down to New Zealand. It also shows 'The Beast', which is the SPCZ or South Pacific Convergence Zone. ' The Beast' is a nasty weather area that roams around the tropics. It brings squally rainy windy conditions with lots of lightning too. We sailed right under and through 'The Beast' on our passage from Samoa to Tonga in August 2012. It was an ugly night full of lightning which is very scary in a sailboat. Right now 'The Beast' stretches in a line that extends from the Solomon Islands down to just above where we are and continues over to Tonga. I suspect it will continue down this way and our weather will deteriorate quickly. It gets me thinking of where we would want to be if we had sucky weather for a week or more... would I want to be in Little Bay? or maybe Bavatu Harbor? or maybe back in the town of Savu Savu? I'll talk it over with Don and we'll decide soon. But first, while it's still somewhat ok, let's take the kayak and go explore the lagoon. As we are putting the kayak in the water we see a skiff entering Little Bay with three men in it. They come right over to 'Buena Vista' and we see the official seal of Fiji on the side with the letters...Fiji Police. They stopped and asked us if everything was all right with us and we said yes, thanks. They continued on, into the lagoon entrance and out of view. We put a few things in the backpack, food and water etc and took off on the kayak towards the lagoon. The tide was still rising, my thinking was that we could ride the remaining tide back into the lagoon and come back out with the tide a bit later. See...always thinking! I gotta stop that. Kayaking through the 'entrance' was very cool, lots of rocky faces on the sides and it gets quite shallow in parts. But once it opens up the lagoon is huge. More like a lake but it's salt water. Plenty of room for seaplanes to land and take off. We looked all around but could not spot the police boat but way over there on the far side we see the smoke from a fire so we suspect they are over there somewhere. The edge of the lagooon is all mangroves, usually not the place we would be hanging out because of previous bug experiences but I gotta say today could be a first. We pulled right into the mangroves in a few little cutaway places and didn't get attacked by midgees so we actually had a good time playing inside the mangrove swamp in the kayak. We'll see tomorrow morning if I'm covered with bites or not.