Thursday Yesterday was John’s last day before going back home. Like Adrienne’s flight a couple days before, he didn’t leave until 2230 (10:30 pm). Even though we had all day, we all decided to Continue reading →

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. Continue reading →

Last night, after running our errands, we headed back to Kosmos to get ready for the Royal Suva Yacht Club’s 75th anniversary celebration, which was taking place all week. This night they were having a dinner and jazzmusic. We arrived at the yacht club shortly after 1800 (6:00 pm). We wandered around, in hopes of mingling.

Sadly no one spoke to us, beyond to tell us “those seats are probably taken”. In fact we felt quite awkward at the whole event. Interesting how everyone on the streets of Suva were so friendly, but in the yacht club, no one was. We thought there might be some other visiting cruisers around, but everyone appeared to be part of the yacht club. Too bad we did not ask about this when we got our tickets, and we wonder why they even sold us tickets without checking our membership. Continue reading →