Vuda, Fiji

Welcome to our Blog. Our latest entry always comes up first... 
Click this link if you want to start at the beginning:
FIRST BLOG ENTRY
If you want to start at the beginning of our trip:
START OF TRIP
If you want to see the story of our trip from South Carolina
(where we bought the boat)
 to Lake Ontario Click this link:
  SOUTH CAROLINA

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After departing from New Zealand a day late (Saturday April 15th), we made the 1100 nautical mile passage in 10 days.  The trip was surprisingly uneventful.  In fact, we motored nearly 90 hours because of the lack of wind.  With the help of Peter Mott at Northland Radio we had daily radio contact and were able to avoid a developing cyclone along the way...

Beautiful sunsets....

Ready to be warm again...

Some flat seas...

Back to catching FISH!

We arrived very late on the 25th and anchored just inside the main barrier reef for the night.  Early the next morning we motored the last three hours to the Vuda Marina where we were greeted with a lovely song and cheerful BULA BULA's, which is the Fijian way of saying hello...

Customs, Immigration, Bio Security, and our Health inspection went without any trouble and by noon we were settled into a med mooring style slip.  We re-connected with Lisa (s/v Enchanter) and she took us under her wing and gave us the lay of the land and took us (by bus) to Lautoka (one of the big cities here in Fiji) for provisions and to acquire an internet hookup...  Big THANK YOU to Scott & Nikki (s/v Beachouse) for giving us the internet gizmo for Fiji when we saw them in New Zealand...

$1 Fijian = $.50 US

The bus to town  $1.60 FJ

Lisa & Cannela (s/v Enchanter)

Our first "Happy Hour" in a very long time...

Our first Fijian sunset....

The one big job we had NOT completed in New Zealand was to haul the boat and paint the bottom.  Like everything else in NZ, the cost for a haul-out is really expensive...  Last year we met Adam, the manager of the Vuda Marina in Tahiti and he sold us a haul-out certificate for $50....   The regular cost for that here is around $250... GREAT savings...

Boats stored in "Cyclone Pits" 

Anyway, the other real advantage to getting work like that done here in Fiji is also the fact that we were able to hire 2 men for 2 days for $8 Fijian ($4 US) per hour!  At our age sanding the bottom is one of our least favorite jobs, so the money spent was really worth it...  In addition, these guys worked HARD!  We figured it would take two days to prep the boat.  They had it done in HALF a day!  By the  end of the first day we had the bottom sanded and the first coat of bottom paint on.  ALL the staff at Vuda Marina went OUT OF THEIR WAY to make us feel welcome and did professional work at exceptionally fair prices...  This by the way, was the first place we ever stopped where the staff actually learned our names!  It felt pretty cool....

We had to remove the wind generator....

And still didn't have much clearance...

Bottom paint on...

Bootstrap DONE!

We only needed half a day on the second day to finish the bottom and re-paint the boot strap (the line just above the bottom)..

We were launched yesterday (Saturday) and Shelley did some major provisioning so we are ready to leave tomorrow (Monday) for our Fiji Island Adventure!

As an aside, we found some Fijian ladies who are willing to make us pencil cases for our Right to Write Project.  Because we are so far from Canada now, we have real trouble getting them from the folks back home...  We also have started a Go Fund Me page to help offset some of the cost of our work out here....  We hope people will see some value in what we are doing and help support us...

Press on the picture to link to our page:

More soon from the islands....