15 March 2020

Suva Harbor is strangely empty of cruise ships and only a couple container ships. While there have been no confirmed cases here it has definitely made an economic impact on the major tourism industry. We have depleted our fresh vegetable and meat supplies in the last couple weeks so headed town by taxi from Royal Suva YC on a hot Saturday morning to find the street full of people and plenty of food and staple supplies at all the markets-business as usual. No worries except that we did notice the tea shop was out of flavors and black tea? I was quite impressed with how well Fiji responded a couple months ago to a possible measel's outbreak and see by government alerts they are ready and have even set up a new lab in Nadi so they don't have to wait for an Australian lab to provide results.

The anchorage just off the yacht club is quite shallow and you come in through a ship channel at over 100 ft depth to a sudden 15 ft backwater. We took the dinghy over to protected Lami Bay to check out that entry in case the storm brewing South of here changes course and to see if any better depth and cleaner water. There are buoys there but all appear to have names on them and a lot of mangroves which means mosquitos to me; so guess we will stay put. There was an interesting 15-20 minutes in a minus tide yesterday afternoon as we started bobbing on the mud bottom!!! We watched the junior program (all five of them) sail on by and waited for the tide to change.

We plan to hole up here until the storm passes South of us then head down to Vatu Lele.
We hope to get to the Fiji Museum and maybe the paper making village in Namosi of Wainimakutu Village.