That's right, I am being tortured by the cookie aroma. Every morning I wake up to the smell of freshly baked cookies. The lovely aroma lasts most of the day when we are downwind from a cookie factory. Funny, I am thinking about making a big batch of cookies for breakfast; Maybe cookies for lunch or dinner? I bet the Cookie Monster would love to find the exact location of the cookie factory!

We discovered that getting the last bit of paperwork signed and completed by the official and regular veterinarian has been challenging and frustrating. It doesn't help the fact that there are only Three veterinarians in the country; two starting on Monday. Hopefully the last signature will be acquired on Monday. I have been in person and on the phone every day excluding Sunday since we arrived in Suva, trying to make the proper arrangements and getting the official paperwork filled out correctly so that we can satisfy some rather simple requirements that New Zealand has for importing our dog. We decided to make Monday our final deadline because a weather window is opening up for our passage to New Zealand. We are under a deadline now with our arrival timing for quarantining the dog. It looks like a nice weather pattern will be available for us to leave on Tuesday.
I really wanted to spend some time on the West side of the country, but that just didn't happen this year. I guess we will have to save something to look forward to for another time.

Check out this new article about the debris from the Japanese tsunami:
http://thewatchers.adorraeli.com/2011/10/17/japan-tsunami-debris-on-course-to-hit-us/

This will definitely impact our plans concerning going back to the west coast through Hawaii or the Marshall Islands for the next couple of years.

We just dropped the anchor in Suva Harbor. We had a great passage. The wind was perfect, the seas flat, and a full moon all night to travel by! We did the 121 mile passage in 24 hours!

Well, we are ready to go to Suva. We took on the last of the provisions, and we have cleared customs in Savusavu. It looks like we've run out of excuses. All we need to do is hoist the dinghy, give it a good scrub and we're on our way. We decided to go directly to Suva because there is a blow arriving on the 17th. We want to be tucked in before it arrives. Our passage to Suva is approximately 121 miles. It should take us about 27 hours or less to get there. We have to finish up our paperwork with the Suva for veterinarian in preparation to entering New Zealand. We are planning to have the boat ready to go to New Zealand by the first of November.

The part that we ordered for the wind generator solved our problems. Now we have wind power again. We are still having troubles with our batteries, but we should be okay as long as we have alternative sources of power. We will replace our batteries when we get to New Zealand, again!

I vividly recall saying that I never wanted to do the passage to New Zealand again. I think we were hove to, about 500 miles between Fiji and New Zealand. Well, we have made up our minds about where to spend South Pacific cyclone season. You guessed it. We will be sailing back to New Zealand. This decision was a difficult one for several reasons. The passage is no picnic, the Kiwi dollar has strengthened even more since we were last there, and the quarantine paperwork and expenses for the dog are challenging. With that said, we really loved New Zealand and we both regret not being able to spend more time touring the country. We hope that this year we will be able to better balance a trip to South Island with boat projects.
Chuck is back from Alaska. He had a great time visiting family, but a sad time after five funerals. He admits that he is ready to warm up.
We are busy now preparing the boat. We will be heading for Suva this week, depending on the weather. We need to get some paperwork signed by the government veterinarian. After that, we will be preparing for the New Zealand passage.

These are photos we had permission to take of a lovely temple near. Labasa.

Temple Photo.

Devotees state that the cobra rock is growing. They have added an addition to the roof to accommodate this phenomena.