After a wonderful land tour yesterday on Taveuni Island, where we toured the northern coast in the back of a pickup truck, we hiked to a gorgeous waterfall in the hills, through a tropical forest and on our return trip had pizza in a small ocean overlook diner. It was a day full of unexpected pleasures and other events. Our first taxi van seized up its engine just past the village and called his friend, who continued our tour with his crew cab pickup. Our second surprise was getting back to NEXUS and finding the bilge alarm going off. Our salt water wash down pump had been left on from the fish we caught coming over in the morning, and burst it's hose in the port engine room. Fortunately NEXUS has fairly watertight compartments and the flooding was contained to 10" in that compartment and seepage around the pipe and wire runs into our storage in the next compartment. Unfortunately the salt water jet was aimed directly at the large alternators on the engine, and I was astonished how much corrosion had occurred between the salt water, electricity and dissimilar metals. We came back on one engine in the dark through the reefs, and were very grateful for the excellent electronics and breadcrumbs we had left on the screen! We cleaned the compartments and flushed them with fresh water, but they were not working, so we spend this morning replacing them with spares, patching the hose and cleaning up the oily water.
Undaunted we were underway again by 2pm, and picked our way through the interior reefs with Curly's waypoints, to the small island of Kioa. Unique in Fiji, this small island has 1100 inhabitants who were refugees from Trevali, an island sinking under the ocean about 800miles to the North. The Trevali elders had the foresight to buy this island as a home for their people and relocated here is six waves back in the 40's through 60's. We went ashore and were greeted by "Eddy" a counsel member, who introduced us to their Chairman "Allen". We asked permission to visit and were granted it. We spent an hour walking the village and meeting people before the church bell rang and ordered them all home for prayers! We look forward to more in the am!