Eric navigated the pass into the lagoon this morning at 0400. It is a somewhat narrow pass and it was pitch black outside, so he couldn’t see anything other than a reef marker and two small flashing direction markers in the distance. If the direction lights are lined up from top to bottom, then you are supposed to be on course through the narrow channel through the coral. So it was a careful steering job to stay lined up in the moderate seas, which where swaying the boat a bit. Also the charts are not very high resolution, so the whole experience was a bit disconcerting for him. Thankfully radar, depth measurements, lights, and chart all lined up and everything went smoothly.

We pulled into Nadi this morning at 0630, ushered in by a lovely sunrise.

The mainland area looks like Southern California, with rolling, dry mountains. There is quite a bit of construction on the flat land along the shore and virtually no buildings along the mountains. There are several islands dotting the horizon all around the main land. We pulled up in front of the hotel that is the rendezvous point for meeting Christi’s dad, located on an island called Denaru. Like Coronado Island in San Diego, Denaru is right off the coast of Nadi and is connected by a bridge. Our plan was to anchor the boat and take a bus into Lautoka to notify the officials we had arrived. It seemed to us that there was no need to take Kosmos to Lautoka since we had already had an onboard inspection in Suva.

Much to our delight, we saw there is a relatively new marina that is not on the charts. A marina would certainly make life easy in terms of getting everyone’s luggage on and off the boat. So, we went to the marina and inquired about a slip. The woman behind the counter asked if we had taken Kosmos to Lautoka yet. We said no, we were about to catch a bus there. She told us we had to take the boat in. Now we are more sorry than ever that we stopped in Suva.

After a quick breakfast at a cafe near the marina office, we went back to Kosmos, stowed the dinghy, and headed to Lautoka. It was a two hour ride. We pulled into the harbor. It is definitely a commercial city, with several wharfs and commercial vessels. There is a factory in the center of town spewing out gobs of black smoke. It is the ugliest place we have been to. And it reeks with a foul stench.

We dinghied to the office. We were all in a grumpy mood about yet another day of check in hoops. In our minds we should have been having fun and sightseeing since Monday afternoon. Instead of fun, we have been in red tape hell. The customs officer was super nice and it was hard to not take our frustrations out on him. We had to fill out three forms to check Kosmos in — the exact ones we filled out in Suva — and one form to remove Adrienne as crew. They did not need to see the boat. Hearing that made us more mad that we had to take Kosmos over there instead of taking a 20 minute bus ride in from Nadi. Grrrrr.

Since we are ranting and raving right now, we have another frustration to add. Kosmos has a fresh water and sea water spigot on the bow of the boat. We have discovered the breaker on the sea water pump is too small and trips the minute we turn it on, so we can only use the fresh water spigot until we change out the breaker, which is a pain. We have had to move Kosmos four times in the last few days, which is a tedious in and of itself. To make matters worse, the ground here is an incredibly sticky mud, and the anchor chain comes up completely caked in mud. We have used a ridiculous amount of precious fresh water cleaning the anchor chain. We have to, otherwise the anchor locker will smell bad. And the whole front of the boat is splattered with mud that doesn’t rinse off easily. It desperately needs a really good scrubbing.

Since Lautoka didn’t look like it was a nice place to go sightseeing, we immediately headed back to the marina in Nadi. We had to mediterranean moore (drop anchor and back into the spot), which is still a learning process for us. We chose a spot next to our big sister, Voyager III, a 78 foot Nordhavn. Our 43 is almost the smallest Nordhavn made, and until the new 86 footer comes out, this 78 footer is the largest Nordhavn they have made.Kosmos can almost be a tender for Voyager. 😉

Our foul moods improved drastically once we got off the boat. First off all, we didn’t need to deal with the dinghy. We just stepped off the boat onto land. The fresh water here is good, so we could fill up with water. Then, once we were off Kosmos, we realized we really had just landed on Coronado Island. For those of you that don’t know, Coronado is one of the most expensive zip codes in the US. Apparently, Denaru has the same status in Fiji. There is a mall here at the marina. It is brand new, opened in the last couple of weeks. In it is a small, but very nice (and high priced), grocery store, an ice cream shop, a bakery, several clothes stores and three restaurants. The mall is so new that many of the stores are still not open yet. A sign is one of the windows says “Hard Rock Caf锝 coming soon. Yacht services are available here, including fuel from a nice pumping station and boat washers/waxers.

We went to dinner at a Japanese Steakhouse close to downtown Nadi to celebrate finally being checked in. The food and cooking show were really good, but it wasn’t quite as good as our beloved Benihana.