Suva is great. The Fijians are so welcoming and most go out of their way to help. We have spent some time wandering around Suva, looking in shops and markets and eating well! While we haven’t had any traditional Fijian food we have had our fair share of curries (from the Fijian Indian population) and the food is good and cheap. The restaurant at the yacht club serves meals for $7 or $8 Fiji dollars (around $5 AUD) and the bar prices are straight from the 70’s. Actually, the whole yacht club appears to be straight from the 70’s, including some of its patrons, but it has a very relaxed feeling about it and we are really enjoying a few sundowners each evening while sitting at the bar, followed by a feed at the restaurant.
Taxis are very cheap and very easy to catch – we haven’t had to wait more than a minute to get a ride in to town. The safety of the cars is questionable, stopping at red lights is apparently optional and the music (usually traditional Indian music) is blaring but for $1 or $2 (AUD) we won’t complain!
We have done some re-provisioning in preparation for our next leg to Noumea and have found that the supermarkets are very expensive! As with most places if you buy local it is a lot cheaper than buying imported goods, and of course being an island the transport costs of imported goods bump up the price considerably. Unfortunately for us the feed that we require is mostly imported as we need tinned and long-life food so we’ve had to be fairly selective and have not bought a lot of the things we had hoped to. As examples, a tin of Heinz baked beans is about $4 and a small container of parmesan cheese is around $9, as is a block of Cadbury’s chocolate and a bag of pasta (AUD). It was Stu’s birthday yesterday and as a much longed for treat I bought him a small box of Darrell Lea chocolates and a packet of Tim Tams. Let’s just say that for what I paid for both would keep us in Tim Tams for months at home (ignoring the fact that we don’t buy Tim Tams at home…!!!). But it was a birthday treat that was enjoyed immensely – this is the first place that chocolate has been any good. It tastes normal!
Monday, June 14, 2010
Monday 7th June 2010
Clearance day! Finally, we can go ashore! Then at 9:00am we watched a cruise ship come in and we knew that we would be second priority. Sure enough, the government officials came over at about 4:00pm and seemed in no rush. Three of them spent a lot of time talking to each other about our stuff while the Customs guy got us to fill in a pile of forms. I wouldn’t have thought clearing a yacht would involve reading a couple of pages of my book, picking up my i-phone to take a look and generally commenting on our belongings, but apparently that’s the way they do it in Suva…and when you’re desperate to get ashore you don’t rock the boat!!! Half an hour later we were processed and cleared to go ashore. By this time shops were shutting so we had a couple of drinks at the yacht club before heading to the restaurant for a much needed meal of chicken, beef and veggies.
Sunday 6th June 2010
Another day on the boat… We once again headed over to Ariel laden down with the few remaining food items to make a respectable meal (pasta, again… I hope I never see it again once we’re home!). We’re running low on food, particularly good food, so have to combine our resources in order to create a decent meal. We’re desperate to go ashore and buy some fruit and veg, and Stu is dying for a steak. With no fridge we can’t carry a lot of things, but meat is the one thing Stu really misses. I can take it or leave it – I’m more than happy with meatless meals or tinned tuna – but Stu is a red meat man and by the time we get to a port he’s ready to sink his teeth in to the nearest cow.
Saturday 5th June 2010
Another non-eventful passage. Somewhere along the way we crossed the internationl date line and went from being 21 hours behind home (in Samoa) to 2 hours ahead of home (in Fiji), and lost a day altogether. We motored in to Suva Harbour, Fiji, at about 6:00am and anchored off the Royal Suva Yacht Club. Calling Part Control we discovered that the relevant government offices are not open on the weekend, therefore we had to stay on the boat until they could come out and clear us on Monday. The prospect of 2 days stuck on the boat was not a pleasant one, although it did give us an enforced rest period – we are always so tired after a passage but tend to run around madly trying to get things done. Stu’s parents arrived about 6 hours later and anchored nearby – close enough that Stu could swim across when he had a case of cabin fever on our boat and needed to get off. I wasn’t keen to swim in the harbor water, thinking too much about things in the water. Not so much the sharks and giant squid (although that is totally feasible of course), but the grot from years of yachts emptying their holding tanks and the rubbish and much thrown and pumped overboard from the Japanese long-liner fishing boats.
Ahhh, the fishing boats. There is a massive fleet here – about 10 fishing boats and one ‘mother ship’ which gets loaded up and then returns to Japan with another arriving to take its place. These boats used to come to Hobart but left once the costs started to rise and they began receiving some bad publicity. This was the best thing that could have happened, as we have heard that they fish in an area until their catch rate gets down to 2 fish per 1000 hooks. We’re not 100% convinced that this is number is fact, but it is reasonably common knowledge that they do over-fish and leave the ocean quite barren before moving on to the next area. We met a guy from Alaska who had seen their catch log in the Custom’s office (no such thing as secure filing here – the files are stacked up in the visitor waiting area!) and he said that they were regularly recording 70,000 tonne catches. And there were hundreds of these folders sitting there. On top of that we have seen the crew carelessly throwing their rubbish over the side, and the ships are forever pumping something in to the water. We just hope the Fijian Islands aren’t totally destroyed, and are thankful that the fleet no longer comes to Australia.
Stu decided to tempt fate, and the wrath of Customs and Immigration, by bringing his parents dinghy over to pick me up from our boat. There were definitely benefits to heading over to Ariel (their boat) for the afternoon - a more comfortable cockpit, an electric toilet (as opposed to ours which has to be manually pumped) and a much more exciting food selection due to having refrigeration topped the list. We enjoyed some company and some food with flavor before heading back to Pelon after tea.
Just to taunt us, Chuck (from Alaska) came past in his dinghy to inform us that he was heading to the yacht club for the free roast pork and beer they were providing to celebrate the opening of a new bar area. Of all the nights to be stuck on the boat… Thanks Chuck…!!
Ahhh, the fishing boats. There is a massive fleet here – about 10 fishing boats and one ‘mother ship’ which gets loaded up and then returns to Japan with another arriving to take its place. These boats used to come to Hobart but left once the costs started to rise and they began receiving some bad publicity. This was the best thing that could have happened, as we have heard that they fish in an area until their catch rate gets down to 2 fish per 1000 hooks. We’re not 100% convinced that this is number is fact, but it is reasonably common knowledge that they do over-fish and leave the ocean quite barren before moving on to the next area. We met a guy from Alaska who had seen their catch log in the Custom’s office (no such thing as secure filing here – the files are stacked up in the visitor waiting area!) and he said that they were regularly recording 70,000 tonne catches. And there were hundreds of these folders sitting there. On top of that we have seen the crew carelessly throwing their rubbish over the side, and the ships are forever pumping something in to the water. We just hope the Fijian Islands aren’t totally destroyed, and are thankful that the fleet no longer comes to Australia.
Stu decided to tempt fate, and the wrath of Customs and Immigration, by bringing his parents dinghy over to pick me up from our boat. There were definitely benefits to heading over to Ariel (their boat) for the afternoon - a more comfortable cockpit, an electric toilet (as opposed to ours which has to be manually pumped) and a much more exciting food selection due to having refrigeration topped the list. We enjoyed some company and some food with flavor before heading back to Pelon after tea.
Just to taunt us, Chuck (from Alaska) came past in his dinghy to inform us that he was heading to the yacht club for the free roast pork and beer they were providing to celebrate the opening of a new bar area. Of all the nights to be stuck on the boat… Thanks Chuck…!!
Plastiki
Plastiki arrived in Apia a couple of days after us.
Plastiki is a catamaran made out of plastic bottles, sailing from San Francisco to Sydney to raise awareness of plastic in the world’s oceans. Plastiki is the brainchild of David De Rothschild and it is very evident when talking to him that he is extremely passionate about plastic issues!
I could go on about it more, but to save those who aren’t interested (although how could you NOT be, with a bike-powered generator and a cabin made from cashew and bees wax!!) here is their website: http://www.theplastiki.com/
We had read that they left San Francisco around the time we left California and we were hoping to see them along the way. We met a couple of the crew and planned to take a look over the boat, but typically by the time we gave them space to do some repairs they had left the boat and left Apia to explore Samoa with family members who had flown in. So unfortunately we didn’t get to look over Plastiki – it would have been interesting.
Plastiki is a catamaran made out of plastic bottles, sailing from San Francisco to Sydney to raise awareness of plastic in the world’s oceans. Plastiki is the brainchild of David De Rothschild and it is very evident when talking to him that he is extremely passionate about plastic issues!
This greenhouse setup was supposed to supply the crew with fresh veggies throughout the trip! Bliss!
However once they hit the tropics they found that itwas using way too much of ther fresh water and so it had to be abandoned.
The hull consists of thousands of recycled plastic bottles
(obviously after extensive testing to test the deterioration so that they don't sink... mildly concerning that it doesn't deteriorate, isn't it!!)
I could go on about it more, but to save those who aren’t interested (although how could you NOT be, with a bike-powered generator and a cabin made from cashew and bees wax!!) here is their website: http://www.theplastiki.com/
We had read that they left San Francisco around the time we left California and we were hoping to see them along the way. We met a couple of the crew and planned to take a look over the boat, but typically by the time we gave them space to do some repairs they had left the boat and left Apia to explore Samoa with family members who had flown in. So unfortunately we didn’t get to look over Plastiki – it would have been interesting.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Posts
