We made it to Fiji! I want to say finally, but that's probably not justified considering how fast and relatively comfortable the trip was. It only took 5 days, and it didn't get bumpy or splashy until today when the wind picked up. The sunsets weren't spectacular, but there were some amazing sunrises. That's obviously all I took pictures of, so I'm just going to scatter irrelevant sunrise pictures through here.
This time there were no suicidal birds, we didn't try fishing seeing as we had meat to get through, and our batteries were full every day and night. We even turned the windgen off occasionally and they were still full. So it looks like we've fixed our power issues, even though something else electrical will surely break again soon. The window we fixed is still leaking though, so that's bad. We think it might just be through one of the screws that didn't get enough sika in it. And the bilge pump (also fixed before we left) broke again too. Also bad. It still works, but there's something wrong with the auto switch so we just have to remember to run it manually every day.
We also drilled a hole through the bulkhead separating the hallway and the saloon. Ive mentioned before that the bilge in the hallway section fills up with water - it spills over from the bathroom when we're on a starboard tack, and drains out from under the bow. Then it stops. There's no holes to connect the hallway to the main bilge, so it just fills up and then when we heel over it overflows around the edge of the floorboard into the hallway. This is stupid. So we gave in and drilled a hole, which seemed to help significantly - the hallway was wet, but not flooded. So two out of four repairs were successful. Could be worse.
After every single passage all I have to say is that the boat is trashed and that cooking is hard. This still applies, although the boat was less messy this time. Probably because it wasn't very cold so we just shared a jumper at nights, handing it over as we changed watch. So no other clothes means no dirty washing all over the ground. But I've figured out why the boat gets so messy - it's the dishes. I wish I knew how other people handle the dishes. Garth does all the cooking, so he leaves stuff lying all around the kitchen. Which ends up on the sink or on the floor. I can't wander round inside without getting sick, so I eat in the cockpit and my plate stays there. We wash up with salt water at sea and this makes it even harder to do the dishes inside because you have to bucket the water in. After last time I decided that I'd do all the dishes in the cockpit, but then there's nowhere to put the clean ones. So the bucket for clean dishes gets brought into the cockpit, Garth dumps dirty dishes in the sink so it can't go back where it normally lives and then we've got multiple buckets with dishes in them all over the cockpit. Which is obviously dangerous. Then there's the massive effort I have to go to when we get to port to wash every single bowl, plate, container and utensil in boiling water to make sure it's clean. I boiled four kettles of water tonight! So I'm not really sure how on earth we'll ever get that under control. Garth is untrainable and continues to leave dirty things just lying around.
I'm getting really sick of throwing out food. Some countries charge you for them to dispose of your fruit and veges, so we dump whatever is left over when we're about a day away from shore (you have to be a certain distance away from the country). Then nobody seems to care about what we have anyway, and we realize we could have just kept the food and disposed of the scraps in their quarantine bins. It's particularly infuriating throwing out ginger, garlic, onions and potatoes - things that last a long time. I really hate buying garlic and then chucking it out before hardly touching it. Somebody in Vanuatu told us that a lot of places don't really care if you hold onto the food and then "dispose" of it when you're offshore again. But I don't want to risk paying a stupid fee if we try to hold onto it and then quarantine won't let us. So over the side it goes. This is frustrating when it's normal food from a supermarket. It's really horrible when the veges are from a tiny island in Vanuatu. The villagers there planted them, looked after them, harvested them and then lugged them to the market. We drove past people working when we went around the island, sweat dripping down their faces. All the bunches were tied together with some kind of flax and were obviously straight out of the ground. The carrots were especially epic, all huge and knobbly with the stalks still attached. Throwing food like that away should be a crime.
Last time we arrived after a long passage I was finding rotting flying fish for days. They were hiding in the most ridiculous places. I'm happy to say I haven't found any as yet, but I'm not going to count myself safe from their sneaky suicidal habits just yet - I haven't looked under the cushions. And here's another sunrise.
Xxx Monique
This time there were no suicidal birds, we didn't try fishing seeing as we had meat to get through, and our batteries were full every day and night. We even turned the windgen off occasionally and they were still full. So it looks like we've fixed our power issues, even though something else electrical will surely break again soon. The window we fixed is still leaking though, so that's bad. We think it might just be through one of the screws that didn't get enough sika in it. And the bilge pump (also fixed before we left) broke again too. Also bad. It still works, but there's something wrong with the auto switch so we just have to remember to run it manually every day.
We also drilled a hole through the bulkhead separating the hallway and the saloon. Ive mentioned before that the bilge in the hallway section fills up with water - it spills over from the bathroom when we're on a starboard tack, and drains out from under the bow. Then it stops. There's no holes to connect the hallway to the main bilge, so it just fills up and then when we heel over it overflows around the edge of the floorboard into the hallway. This is stupid. So we gave in and drilled a hole, which seemed to help significantly - the hallway was wet, but not flooded. So two out of four repairs were successful. Could be worse.
After every single passage all I have to say is that the boat is trashed and that cooking is hard. This still applies, although the boat was less messy this time. Probably because it wasn't very cold so we just shared a jumper at nights, handing it over as we changed watch. So no other clothes means no dirty washing all over the ground. But I've figured out why the boat gets so messy - it's the dishes. I wish I knew how other people handle the dishes. Garth does all the cooking, so he leaves stuff lying all around the kitchen. Which ends up on the sink or on the floor. I can't wander round inside without getting sick, so I eat in the cockpit and my plate stays there. We wash up with salt water at sea and this makes it even harder to do the dishes inside because you have to bucket the water in. After last time I decided that I'd do all the dishes in the cockpit, but then there's nowhere to put the clean ones. So the bucket for clean dishes gets brought into the cockpit, Garth dumps dirty dishes in the sink so it can't go back where it normally lives and then we've got multiple buckets with dishes in them all over the cockpit. Which is obviously dangerous. Then there's the massive effort I have to go to when we get to port to wash every single bowl, plate, container and utensil in boiling water to make sure it's clean. I boiled four kettles of water tonight! So I'm not really sure how on earth we'll ever get that under control. Garth is untrainable and continues to leave dirty things just lying around.
I'm getting really sick of throwing out food. Some countries charge you for them to dispose of your fruit and veges, so we dump whatever is left over when we're about a day away from shore (you have to be a certain distance away from the country). Then nobody seems to care about what we have anyway, and we realize we could have just kept the food and disposed of the scraps in their quarantine bins. It's particularly infuriating throwing out ginger, garlic, onions and potatoes - things that last a long time. I really hate buying garlic and then chucking it out before hardly touching it. Somebody in Vanuatu told us that a lot of places don't really care if you hold onto the food and then "dispose" of it when you're offshore again. But I don't want to risk paying a stupid fee if we try to hold onto it and then quarantine won't let us. So over the side it goes. This is frustrating when it's normal food from a supermarket. It's really horrible when the veges are from a tiny island in Vanuatu. The villagers there planted them, looked after them, harvested them and then lugged them to the market. We drove past people working when we went around the island, sweat dripping down their faces. All the bunches were tied together with some kind of flax and were obviously straight out of the ground. The carrots were especially epic, all huge and knobbly with the stalks still attached. Throwing food like that away should be a crime.
Last time we arrived after a long passage I was finding rotting flying fish for days. They were hiding in the most ridiculous places. I'm happy to say I haven't found any as yet, but I'm not going to count myself safe from their sneaky suicidal habits just yet - I haven't looked under the cushions. And here's another sunrise.
Xxx Monique
Hi Monique! We follow each other on instagram, great to read your blog! When we are at sea we eat from paper plates/bowls and drink from water bottles so the only dishes we have to do is cutlery/utensils which makes it so much easier when we arrive somewhere (although we also have a dishwasher on board)..... Check out my Mums blog about our trip http://www.sailblogs.com/member/wattsailing/
ReplyDeleteErina
Hey Erina, of course I recognize your name! Paper plates are so tempting... But unless they make paper saucepans as well I think we're still going to have issues! There's only the 2 of us, I think it would be much harder doing all the dishes for your tribe. I'm very jealous of your dishwasher!
DeleteYour mums blog is great! You went the same way we did - lady Musgrave, Hummocky island, yeppoon, Percy's. Did you find many turtles on lady Musgrave? I loved it there!
I saw you only just discovered coral reefs at lady Musgrave - have you been to many in the Whitsundays? If you haven't already and you're up for a bit of a trek from Hook Island, I absolutely LOVED Bait reef. There were so many places to explore that we didn't, but the coral was amazing with a mix of soft and hard. There were a few friendly reef sharks, turtles, manta rays and mass amounts of fish. The coral formations were really incredible, and you could hear whale calls rebounding off the coral under the water. The entrance was easier than lady Musgrave, but you'll want somebody up the mast anyway. And there's only 4 or 5 moorings - you can divert to hook reef for a day if they're full and you're too scared to anchor (like we did). I did a blog post about it if you're interested - there was also a link to a diving site in there with all the good places to snorkel in the northern part of the Whitsundays (the only info I could find on snorkeling).
http://www.svheartbeat.blogspot.com/2014/08/australia-whitsundays-bait-reef-airlie.html?m=1
There's a few more blog posts on the Whitsundays, in case they're useful to you! The cockatoos at Nara inlet were amazing and we kept finding whales around the top of Hook Island.
Hope you guys are having fun! Xxx
We only saw 1 turtle at Lady Musgrave as we were coming in the entrance! We only stayed one day as we were in a bit of a hurry to get into the Whitsundays but we are heading back down to Brisbane soon to spend Christmas with our family and we will definately be stopping at Lady Musgrave again but for longer this time so hopefully we'll see some turtles! We spent the last 2 nights in Cid Harbour off Sawmill beach and saw alot of turtles but sadly no Dugongs which we were hoping to see! We havent been to many reefs, only really Lady Musgrave! We are at Airlie now stocking up on food and water and waiting on a nice calm day to head to the outer reef which we are really looking forward too, it sounds amazing! We were planning on going just to Hook reef but will have a look at Bait Reef too! Going up the mast is my job usually which i'm more than happy to do being the only one not scared of heights! I love sitting up our mast and taking photos.We spent a bit of time sheltering from the wind in nara inlet which was lovely! Thanks alot for all the tips!
ReplyDeleteHope you guys are also have a wonderful time over there! xx
I think you said you already checked out my posts on hook and bait reef, so I probably don't need to say anything except you should definitely go to both! Hook reef was one of the most beautiful places I've ever been - definitely go up the mast and look out at the reef from up high! As we were in the dinghy heading over to it I remember being very overexcited by how beautiful it was from above the water. It's a huge reef though - we just stopped near the southern end and didn't bother going in too far. The reef protected us from the waves but not the wind, and it was one of the rockiest anchorages we've been in when the wind picked up. It was just shallow water over white sand. Bait reef was quite deep and exciting, with all the tunnels and things to swim through. The giant Maori wrasse were really fun to play with, there were massive fish around the moorings. The coral was really similar to hook reef but both places were amazing and quite different! I remember thinking that they were exactly how you picture the Great Barrier Reef to be from all the promo videos, with clear water and beautiful coral.
DeleteFor lady Musgrave, the coral straight in front of the island towards the anchorage was the prettiest, and around near the camp site was less pretty but more exciting (possibly the western side... From the anchorage looking at the island, it's the right hand side of the island). We rowed over and there were turtles swimming under us, and we swam out further and found more turtles, a manta ray and a reef shark in the deeper bits. But the turtles were mostly right near the shore! Take the kayak or just turn off the engine and row along that coast :)
It sounds amazing! We have a day of light winds on Wednesday so hopefully we will be able to head over then, I'm so excited but a little scared of the sharks that i know we'll see out there - even if everyone tells me they wont eat me!
ReplyDeleteWe anchored quite a way away from the island at lady musgrave so we moslty snorkelled on the reefs further out so hopefully we'll go in a bit closer so we can check them out! Turtles are my favourite animal but ive never swam close to one, ive only seen them pop their heads up or swam past in the dinghy so im really hoping to see some and get some film on the gopro!
For sharks, just don't come up from the water and start dangling your feet - you're supposed to stay under water (or just near the top) and stay still, don't go splashing around. I think. Look at the fins - the most common reef sharks have black or I think white tips which means you can go hug them and they'll be cool. (Only don't). I've only seen black tipped ones. I usually look around at how many other fish there are - I figure if they've got lots of fish to choose from they won't want to eat me. Which is irrational girl logic and I don't care. There's definitely scary looking sharks at bait reef but they definitely won't hurt you, just hide behind somebody and stay still till they go away :p
ReplyDeleteTurtles are my favourite too and you should see lots! Just don't get overexcited and chase them like I always do. They're so fast. If you follow them quietly the bigger ones don't mind, but small ones are skittish and scared of being eaten. Have a blast, can't wait to see gopro pics!
haha that sounds logical to me! thanks for the tips - i'll still probably freak out when i see one and jump back into my kayak and hide for a while haha!
ReplyDeleteHope you guys have a good trip over to Tonga, my dad has spent alot of time living over there for work and he loved it! x