ON ROUTE TO VANUATU
We are on the move again, this time a 470 miles sail from Fiji to the island of Tanna in Vanuatu. So far we have had little wind and lots of motoring. Hopefully we should arrive tomorrow afternoon; again we will need to arrive during daylight as the charts seem miles off and we aren’t game enough to attempt an entrance into Port Resolution at night.
Our last week in Fiji was a great contrast from this year of cruising as we spent all the time in all of the three marinas that are located on the west side of Vitu Levu. It is the first time we have had shore power to the boat for over 18 months.
The problem has been that all the Central American marinas are 110 volts and 60 hertz, which are boat isn’t set up for and so it was a great opportunity to give the batteries a good charge, leave all the lights on and not have to worry about power!!
Musket Cove, on the island of Malolo, was our favourite marina. It is right in the heart of the Musket Cove resort and Plantation resort and we were able to use all the facilities at no cost all for a price of the marina berth fee which was about $18.00 per night.
So as you can imagine a lot of time was spent around the pool and enjoying the odd cocktail or two. On top of that we seem to have picked the right week to be there as it was Fiji Regatta week, not that we took part in any of the yacht racing, but it did mean free drinks and a meal on opening night (god! we are turning into full time yachties!!!)
From Musket Cove we back tracked to Denarau marina, close to Nadi, to meet up with Ken and Judy, who were over here on a holiday/work. We had a great couple of days enjoying their company and catching up with all the gossip at home.
On the Monday when Judy was at work and we were chatting to Ken on board Innforapenny a most bizarre thing happened. There were some men working on a charter boat about 50 metres away and there was a massive explosion and we looked up to see a large CO2 fire extinguisher take off and pass over our mast and land about 10 metres away in the only empty mooring pen in the marina.
Talk about a close call – a few more metres this way and it would have drilled a hole in our boat or worse killed someone!! It seems that they were removing the CO2 fire extinguishers from the boat and someone accidently dropped one of them on its neck.
