Just a brief recap. Barb and I left New Zealand on May 3rd to head north to our next land fall, Fiji. We did the crossing (1,067 miles) in 8 days, one and a half hours. Not a record time but exactly what we had predicted. We had great weather and a beautiful bright moon to cruise with. It would have been nice to have had a little more wind but better that than too much. As it turned out we used about 60 gallons of fuel and sailed the boat 52% of the time which is below our average of about 70%. The other, very significant, thing about this crossing was that the boat had zero mechanical issues. In fact it has now been almost 3 months since anything has broken and or needed servicing on the boat. If this keeps up I am going to get way to lazy because there is nothing to fix. Some of you who read this want to know how we did in the area of fishing on this crossing. We caught 4 good size fish that gave us some great dinners over the passage. Nothing better than fresh fish. From ocean to dinner plate in less than 2 hours.
We are currently on the Island of Malolo Lailai at Musket Cove Resort off the SW coast of the southern Island of Fiji. We have used this as sort of our home base for side trips in exploring the island groups in western Fiji. We go out for a week or a few days and then come back to regroup and replenish and then head back out. Musket Cove is a resort but is also a cruisers paradise. They make it so easy to stay here that you never want to leave. People asked us what we are doing and it is hard to answer that question because we don't do much of anything. Typical day goes something like this: Get up about 7 and have coffee and watch the sun rise. We read a book until about 10 and then go to shore to the pool. We get our lounge chairs on the beach and read more of our books. Sometime around 1 we get some lunch. After lunch we go back to our chairs read and take a nap. Sometimes we add in a walk on the beach and look for shells. About 4 we go back to the boat. We then sit on the back of the boat and watch the sunset have dinner read and go to bed about 9:30. We have now been here for a month and it doesn't get old. The really good part of this is not only is everything pretty inexpensive but the dollar is $.45 per Fijian dollar. In other words everything is half price.
If the weather is good tomorrow we will leave for a 2 week tour of some of the islands. As we do our islands hoping we never leave a place before 9 and we are always at anchor by 2. If we like a spot we stay for 2-3 days before moving on. If the weather turns bad we don't move until the sun comes back out. Biggest reason for that is we have to be able to see the coral heads and reefs in the water. Some of the reefs and coral formations are not charted so we have to be extra careful.
So that's what we are up to these days. We sort of feel like we are in slow motion. Not much going on and that is exactly how we like it. Until next time this is Destiny clear and back to 1 6.
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