We had only two weeks to spend in Fiji so we weren't going to see much in the time available. We had to make our way to Lautoka in the west of the country, through the reefs, to allow us to check out for New Caledonia, which would take some time. En route to Lautoka we stopped at Makogi Island where we took our dingy loaded with glasses and associated gear around to the village located on the windward side of the island (thus a wet trip) and ran a glasses clinic there. The people there were the lucky recipients of our last pairs of sunglasses. The village had been devastated by Winston but had been more or less rebuilt, the small school had been blown away and had subsequently been rebuilt by a US based organization called Sea Mercy which uses yachts to achieve their goals. We have encountered them previously and they do a fantastic job in the Pacific countries they work in, often concentrating on vision issues, even to the extent that they utilize the services of ophthalmic surgeons to perform cataract operations. Nice job Sea Mercy.

When we attempted to weigh anchor – it was not possible. When the foredeck hand said in a loud voice “we had five metres to go” (in 15 metres of water), everything came to a grinding halt - the windlass circuit breaker dropped out which meant something was wrong. The only solution was to dive on the anchor which revealed we were anchored to the bottom via another anchor that was itself connected to the seabed via a thick rope! It was missing a vital part but was most likely used as a mooring for a smaller craft which at some time in the past but had lost it's usefulness and was now just junk on the seabed. By tying a line to it with a slip knot, and then lowering our anchor, we managed to disentangle ourselves. All's well that ends well we say.