We've been moving & shaking lately, covering the miles during our last couple of weeks in Fiji. The weather has been fantastic & very calm. It's HOT but nobody's complaining, well just a little. Tonight we're anchored in "The Blue Lagoon" made famous (at least Fiji thinks so) by Brooke Shields many years ago. It is really blue and the snorkeling we did this afternoon after getting anchored was truly beautiful. We spotted a new kind of flatworm and a few new corals which always pleases us. Also, the fact that it's flat calm & crystal clear makes the water so pretty to be in. We plan to stay here for a couple of days and explore.

We are lifetime members of Musket Cove Yacht Club- it cost us about $3, so that's in our budget! The funny part about this iconic place for the yachties is it's also a resort and if you stay on a mooring at the club, you get to use the resort facilities. So one afternoon Jon & I did "resort day" and swam in their big saltwater pool, lounged poolside where a waitress gave us a free drink and people watched for a little bit. At one point Jon turned to me and said "let's not pay to stay at this resort again someday!" We joked around that membership has it's privileges.

From Fiji

But we did finally decide it was time to move on so we, along with Blue Rodeo & Victory, all headed over to Mana Island to check that out. They too have a few resorts there but the anchorage is nice and Jon & I were interested in scuba diving a site called "The Supermarket". We did this the following day but since the wind had turned out of the SW, it was really wavy and there weren't as many fish as we thought there should be. We agreed that this is the "price" you pay for trying to do dives when the weather isn't right. The best part of Mana was hanging out with friends and watching a sea plane split the distance between us & Blue Rodeo for a landing, not more than 50 feet from our boat! Mark & Anne have friends visiting- Bevin & Carol from Seattle, and so we've had a good group of 8 doing things together on shore, in the water and at night for dinners.
Yesterday, our little private rally upped anchor and headed further north to Waya Island in the Yasawa group, which is reminiscent of the Marquesas. If someone had just brought me some pamplemousse, it would've been perfect!

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It was a light air day and we all decided to fly our spinnakers- ours would be the maiden launch since we just had it made in NZ. We got it up, enjoyed it for about an hour, then the wind died and we had to put it all away again. It was nice to see all the colors, that it was cut right & set well and that the new prod Jon had made last minute before we left NZ, worked as it should to hold the sail out in front of our bowsprit. We had the lines out, had a fish on but it got off last minute which was a bummer for us, but hopefully good for the fish. But Jan Bart on Victory landed 2 big fish and graciously divvied up the proceeds so we got 2 huge fillets!

From Fiji

As soon as we anchored, we all headed in to shore thinking we'd walk a trail over to Octopus Resort on the other side of the island, check that out and maybe do happy hour there. But it turned out we did have to do sevusevu on this island (we thought it would be too touristy to require it still) so we plopped down on the mat once again for another round of kava. This one came with entertainment from the friendly villagers (for $5FJ/person) and ended with us all up dancing so it wasn't so bad. After we were released, we set off on our walk trying to beat the sunset. It worked out and we even got back to our boats before dark!

From Fiji

I really wanted to stay at Waya since it was absolutely beautiful and promised good hiking but we were all eager to make it up to this Blue Lagoon in the calm weather so... today was another motoring day till 1:30p. We decided we had to take a more active approach to catching fish so Jon rigged a hot pink lure with 3 hooks called a "Big Mac". It wasn't long before we got a mac attack and landed a jack which I cooked up for lunch with some fresh salsa. We put the lure back out and had another small fish on it but it got off. We still have big hopes for this lure the next time we sail.

And we did come to a decision as to what we're doing for the rest of this season- we're headed to Vanuatu and then back to New Zealand! No, it wasn't the allure of the lovely passage to get there, but several other reasons, the main one being that we were feeling rushed. There was no way we were going to be able to have enough time to explore Vanuatu & New Caledonia in time before cyclone season starts and once you head to Australia, it's really hard to go back to windward to do what you missed. Given that the South Pacific has been the richest cruising we've ever done, it seems a shame to hurry through it. Plus, we love NZ. There's so much going for it and hey, it's CHEAPER than Australia! So we'll have another go at this area next season and see where we get. I find it a bit amusing how many other boats have decided the same and I guess it makes us feel better about our indecisiveness along with the good we feel about having made this decision!

It seems that the position reporting service we use to plot & track our path across the Pacific lost a bunch of data- including all of our plots from last year. I mean, it really means nothing in the grand scheme of things but it was kindof fun to look at where we've been and how far we've sailed at really slow speeds to reach this faraway place and now it's all gone! They weren't doing proper back-ups to be able to retrieve the data. I don't know of anyone else that had this happen but I'm sure we aren't the only ones who got disappointed.

I was pawing around in the cupboards a couple days ago noting how dangerously low my Trader Joe's provisions are at this point given that it's been nearly 2 years since we left the US. I brought back all I could when we visited home earlier this year but that was just nuts & chocolate chips & the like, not cans or anything heavy. Then I started thinking that a few of these items are ones we actually bought before we headed off in the camper across the country, before this sailing segment of our "mid-life crisis lives" started. Sooooo..... that means that some of this stuff went all the way from the East coast to California in the camper, then all the way back to Maine where we had the boat stored, it was then carried up a ladder and stuffed into a cupboard inside the boat and then it rode all the way to here! I guess this is a testament to how long we keep some food items but also to the loyalty we have toward this Trader Joe's stuff! They've got us!