We have just arrived at Musket Cove, Malolo Lailai Island, off the west coast of Nadi. We are joined by Mark and Pam, Allan's brother and his wife, who arrived this morning at 5:10am, and are by some miracle still awake despite a long 25-hour trek from Houston, Texas.

Allan and I left Savu Savu last Friday after a quick overnight in town and headed around the corner, past Wainunu Bay to Nambouwalu near Vuya Point on the southern tip of Vanua Levu. Or, if you're into the numbers: 16 59'50"S 178 41'00"E. The hill above Vuya Point was adorned with modern tiki's in the form of wind generators, cell towers, and satellite dishes, and not surprisingly, the village of Nambouwalu was lit up like a Christmas tree at night, an unusual sight in most villages, where power is rare and most homes operate by lantern after dark, or occasionally by sparse electric lights powered by noisy generators. A church service of some sort was going on, and a loudspeaker blasted harmonious gospel music and a sermon in Fijian across the tranquil bay. The area was lovely, with some rather large homes on the hill, and we wondered about it all -- the wind generators, the electric lights, the large homes. Curious.

We left in the morning for a perfect sail across the Bligh Water, which was not the least bit dramatic or scary or anything, much to my disappointment. Fly Aweigh was on her favorite point of sail, a broad reach in 15 - 20 knot winds. Daylight waned in time for us to drop anchor by the Vatia Wharf in a very uninteresting, windy anchorage surrounded by dry, featureless hills and murky water, but it was a good home for the night, with a beautiful sunset that we enjoyed from our "back porch." In the morning we continued our westbound trek, feeling much like we were sailing over Highway 1 near San Luis Obispo, California in the heat of summer. We are definitely on the dry side of the Fiji Islands, and it's all reminiscent of our own Channel Islands off the coast of Oxnard.

Our destination was Vuda Point (pronounced "Vunda"), a new marina north of the airport town of Nadi, where we hoped to find a berth for a few days, hose off the boat, do some laundry and all that civilized stuff. The only problem was, we couldn't find the marina. A solid mindset is a definite liability in us humans, and we were victims of an erroneous idea that had us looking for a large opening to an obvious marina, neither of which describes Vuda Point. After a bit of searching, which included checking the lat/long position on the marina's website (not enough numbers -- they didn't include the seconds, so we were still searching a fairly large area) we turned around, and it was then we spotted an innocuous series of poles in the water with little flag-like arrows pointing through a narrow channel cut into the reef, which led to the tiny marina around the corner. As we motored through the small channel we saw Joseph and Marcy from Horizon on the deck at the restaurant, who waved hello and joked about our apparent lack of situational awareness.

After a short wait on the mooring ball in the center of the circular marina, we were wedged between two sailboats just steps from the laundry (fluffy towels!), the showers (unlimited water that comes from from a thing that doesn't require you to hold down a button continuously!), and a faucet for our hose (clean boat! Unstuck scupper drains!) So all was well with the world. We had a delicious pizza in the restaurant on the edge of the marina with a superb sunset view, and caught a good nights' sleep.

The next day our new friend and personal taxi driver, Mohammed, drove us and Joseph and Marcy to the Customs office at the Port of Lautoka, where we checked in, updated our cruising permit for the Nadi area to include the offshore islands, and added Mark and Pam to the crew list for a week. A bit of shopping at the big MH grocery store and the huge produce market in town, and then Mohammed picked us up and drove us back to the boat. We had one casualty in the big city: we lost my cell phone, which had a Fiji sim card so we could keep in touch locally with our personal taxi driver Mohammed, and my mom, who also has a Fiji phone. Don't know if the phone was pick-pocketed, or just lost, but it was unrecovered so we bought another sim card and thankfully have another old phone on board to use.

Another nice pizza with a view, joined by Marcy and Joseph, who are headed for Vanuatu. We had a great time patting ourselves on the back for being smart, or courageous or perhaps foolish enough to be out here on sailboats and seeing the world in such a fun way.

And now, Mark and Pam have arrived. As I write this sentence, they've finally given in to exhaustion and are peacefully napping while the wind howls in the rigging at 20 knots, the boat dances this way and that on the mooring, and Fijian fishing boats zoom by noisily. We're hoping for a calmer evening and a day or two to explore what Musket Cove has to offer, and then we'll head to our next destination: somewhere else beautiful in the Mamanuca chain, maybe the island they filmed "Castaway" on, which is just up the way.