Sat. 26th Sept. Vuda Point Marina

Most of our cruising mates have now gone after spending final days watching important rugby games, having 'farewell' meals on various vessels, helping with hauling and been given unneeded kava roots, corned beef and immaterial Western accoutrements like pencil sharpeners, nail varnish or colouring books, for our trip up to less populated Fijian Islands, where the chiefs expect these sort of presents in return for being allowed to cruise their islands. Its been great meeting and getting to know you Blaze 2, Blues, Calysta, Drimia, Equinox, Hilde, Mikado, Nemesis, Newtsville, Orono 1, Silk Sheets, Taku Tori, T-Rex and last but by no means least because its alphabetical.....White Hawk. Have safe trips for your future passages and we look forward to catching up with any of you again, someplace, sometime, soon.

We have been here in Vuda Point getting quotes, and planning some stainless and vinyl work. All the staff here are real friendly but because the marina is a little cut off from Lautoka town, the taxi drivers Abdul 1 & Abdul 2 are the main men to organize anything, with contacts and business cards for any yacht's needs, so we ring a few of these 'friends/associates/family' businesses to do our work. Its Saturday afternoon, 12 days later, and we're sitting on Ishka, pissed off with Fijian trades people because they haven't turned up, or they tried to electrocute us by leaving our switch panel live for a few days before returning to cut another wire ['Rama' was his name and we'd like to rama screwdriver up his........!], or they have arrived with unpolished bits of steel a 4 year old could have cut better; another term to summarize the time here is 'frustrating', so we've cancelled all jobs, and will get them done with a more 'professional' guarantee in NZ. The decision to forgo any work being done here is a big weight off our shoulders, now we can look forward to exploring more of Fiji with less stress and more money. We have decided to hire a car tomorrow for a couple of days and drive to the capital, Suva, check out some inland Fiji and hopefully get to surf. It's also the AFL Grand Final this evening, so we will join a few new cruising mates at the bar later to watch the game. We're living on a cat from Geelong, but hopefully the Saints win because our good mates the Prestos in Melbourne, deserve it.