Baie de Prony is named for the vessel that first explored it in 1854. Only ten years later a "forestry industry" began here using convict labor. (New Caledonia was, like Australia, initially a penal colony.) Throughout the bay are sprinkled ruins of convict "settlements," but there are no remains of the forest. I've been told that the original forest cover was the huge, slow-growing kauri pine that was popular in shipbuilding. Not sure if this is correct. It is hard to imagine. There is none of it remaining, and no evidence of replanting. The hills as far as you can see are red earth, thinly covered by green scrub with great orange gashes of landslides and erosion. It is sad but oddly beautiful.

We were surprised that Procyon would take the very first anchorage because Baie de Prony has no fewer than 16 identified anchorages within it, six of which alone are in the large eastern interior bay called Bonne Anse. Anchorage "A", as it is dubbed in the cruising guide, is right out behind the wooded point that merges with Prony Reef and is only protected from southeasterly winds, which, granted, are the predominant winds in the region. Well, it proved to be an outstanding choice, because the wide open view to the west – over Prony Reef to Île Ouen and the Woodin Channel -- then north to the multicolored hills backing the western side of the Baie de Prony -- was simply awesome, morning, midday, evening and even by moonlight!

PROCYON REUNION
Randy and Sheri had, unfortunately, been forced to spend nearly a month in Noumea after Randy had a mishap learning to kite-board and rammed a piece of coral well up into his foot. This became quite infected and ended up needing surgery, and his back compounded his misery by going into spasms. He was not a happy camper for a few weeks. However, he had as good an experience with the French medical system in Noumea as we had in Raiatea, and, in the end, Noumea is not a bad place to recuperate with its delightful market right at the head of the marina. The good news for us is that the Procyons would otherwise have already been on their way to Australia, and now they will be making that trip the same time as we.

We had a lovely afternoon and evening visiting aboard Procyon, which is a custom-built Gozzard 44, a truly beautiful boat with an owner's open layout placing a spacious dining/living area in the triangular space where usually there would be a forepeak cabin. We did steaks and baked potatoes on the grill, and relished a green salad with fresh ingredients and talked boat talk around their lovely dining table. It was a fleeting reunion, though as early the following the morning, they were underway south to the Isle of Pines. We, however, were left with the gorgeous view to ourselves.

BONNE ANSE
We lingered there a day working on various projects, then the next morning raised anchor to poke around the other five anchorages in Bonne Anse. One of the reasons Randy and Sheri has stopped so quickly is that they had seen a number of boats precede them in this direction. Over the course of the following day, we'd watched most of them leave again, so when we motored east ourselves, we were pleased to see that all but one boat had departed. We chose anchorage "E" on the north side of the bay in which to put the hook down as the forecast was calling for the wind to clock around to the north. Anchorage "E" was a cove of eroded orange hills laced with green, a red sand beach backed by a grove of green trees, and a wide semi-circle of shoals completely sedimented in red silt. Grandterre's red and green color scheme, so eyecatching at a distance, is rather intense up close, and in anchorage "E" we had totally sacrificed the long view. It was, however, quite a bit warmer, a function, I think, of both the wind shift to the north and the encircling land mass. Plus, again, we were totally alone…that is, except for the flies.

We had heard mention of the fly problem on the radio but had not imagined its degree. We paid the price for being late getting our screens up as the interior of the boat was beseiged. We are talking hundreds. The flyswatter was excavated and put to constant use. There is one redeeming feature of flies; they go to sleep at night, so you can. Okay, and they don't bite. But, Jiminy Christmas they are IRRITATING!

Our second morning in Anchorage "E", we dinghied across the bay to a trailhead leading to the lighthouse atop Cap Ndoua. This is the very important leading light for the Havanna Passage, the main ship entry from the east. We secured the dinghy off a nice little red sand beach and easily found the trail. Once upon a time, this trail was a road, but erosion has carved deep gullies in the bed, and recent rains or perhaps just the morning dew made the hard-packed clay very slick. We emerged from the tunnel of trees about half-way up and climbed the rest of the way to the light flanked by hip-high brush but with awesome views in every direction. What's really amazing about this panorama is that there is hardly any sign of man in it, discounting the light itself and its associated equipment, some ruins on a lower plateau, and a couple of red earth roads winding off to the east. That the hike is a popular one is attested to by a "flagpole" where hikers have hung items of clothing (including a pair of bikini panties) as well as a curious form of natural graffiti: the entire vale just east of the light is filled with "signatures" shaped from assembled rocks and then framed in a rectangle of rocks. I suggested we put together a "Tackless II was here" or "The Two Captains were here", but Don pointed out that either would take a lot of rocks.

But here's a peculiar thing. No flies on shore!

The illusion of "little sign of man" proved to be just that: An illusion. As we motored out of Bonne Anse that afternoon to check out some of the anchorages on Prony's western side, a huge industrial complex was revealed filling up the whole eastern part of the bay! Just over the ridge from where we'd been anchored! Now we know that the great lume of light we'd been seeing in the sky since Port Boisé is not Noumea at all, but this plant! The cruising guide describes a rock crushing facility here, which it claims closed in 1968. Whatever this is, it is neither defunct nor old!

Once revealed, it tuned out to be pretty hard to shake the specter of that monstrosity. We motored behind a little resort island called Ilot Casy up into the western arm of the bay, but still bits of the factory kept sticking up above the landmasses we tried to put between us and it. We were intending to go all the way up the bay to its fjord-like end, an area known as Carenage, with two hurricane-hole anchorages and some hot springs. But Don's interest was waning fast, so we turned instead towards a cove called Anse Sebert. Imagine our surprise when we rounded the point and found not just four other boats (one of them our buddies on Avior), but moorings!

ANSE SEBERT
We aren't sure who put these moorings here, but there are about ten of them. The chart shows a village nearby, but Jim and Paula of Avior did a walk ashore and found only ruins amongst which there appeared to be holiday "shacks." So perhaps they are the work of a Noumea-based cruising club. However, the landing was not in the possession of vacationers today, but a squadron of military types with a small fleet of inflatables. Over the course of the afternoon, a helicopter landed, took off, circled and landed over and over, and guys with rifles hid behind trees and tried to look inconspicuous, ignoring Jim and Paula as they took their walk! Later, while the four of us relaxed and pondered the situation over some cocktails, eight inflatables with eight men in each paddled off into the night. That it was a training maneuver and not a guerrilla takeover was suggested by lead and tail-gunner dinghies sporting engines and running lights!

RECIF DE L'AIGUILLE
The big attraction in Anse Sebert for non-military types is the nearby dive site Recif de L'Aiguille (Needle Reef), a rock spire that ascends nearly to the surface from about 80 feet right in the middle of the channel. Our dive gear, all nicely serviced in Fiji, has been sitting largely unused this season, and quite honestly, if it hadn't been for Paula's determination, it might still be packed away. The hesitation (besides pure laziness) has been the water temp. Readings have hovered at about 74-75 degrees on the surface which suggests colder temps below. This is about three degrees colder than the winter temp in the Virgin Islands, and up until the last few days, air temps have been pretty chilly, too. Have I mentioned that Don and I foolishly took our heavier wetsuits back to Florida? Well, we hadn't needed them since Mexico! But, at 0830 the next morning, after seeing Avior's gear start to emerge, we decided we wouldn't be wimps and started excavating and donning every bit of gear we still have. For us that meant Lycra suits topped by Polartec suits and hoods, booties and gloves. I was lucky to also have a neoprene chicken vest to add to my get-up.

It was, in short, a great dive! From about 60 feet up to about eight feet below the surface, the spire is encrusted with corals, sponges and a crazy variety of shellfish. Visibility was good and the sunlight just right to highlight some unusual formations. Huge groupers, that folks in these parts call cod, poked up from the depths to check us out, a pair of huge batfish kept shyly just ahead of us, while lovely pale spotted hinds (which folks in these parts call grouper or coral trout) tried to camouflage themselves against pale coral "stalagmites." According to the cruising guide, fresh water comes out the tops of these unusual formations, which must be how these reverse concretions have accumulated! In fact, it is probably how the how structure came to be, a fresh water leak in the seafloor depositing its minerals in a climbing tower eventually aided by reef building corals. Tiny little bi-color damsels darted hither and thither, while bigger "tropicals" wove around us. Presumably because this is a preserve, the fish were not particularly fearful. (That's, of course, because they didn't know what Don was thinking; he did a lot of "finger-shooting"!) We all surfaced delighted and wondering what we'd been waiting for!

APRES DIVE
By evening the weather had turned gray and rainy, but several of us were invited aboard the catamaran Lady Nada for an impromptu cocktail party. Lady Nada and Heat Wave were the hosts, and Avior and Tackless II the guests. Lady Nada is a big catamaran single-handed by its builder David, and Heat Wave is a fast monohull skippered by an attractive German woman, Bridgit and her partner in the boat Lee. All of us had been on the ICA Rally from Vanuatu, but we'd not gotten to know the others (other than Avior) very well. It was quite the international evening with a South African (David), Englishman (Lee), German (Bridgit), Scot (Paula), Aussie, Jim and we two Americans. Sadly, no one had invited the one French boat that came in..

HIKING ASHORE
On Friday, the weather stayed overcast and grew blustery, evaporating any enthusiasm to revisit the dive site. Instead, the group began to disperse leaving only Tackless and the French boat in the anchorage. In the afternoon, we grew antsy enough to dinghy to shore to check out, now that the military had vacated, the walks that Jim and Paula had found. After securing the dinghy to a nice floating dock, we found a detailed map of 14 kilometers of trails through the Prony preserve area! Wow! We could have walked up to the Carenage anchorage! One sure could spend some time here! Unfortunately, we only had a few hours until sunset, but we set out to the north along the shoreline following a well marked path around the headland to Prony Village.

At an intersection in the middle of the woods we stumbling upon a display answering some of the questions we'd had about the forest industry here. According to the display, Prony village was established in 1865 to house convict labor set to the task of felling the native big kauri pines and gum oaks. Right on a section of the trail was built an example of the wooden rail system that had been used in those days to move the huge logs. Smooth log rails were laid across wooden ties on which were mounted big wooden sleds, maybe thirty feet long. On these were secured an entire tree trunk. Even with this fairly slick system, there must have been a lot of back-breaking labor for the convicts, not the least of which was getting the log onto the sled. On the hill above this display was the convict cemetery lost in second growth woods, where, if a sign didn't tell you there were graves there, nothing else would suggest it. Further along the path were stone-wall ruins of the penitentiary, now incorporated into what do appear to be weekend cottages. Around them, several freestanding stone walls, even one entire building, had been totally encapsulated by the roots of banyan trees! The cottages were planted artfully with flowering shrubs, and everything looked like a landscaped park. Whatever one may say about the French colonial system, one has to be impressed with the infrastructure. Not just the roads and utility poles that impressed us in the Loyalties, but the details of these parks, the well-groomed trails and signposts, the first class docks and wharves. It is so noticeable, of course, because we are talking first world management in a third-world situation.

GONE ASTRAY
On our way back to the dock, Don noticed that there was another marker on the fringing reef just like the one we had all tied to when diving on Recife de l'Aiguille. On second look we realized, it WAS the marker we had tied to! Somehow, within the preceding few hours, it had broken free and drifted to shore! This is not good, considering the reef comes to within a few feet of the surface! It also would not have been cool to have been down on the dive when it came loose! (Of course, we were diving in calm conditions, and it was currently blowing about 20 knots.) On our way back to the boat, we stopped to introduce ourselves to and chat with the French couple of Fidelio (turns out they are physicians who have lived aboard 30 years and worked in Martinique, Nuku Hiva, and Noumea.) Just as we were suggesting that they – with their better French - call Noumea Radio to report the displaced "balise", up zooms a Marine Patrol boat, and within minutes it was on the notice to mariners!

As we climbed back aboard Tackless II we were of mixed emotions about whether to go or stay longer. It would have been nice to explore more of the trails. Indeed it would have been nice to spend several more weeks checking out all the rest of Prony's anchorages. But with Noumea still waiting and the month ticking down fast, we opted in the end to move on.

By the way, I forgot to mention that when we went to shore for the hike, I sprayed the beejezus out of the interior of the boat with bug spray meant for mosquitoes that we'd filched from our Fiji hotel room. By the time we got back, the fly problem was history! Now, keep those screens closed!

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Labels: Diving, Hiking, New Caledonia

It seems that several weeks ago, Luc and Jackie of the yacht Sloepmouche (cruisers who have paused here in Vanuatu the past two years) sailed into Southwest Bay. Over chats with local chiefs it transpired that the villagers would do just about anything to increase visitor traffic to the bay. Indeed last year one of the villages undertook to put on a program for a small cruise ship that made several visits. The villagers went away for some training and put together a relatively polished presentation. Then the cruise ship didn't come anymore. So Luc, who is an active contributor to the SSCA Bulletins, undertook to coordinate a cruiser festival here in conjunction with the chiefs. The three villages planned a three-day event, and Luc got the word out over the coconut telegraph, with the result that some thirty-four boats assembled for the event!

I'm sure others may have been put off by the idea of such a crowd, but in fact, the anchorage could easily hold three times as many boats. We are all swinging free with plenty of room between neighbors. And while the critical mass of cruising boats and their crews has been a revelation for the locals, it's also been quite a social occasion for the yachties themelves, many of whom haven't crossed paths in years.

The three villages involved in the event are Lembinwen, Lapo, and Tenstick. The festival began at Lembinwen, a large village on the bank where a salt water river flowing briskly from a huge tidal lagoon meets the bay. Central to the day was the dedication and opening of the Southwest Bay Yacht Club. The "yacht club" phenomenon is found all though Vanuatu. In traditional places where areas, buildings and pathways hold all sorts of traditional restrictions and taboos (particularly with respect to outsiders and women), having a building where yachties can gather to mingle with the locals without inadvertently treading on those traditions has been a successful compromise. Lembinwen was keen to have one and built the thatch hut in a matter of weeks.

But it could not happen without a lot of pomp and ceremony. The yachties were greeted on the beach with drinking coconuts and hibiscus flowers for each lady. There was a receiving line and a string band (evidently every village has their own) and an emcee with a megaphone. We learned later that the megaphone is a regular part of village life, a way for the chief to "send out" messages to the village, a tropical town crier, if you will. In the hands of Charlie, Lembinwen's emcee for the day, it was a non-stop white noise as he shifted back and forth between languages and panned his voice this way or that to target various groups of yachties or villagers in a relatively vain effort to herd us all along …vain of course because he was completely incomprehensible! There was a flag-raising on the beach, a banner held up by adorable children we needed to walk under, and speeches from a thatch dais by several chiefs, who were terrified at addressing a crowd of white foreigners in English if the trembling paper holding the composed speech was any indication! There was even a white ribbon on the door of the new yacht club that had to be cut with scissors at yet another flag raising.

Considering that this was Lembinwen's first such event, they did a very fine job. They had a whole series of demonstrations of village life planned; climbing coconut trees for nuts, cutting said nuts open for drink or meat, cooking a pudding of coconut and plantain in tubes of bamboo of a fire, starting that fire without matches, and of course weaving useful carryalls out of pond fronds. They also gave a cursory demonstration of how their outrigger canoes are constructed, and a shy fellow showed the traditional sand-drawing, where images are created without ever lifting the finger. We had a nice lunch of beef stirfry, taro, and a fancy bread and banana concoction, which surely used every plate in the village's possession, and then we all climbed up a hill (where hand-rails had been lashed helpfully to the path-side trees) to watch a ladies' grade-taking dance.

Unfortunately, what explanation of the dance Charlie and the megaphone provided was not clear enough that many of us appreciated what we were seeing. It is only after coming back to the boat and reviewing my Lonely Planet did I start to get a clue. Grade-taking, usually associated with men only, is a process whereby individuals increase status within the community. According to the Lonely Planet, the men "earn respect by publicly disposing of their wealth in a series of elaborate ceremonies"…"accompanied by the ritual killing of pigs." What they are after from the pigs are the boar's tusks, which take six to seven years to grow, so one has to own a lot of pigs that reach maturity to collect the required number of tusks to reach "high levels of society." It seems that the southern Malekula women are the only Vanuatu women to take grades.

What was perhaps slightly uncomfortable was that the ladies danced topless. It is an odd jump to make from women in Mother Hubbards (the smock-like dress introduced by missionaries) to the same women in grass skirts and vines. These are not the nubile virgins most of the men were hoping to see, but matronly figures, to put it kindly, and the dance was a fairly monotonous chant and tread around a "house" made of saplings, which the ladies eventually entered and then pushed down for the finale, a symbolism lost on us.

After the dance, about half the cruisers opted for the lagoon tour – a fast trip in a line of dinghies through the huge estuary up the river.

The next day was pretty much a rerun, except that presented by the villagers of Lapo, the ones who had trained for the cruise ship, every phase was more coordinated and more polished. Instead of flowers for our ears we had leis (which work better for white people!),
there were straws for our drinking coconuts, the benches at the beautifully landscaped dance ground had backs to them (!!!!), the lunch was somewhat more elaborate, and the guy on the megaphone was much easier to understand. As we landed our dinghies on their beautiful beach, we were parceled into groups of ten and given a guide for the day. The guides were more effective than Charlie's amplified directions had been, but even so I am quite sure the guides found cruisers much more challenging to "herd" than the cruise ship passengers had been!

The two big differences in the day were the village tour and the dancing. Lapo (pronounced LaBO) is the Swiss village of southwest Bay. The thatch huts climb the steep hillside along a path that switches back and forth up through dense jungly forest. The houses, though still stick and thatch, seemed larger and more westernized in style, with porches and windows, some with screens and others even with glass, motivated, I presume, by the gorgeous vistas and the cool breezes. One little cluster had three tombs in the front, (rather Samoan style), there was a nice little Presbyterian church, and deliberate effort at landscaping with flowers and shrubs along the paths was evident everywhere. Near the top of the villages was a waterfall with a Jacuzzi like pool for kava drinking.

As for the dancing, this time it was men's dances and the men were in Kastom-dress.
Unlike the "participatory' dances we saw in Tanna (and here I consult Lonely Planet again), the two dances we saw in Lapo were "impersonation" dances where the men "pretend to be an ancestor or legendary figure" which allows the use of elaborate masks or headdresses.
Below they wear little more than penis sheaths and decorations of leaves, including colorful tufts from their backsides like rooster tails. Unlike the women, the men were easier on the eye, revealing fitter more muscular flesh. (We were told that one reason the men don't run to fat like the ladies is that kava – in these villages restricted to men's consumption – is an appetite suppressant!). Also the men's dance was accompanied by the drumming of a set of three elaborate tamtam (carved wooden slit-drums), which was very stirring.
The costumes and headdresses were truly memorable (different in each dance), but the dance steps themselves were the same for both dances, a handful of slow deliberate steps, then a flurry of fast double-timers when the drum beat sped up.
The art, of course, is doing it while keeping the headdresses upright.

Of course, just as we were all sitting there thinking the dance steps were rather unexciting, we were invited to come out and join the dancers. It wasn't so easy…and that's without headdresses!

All in all another nice day.

The third day of the festival was a more relaxed opportunity to visit the small hamlet of Tenstick, located on the westernmost point of the bay and named for the haystack islet just offshore. It seems in WWII the pilots based at Espirito Santo paid the villagers "ten sticks" – or ten cigarettes – to use the islet for target practice. Here the main attraction was to be snorkeling and diving, but the good weather that had blessed the first two days of the festival failed, and the morning was beset with a chilly drizzle. As you might guess, most of the cruisers, overdosed on village visits from the previous two days, opted to stay home. On Tackless II this captain was feeling a bit under the weather as we had celebrated Don's big SIX-OH the night before (more on that later). But when someone announced on the radio that perhaps these villagers had gone to more preparation than we'd been led to expect, we, like several others, clambered into our dinghies to pay our respects.

The Tenstickers had their own string band, their own hibiscus flowers and drinking coconuts to offer (these with straws of "cabbage stems"!), a table of snacks to try, and some crafts and shells to sell. Both men and women were on the beach to greet us, and sat around to chat. Don and David (the Runaway Bay crew had caught up with us in time for the BiG SIX-OH dinner) had a tour with the chief, and David invited the chief to visit our boats in the morning (Damn, gotta cleanup AGAIN!) Afterwards we took our snorkel gear to check out the reefs around Tenstick Islet, and were sufficiently impressed with the clear water and reef landscape to plan a scuba dive tomorrow.

If you are wondering what the villagers got for their efforts, it is common to ask a fee. After all, these traditions, reefs and National Geographic opportunities are all these people have to market. On the first day, Lembinwen asked only for gifts of our discretion (and they collected quit a heap!); at Lapo they asked the equivalent of $30 a head (a bit dear), and at Tenstick $3 bought us access to the reef.

Don's BIG six-OH!

August 13th came around again this year, and it was mighty nice of the folks of Southwest Bay to throw this big party for Don, cause i'd been wondering waht special thing I could to celebrate. It was our friends Randy and Sherri of Procyon that alerted us to it as a perfect place to meet up for the occasion, and very fine that our "newest best friends" David and Chrissie of Runaway Bay put the push on to get here in time. Other than the events of the festival, Don's big day started with sat phone calls home as well as well-wishing by email, and ended with a big dinner for six in Tacky Two's cockpit. Randy and Sherri contributed a sinful chocolate cake and a split of champagne, Dave and Chrissie a lovely fruit compote and yam fritters, while I strove to provide cheeseburgers in paradise…which, believe me, in Paradise is no easy feat. My homemade buns, such a success in Tonga two years ago, were a bit of a flop, and the burgers, down-sized twice before grilling to fit the buns ended up more like White Castles' infamous sliders. Damn, I shoulda thought to grill onions!!!! My potato salad, however, was more successful, thanks to Chrissie's bringing us provisions from Port Vila.

Although we miss being close enough to home that the family could make a big fuss over us for milestones like these, the cruising way has its virtues: celebration by like-minded souls in like situations with similar thoughts of where we are in life and what we want from what remains us.

15-18 August 2008 – ‘Tween Time

Southwest Bay was the kind of place one could hang on the hook indefinitely, especially with the ability to restock beef, fish, eggs as well as lemons and limes from the Kiwi Farm. On the Friday after the hoopla of the festival died down and as the fleet started to disperse, we did manage to fit a scuba dive in on the reef on the west side of the pass between Tenstick’s islet and village. Don and David actually opted to sit on the surface and schmooze about boat systems while Chrissie, a newly certified diver, and I went for a very nice dive through a system of caverns and pinnacles, my favorite kind of landscape. Hard to believe Chrissie was a newbie!

In the afternoon, Don and I went ashore to collect a sarong I had purchased from a woman named Marklynn at the Tenstick do the day before. We found her house as she’d described, the last compound on Lembinwen village’s west end. She and her husband Silon made us welcome in the family’s main building, a structure of cement and stone up two feet, topped by the traditional vertical stick walls, and an absolutely beautiful thatch roof. The building housed an open space probably 25’x40’, and inside was almost nothing! Against one wall in the corner was a bench with some cooking pans, and the sarong I was picking up was pinned to the wall above it. Their son Anthony, a handsome young man as yet unmarried, is one of the musicians in the village string band, so of course we had to buy a copy of their just-released CD (produced very professionally by a Peace Corp worker.) Later when Marklynn went to get a gift for me (my very own, very pink Mother Hubbard dress…so I “could have a proper dress!), she went into a smaller hut nearby, so we deduce each member of the family as their own sleeping hut.

Aside from the new and spacious compound, Silon and Marklyn are distinguished by keeping pets. In a stone and cement pool built into the sand, Silon keeps five turtles – four hawksbill and one green turtle – that he says he has raised from babies. Keeping turtles for four years takes a lot of work. They feed the turtles rice and change the water every day, and Silon claims they take the turtles out in the sea for swims. He says he keeps them to teach the community children that turtles are protected now and not to be caught or shot for food. He also has a flying fox in a cage, which he acquired when one of the boys shot the mother with a slingshot and the baby was found tucked under her wing. All the animals seemed happy and clean and friendly with the family.

On our way out, Silon led us on a tour through Lembinwen village. Even though we had spent a day there for the festival, we actually had not seen much of it. Wandering around unattended is not encouraged. It turned out to be quite densely built up (no wonder Silon moved to the suburbs!). We saw two of the three churches (Presbyterian, SDA and CDC…I know what SDA is, but not CDC!), an actual open air stage for the band and other village events, a volleyball court, the primary school, the chief in his undershorts and well, you know….village life.

The next morning we took advantage of the light winds and motored back around the south end of Malekula to the Maskelyne islands at Malekula’s SE corner. This was a change of plan. Originally, I’d thought we’d sail with Runaway Bay north up to Luganville on Espirito Santo, where the US military base was during WWII and where there are several spectacular wreck dives (the USS President Coolidge, a 654-foot former luxury liner that was serving as a troop ship when she struck a friendly mine and sank, and the infamous Million Dollar Point, where the US navy dumped thousands of tons of equipment after the war.) However the Coolidge is a deep dive which I am avoiding these days, and Don was lukewarm about diving on his own, and with the weather report predicting strong easterlies coming in within the week, we were concerned about getting pinned in up there when we would need to get back southeast to Efate. So, instead we decided to proceed with Procyon and other friends over to Ambrym Island for a famous Rom dance festival

The Maskelyne Islands are a pretty little group of seven islets and extensive reef areas. We tucked in to a super protected anchorage behind the coral-fringed islet of Awea (S16*31’.9; E169*41.’2) with a bunch of friends, and quite honestly, never put the dinghy down. With two festivals behind us and another to go, we were perfectly happy just to sit on our boat and do as little as possible. Of course, that didn’t stop people from visiting us. Marjetka, the Slovenian single-hander, and her wonder dog Cherie were there and came and spent an afternoon visiting, as did Randy and Sherri of Procyon. Also we had a few visitors that came by canoe, most memorably Martin and his five-year-old son Thatcher! We enjoyed chatting with Martin, and although he had nothing to trade, we ended up making him a gift of some reading glasses which he sorely desired.

On Monday morning, the wind picked up to a respectable 15 knots and the entire anchorage emptied out in a steady stream and set sail for the NW tip of Ambrym Island about 46 miles away. As the fleet sailed out, we had to give way to the local canoes, now alll equipped with sails!

Since Ambrym is Vanuatu’s other big active volcano, we were concerned about picking up ash and fumes as we sailed by its leeward side, but fortunately for us the main impact was some locally-generated wind patterns switching the southeasterlies abruptly to northwesterlies! Still we had another great sail and settled into the relatively open roadstead off Nebul village known as Rodd’s anchorage (S16*06’.5; E168*.07’.7).

Labels: Diving, Hiking, Rally Experiences, Traditional Festivals, Vanuatu

The anchorage itself, wrapped around by the islands of Malolo Lai Lai and Malolo as well as a maze of reef, is well protected once you find your way in. Yet it is not a remote spot. Malolo Lai Lai has at least three other resorts that overlook the anchorage – Lomani, Plantation Island, and Malolo Beach(?) – and there are others around the bend! This makes for a lot of boat traffic, pangas from the various resorts bringing staff to work from the village on Malolo and then carrying guests out for snorkel and dive tours, Hobie cats in novice hands, and ferries to and from the mainland. With all this going on there is still plenty of room to anchor between the reefs should you not want to take advantage of either the 27 maintained moorings Musket Cove Resort provides for a modest fee or the further twenty med-moor spaces available inside their little marina. This little marina is up an inlet in the reef along floating docks with a fuel and water dock at its innermost end. They even have hurricane storage in a man-made lagoon doglegged in to the center of the resort itself.

But what really distinguishes Musket Cove from many another stop is how the Musket cove Resort treats their marine-based guests. Instead of a grudging permission to land, at Musket boat-based visitors are granted virtually equal rights as resort guests. For the modest fee of $12 per yacht, we get a life-long membership to their Yacht Club entitling us to open an account with a credit card and then use that account at any or all of the facilities – the restaurants, the dive shop, the beach rentals (kayaks, Hobie cats, windsurfers, bicycles), the ferries to the mainland, the grocery store, and of course, at the bar.

Cruisers do love a good watering hole, but this is a department in which the Pacific has proved woefully thin. So to have one conceived exclusively for us, on its own little man-made sandy island, complete with beach, thatched palapa bar, picnic tables with lights, and wood-fired barbecue grills is the proverbial "died-and-gone-to-heaven" for sociable sailors. And if we are all seeking a place where "everybody knows your name", we've found it here where the two Fijian lady bartenders somehow manage to do just that! Even Savusavu's hospitable Yacht Club, at which we spent so many fine evenings, seems uptight and formal compared to Musket's super friendly Ratu Nemani Island Bar.

It was into this paragon of summer camp for cruisers that we brought Uncle Bill for his last few days in Fiji. We arrived Saturday afternoon, picked up mooring #1, (which looked, and turned out to be, brand spanking new), and launched the dinghy so the boys could go in and reconnoiter. They got us registered as Musket Cove Yacht Club members (each with our own laminated membership card), signed us up for a dive package shareable by all members of the crew at the dive shop, and inaugurated our association with the Ratu Nemani Island Bar to such a degree that the lady bartenders smile the moment they see Don coming over the bridge. Uncle Bill plunged into the crowd ever in search of an unattached female sailor who might want to go cruising in the Bahamas, and while I don't think he found one, but he sure seemed to have good time trying!

Where was the Admiral in all this? Well, in very poor hostess fashion I managed to get myself an article assignment that had to be turned around within the week, so for most of Bill's last days aboard I could be found chained to the computer.

I did come out for happy hour and dinner (never fear), and, as our first real night at Musket was Sunday, that meant we were in time for the traditional Musket Sunday night BBQ. It's BYO meat for the grill (or purchase a BBQ pack from the little store) and then the resort brings the fixings – baked potatoes, green salads, pasta salad, coleslaw and garlic bread – that you can buy for a modest fee. We ended up sharing a table with the crews of two Voyage catamarans –Rick and Robin of Endangered Species and Paul and Lei Ellen of Gato Go – plus Lee and Jan of the monohull La Bohème (who were on the dock at the same time we were in Raiatea!) – all of whom, it turned out, are, like us, home-based in the Tampa Bay Area!

Monday the boys spent the morning on boat projects (specifically installing the new circuit breaker for the windlass), and then in the afternoon they made a one-tank dive with Musket's Sub-Surface dive shop. The dive was a shallow one on some scattered bommies that didn't measure up to what we'd enjoyed the week before in Savusavu Bay, which was a bit disappointing. With the benefit of hindsight, it's clear they should have gone for the morning two-tank dive for which the dive boat runs farther out to better sites. However, you have to reserve a day ahead for an 0800 departure and the weather forecast for the morning had been bad. With nature's famed capriciousness, the weather, of course, was fine. That evening they lured me out from my lair again with happy hour which led to Curry Night at the Resort's main restaurant with Dick and Lynn of the other Voyage cat in the anchorage, Wind Pony.

Tuesday was Uncle Bill's last day aboard, and it was spent – as far as I could see over the screen of my laptop – with those usual last day activities: packing and weighing of suitcases and last minute reviews of watermaker installation procedures (one of the projects awaiting Bill when he gets back aboard his own boat Geodesic.) Ironically, I finished up my article and sent it off about ten minutes before it was time to take Bill ashore to catch his ferry. This ferry, on which Musket Cove Yacht Club Members get a big discount, runs three times a day into Denerau marina on the mainland which is a hop, skip and a jump away from Nadi airport. There is also a busy airstrip here from which small planes regularly fly, not to mention a seaplane service and helicopters, but being nautical (and cheap) folk, the ferry was more our speed.

Uncle Bill left mid-afternoon in fine weather, but the forecast front finally rolled in about sunset filling the sky with clouds and pretty well knocking out our chance to see the red eclipse of the moon. We consoled ourselves with dinner aboard and the last three weeks of the Dancing with Stars season, which Tiffany had sent out with Bill on DVD. Hopefully, Uncle Bill got to see the eclipse from the plane.

PS: My nephew John Wells is participating for the eighth time in the Annual Multiple Sclerosis Society MS 150 in South Carolina the weekend of Sept 15-16. This Bike-athon is a fund-raising effort to raise money for the fight against multiple sclerosis, a disease that affects million including members of our family. I include a link here for any one who might want to pledge a donation in his name.

Click here to visit my personal page.
If the text above does not appear as a clickable link, you can visit the web address:
http://www.nationalmssociety.org/site/TR?px=1790741&pg=personal&fr_id=6180&s_tafId=12721

Click here to view the team page for Pedal Pack
If the text above does not appear as a clickable link, you can visit the web address:
http://www.nationalmssociety.org/site/TR?team_id=35052&pg=team&fr_id=6180&s_tafId=12721

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Labels: Diving, Fiji 2007, Musket Cove

We picked our way through the reefs on our way in from Buca Bay, grateful for the full sun, because our CMap charts are still off. Conveniently, the NZ sloop Steelheart motored right past us, so, since they'd been to Viani before, we followed them in to the center anchorage right below the home of the Fisher family, who own much of the acreage here. Jack Fisher, a stout man of about sixty, is known for guiding visiting yachties whether on treks in the hills or to the delights of the reefs. Jack came by shortly after we got the hook down, and we made a plan to dive the next day.

However, within an hour, two more boats arrived in the anchorage. Another Kiwi boat called Tokimata and the American 44-foot Voyage catamaran Wind Pony. The Voyage cats' charter base is in Soper's Hole, Tortola, so every time one of these handsome craft sails by we enjoy a little nostalgia. The crew on Wind Pony, Dick and Lynn of St. Paul, MN, and their visiting friends Joe and Molly were also interested in a trip out to the reefs, so pretty soon the plan was modified for us ALL to go aboard Wind Pony.

For this kind of thing, cats just can't be beat. There we were, eleven people including Jack, with an absurd amount of space to enjoy the ride. And, in a way that wouldn't have happened easily otherwise, we all quickly got to know one another.

The good news from our point of view is they weren't all divers. On our first trip out, only three of us, Don, Peter of Tokimata, and I, dove the famous Purple Wall, while the others snorkeled the top of the reef. Jack gives a briefing on the site, and then he takes you out in your own dinghies, following your bubbles as you go with the current. For this service, he charges F$10pp. For experienced divers with their own equipment and an onboard compressor like us, this is a deal that is hard to beat! But for more novice divers or for people without gear, there is a professional dive operation at the east end on the bay called Dolphin Divers, so no one need miss out

The Purple Wall is one of the most beautiful dives I have ever done, and as you can guess, that is saying a lot. Ever since my trip to the Red Sea in 1984, I have had a soft spot for soft corals. Up until this dive, I have been disappointed that the soft corals we've been seeing have been the leather corals and other spongier sorts -- interesting, but usually drab. The soft corals I remember from the Red Sea were inflated bouquets of color – pinks, oranges and yellows.

Jack dropped us in up current, and we swam down the reef to about forty feet. For the first few minutes I was unimpressed. Then we rounded a bend and the wall exploded with a profusion of soft corals, which for some reason are all in purple hues! They were dark purple, lavender or white with purple trim! It was a spectacular display. Plus there were loads of fish, and lots of crinoids, relatives of feather starfish that filter feed at night but curl up in the day. Most eye-catching were the little orange basslets that mass around the corals providing quite the color contrast, and at one spot I saw a pair brilliant yellow goatfish against the purple. Talk about Nature's palette! We also saw two huge Napoleon wrasse, thousands of butterfly fish, and enough fish of "shootable size" to satisfy Don's meaty fancies. (It seems he doesn't need to actually be spear-fishing, he just likes to see something he could!) At the end of the dive was a swim-thru cavern, clad in every color soft and cup coral you can imagine, along with beautiful sea fans, wire corals, and gorgonians. Since this cave both ends the Purple Wall dive and begins the famous White Wall dive, you have seen it photographed in dozens of divemagazines.

Then, as if all this weren't enough, as we did our safety stop, what should swim up but a manta ray! He was not huge, probably about 10' wide, but he was deeply black and feeding at the surface. The snorkelers all jumped back in the water to see him.

The next day, we dived the Cabbage Patch. Relatively new divers, Dick and Lynn of Wind Pony had opted to snorkel yesterday, but encouraged by our great dive, they decided to give it a shot. Unfortunately, the current was much stronger here than we'd had yesterday, which made things a bit more challenging, but Jack put our dinghy anchor down so that Lynn would have a descent line. It was a good move for all of us. We crept up and over the edge of the wall and again enjoyed the profusion of soft corals, these of mixed colors, purples and yellows with lots of colorful fish. The soft coral wall was over too quickly thanks to the current, so the second half of the dive was up on the ledge going from bommie to bommie. A bommie is an isolated coral patch, often attaining significant height, each providing shelter for a huge range of fish. On this stretch, we saw many large fish between the bommies -- groupers and snappers and god knows what! We also had several sharks, including a 10' lemon shark resting on the bottom.

This dive ended a bit short when Lynn experienced some buoyancy problems. Her instructor back in Tobago had, for some reason, fitted her with a bit of belt carrying eight pounds of lead across the top part of her tank, "to help her swim more horizontally." I've never seen anything like it, and certainly saw no reason why she would need it. Apparently, she lost this weight during the dive, and of course, could not get back down. Once on the surface, she was caught up in the current, and had to be picked up by Jack. Before we found the explanation, Lynn was a little spooked that she had some incurable issues with buoyancy control. Jack kept saying she needed more weight, but on the dive itself I was fairly sure she was over-weighted. It turned out we were both right. When we got back to the anchorage, she and I got in the water and did buoyancy check. Discovering the missing weights, the mystery of her inability to get back down was solved, and after the buoyancy check, I was confirmed that she was carrying too much weight to start, hence many of her issues. We took several pounds off, and did a little tour under the boat, and she looked like a pro to me. It felt good to be back in the role of helpful instructor, however minor a lesson.

And it sure felt good to be diving again. Diving fabulous diving! Have I mentioned how much I love scuba diving?

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Labels: Diving, Fiji 2007, Vanua Levu Circumnavigation

Not by half! Marjetka rowed up to Tackless II the morning after our arrival with two gutted and scaled mackerel -- "a gift from the old man on the beach." Don's knee has been hurting him since it popped during the scrambling on the muddy hillside at Cawaro, so we had not even been sure we would bother to go ashore, especially since the cruising guides suggest that the Rabi people like their privacy. But Marjetka has been here for two weeks and is likely to stay another two weeks. She has gotten quite involved with the two local "families" (no young children here since the school is in Nuku), and rows them out fishing in her small patched dinghy, a big service since they have no working boat of their own.

In the afternoon Marjetka and her "Lady Tramp" dog Cherie came back, and we spent a most pleasant evening over wine and cheese learning their story. Marjetka hails from Slovenia (just east of Italy), and five years ago she gave up her job as a computer programmer and bought the Little Mermaid on Germany's Baltic coast. She thought she was embarking on a three-year circumnavigation, but like some other sailors we know, she is finding it is taking longer. The personable Cherie came into her life in Martinique, when Marjetka rescued the puppy by buying it off the owners who were carrying it by its hind leg. Having a dog aboard solved all Marjetka's problems of uninvited nighttime visitors who were sure they were doing her some favor, and once Cherie even woke her when she'd fallen asleep on watch and strayed too near a reef. Don and I were most taken with Cherie.

Marjetka has a Norwegian friend who flies in here and there to visit (har to imagine on the tiny boat!), but all in all she is content traveling solo. Alone she can spend whatever time she chooses in whatever place takes her fancy, and build whatever relationships there she wants. Clearly it brings her some special experiences. Don and I have been reading a collection of interviews of "travel writers" titled A Sense of Place, edited by Michael Shapiro and published by the Traveler's Tales folks. I say "travel writers" in quotes, because most of them see themselves less as "travel" writers than writers about place. However, a steady theme throughout the interviews was that when they are traveling for work, they travel alone, because when you are part of a couple, it changes the way you interact with people. Having been single for so many years, I think we both understand this intuitively, and while I for one sometimes miss that, I wouldn't trade back.

So Sunday morning I go ashore with Marjetka. Our first stop, after determining that "the old man is out fishing" is to feed our slop to two tethered pigs, who happily switch from munching coconut to chicken bones and mackerel heads! The "old man" paddles in from snorkeling with the bodies of three giant clams tethered to his belt. Lunch for his household, a son and another young man.

We enter the very low hut from the cooking area, the only eave I can get under. Inside I am surprised to see the complex "architecture" of the L-shaped abode, built of sticks lashed together, with open areas for windows, and complicated gables supporting a roof of thatch and corrugated mixed. It is a bit dark, but cool. After putting some pots to cook on the fire in the raised hearth in the cooking nook, the son opted for the hammock that swung a few inches off the ground and a newspaper from May, and we sat with Panea (the old man) on some comfy cushions over the ubiquitous mats.

Panea's English is pretty good, and he has a book he lends me for the evening telling the history and stories of the Banaban people of Rabi. However, Marjetka tells me Panea himself is actually of the Polynesian Ellis Island people that bought the next Fijian island south called Kioa to reduce population pressure on their own island. Panea definitely has a different look than Tina and her husband in the other hut down the beach who are of Micronesian stock and much darker and more angular. Panea keeps a log of the people who stop in Albert Cove to visit. There aren't so many, since it is slightly off the beaten track to Taveuni, but the boat signing the log ahead of Marjetka were the Swiss family, Andy and Marion we'd just met in Cawaro.

I stay and visit a bit with Panea, while Marjetka goes to put an epoxy patch on Tina's leaky canoe. Afterwards we pick up Don and go snorkeling on Albert Cove's inner reef. While Marjetka, Don and I are mostly sightseeing, it is all business for Panea. Over his shorts he dons a short-sleeve shirt over which he ties on a thin belt of twine. He's got mask and fins and is armed with a homemade Hawaiian sling made from a piece of 1/4-inch stainless-steel rod about five feet long fitted with a point at one end and strap, and an elastic arrangement I can't explain. From the pretty corals of the shoal, Panea sets off toward deeper water with Don working hard to keep up.

When Panea takes a shot at a fish, the whole spear goes flying free, dropping with or without fish wherever it may. Thus one must be careful about not shooting out into the deep! Don was impressed that Panea retrieves his spear on the same breath with which he shoots it! When he hits a fish, he runs a wire from his belt through the eyes before he slips it off the spear, so that he ends up wearing his catch around his middle. If he finds an edible shellfish on the bottom, he tucks that inside his belted shirt! Quite the system.

We'd already been in the water an hour when I realized I'd lost track of Don. Marjetka and I swam back to the anchored dinghy and still no sight of them. I had to swim back to Tackless, and climb up on the deck box with the binoculars to locate them in the glitter of the afternoon sun. By the time Don swam back to the boat, he'd been in the water two hours. As Marjetka rowed by with Panea (who had the decency to look frozen), he had added an octopus to his catch which he said he would cook up for our dinner!

All this, mind you, from a man who had a stroke a year ago and who still struggles to walk down the beach!

It is after dark when Marjetka rows back with the octopus in a blue plastic pail. It has been beaten tender and cooked in lolo (coconut milk). At first glance it appears intact, but, no, Marjetka says, Panea kept the head which is their favorite part. What we have is all eight legs attached to the throat! It was a big octopus! Marjetka, bless her, takes on the job of slicing him up into more manageable pieces, while I make rice and green beans. And afterwards we each have two legs left for another day!!!! We had a lovely dinner which only ended when, Cherie, taking a break in the dinghy, got overly excited about the fish jumping around the boat and plunged in after it. It took a little coordination of lights from T2 and Marjetka in the dinghy to fish her out of the dark.

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Labels: Diving, Fiji 2007, Vanua Levu Circumnavigation

There were new guests, of course, another young American honeymoon couple with the place to themselves. This time the honeymooners weren't divers, so we wouldn't be competing for the dive boats. Or so we thought. Although we had called ahead and spoken with Jenny, we had a little miscommunication. She thought we were going to Kia Island first…because, well, we'd thought we might go to Kia first, and her boat and staff were committed to support a mooring installation project at the port of Malau near Labasa. So to our chagrin, we watched the dive boat whiz out of the resort at 7:30 am. Thanks to some mechanical issues, it didn't return until late the next day!

It may have been just as well, because on our first evening a gusty wind sprang up and blew hard the next several days! It blew so hard our second night there, tossing the palm fronds so hard that they sounded like rushing water, that Jenny insisted we stay ashore for dinner until it died down well after dark. As usual we had plenty to do. Don's success in the varnish department now spread to some small pieces that he'd bypassed in the first go round, and I tackled cleaning the bottom. Plus I'd borrowed from Jenny's library "A History of Fiji," by R.A. Derrick. Unfortunately, I only got halfway through – up to the mid-1800s -- before we left, but this very readable account of early Fiji – how the initial migrations likely happened, and how the people sorted out into the hierarchy of chiefs, warriors, "priests" and commoners (a hierarchy that persists to this day) and the constant posturing and battling between tribal city-states (usually started by intrigues in the chiefly class) -- revealed a lot about why Fiji is the way it is.

Diving on the Great Sea Reef

But finally, Friday rolled around with calm winds and high soft streaky clouds, and we were picked up in Nukubati's "aluminum inflatable' by Salote (Nukubati's boat woman) and Sisa our dive leader. Why we didn't start out in our dive suits I don't know, because the ride out was fast and wet. By the time we reached Ravi Ravi Pass and the outside of the Great Sea Reef 25 minutes later we were soaked, which made getting the suits on after the fact a struggle.

A little aside here: These boats have no GPS or chartplotter, yet Sisa piloted us out through the reefs in unbeaconed waters to the pass with no more than a few looks over his shoulder at the mountains behind! Very impressive.

The dive of the morning was called Fishmarket. Just around the outer reef from the pass, this steep outer reef bank started in about 30-40' feet of water and dropped away in a wall to depths only vaguely glimpsed. On the chart the depth contours suggest that the drop to 298 meters is close at hand! The visibility was superb, especially after weeks in the green waters near the shore, and we were quick to see why they called the dive "Fishmarket." Lots of large meaty-looking snappers and groupers in addition to plentiful tropicals and schools of boga with neon blue smears of their sides populate this reef, an exciting change from the seaward reef we dove in the Ha'apai last year, although the corals were not as pretty as that dive. Almost immediately, Sisa pointed out the first of four turtles, and Don sighted several whitetip sharks cruising below us, plus we were shadowed much of the dive by one large solitary batfish.. Like icing on the cake, the water at depth remained a balmy 81 degrees! Another improvement over that Ha'apai dive.

On the surface, Salote was having a rolly ride as she followed our bubbles, but she brought the boat right to us making our exit from the water as smooth as possible. We took our surface interval anchored in the shallows on the north side of the reef, enjoying the snacks the resort had provided along with their nice fluffy towels. Wow! It's mighty nice to be on the receiving end of such attentions!

Our second dive was a drift dive through Ravi Ravi Pass along its eastern side. The reef on our left presented a craggy face with hidey-holes for all sorts of creatures as well as some striking sea fans. Sisa promptly pointed out the cruising sharks, whitetips from small to large, and then turned his back to show us tiny white and blue nudibranchs on the coral no larger than an thumbnail! He was pleased to find two round stingrays – one small and one large in their holes at the base of the reef, and I was tickled by an even bigger ray ruffling overhead along the reef's upper edge. On this dive we saw many angelfish, the psychedelic regal angels, the handsome emperor angels, but also many large blue angels, which look like our gray Caribbean French angels only accented in blue rather than yellow! There were lots of parrotfish, some bi-color and some blue, including several large bumphead males. Everywhere, there were dusky surgeon fish and a larger fish like our durgons, as well as four or five different types of triggerfish. A highlight for me were the cave-lets in the reef providing protection for some elaborate growths of sea fans and gorgonians, the stuff that uw photographers fill the color pages of dive magazines with.

Our ride back into the afternoon wind was even wetter than our ride out. Don and I resorted to wearing our masks about half way which amused Salote and Sisa no end.

Nukubati Meke
We got back to Tackless II at about 1:30. We rinsed our gear, showered ourselves, ate some homemade veggie soup,…and promptly dozed off. What is it about diving that takes the starch right out of you? Still, by five we were up dressed and ready to go ashore for our "official" dinner ashore which just happened to be meke night.

Meke is the word for Fiji's traditional music and dance. At Nukubati, the staff gathers in the lodge in their flowered shirts and dresses for an evening that starts with the kava bowl before dinner and ends in an evening of song and dance. This was the evening that we missed during our last stay.

What a special night! As we sipped our cocktails and nibbled on the canapés and roasted coconut that are the nightly hors-d'oeuvres, the staff assembled on the spread mats and began making kava in Nukubati's large wooden tanoa, the traditional four-legged kava vessel. Several men with guitars and ukeleles began strumming a tune, and as more staff gathered they launched into a series of songs in multi-part harmony. When the kava was ready we were all invited to come for a "bowl". Although we had 'training" in the kava ceremony in one of Curly's cruising seminars in Savusavu, this was our first actual opportunity to participate. You can ask for "high tide" or "low tide" to select the size of the serving wanted. Because of the diving, I was abstaining from alcohol, so I took only a low tide taste. We managed to remember most of our training…one clap before receiving the cup and three claps of appreciation after. Although obviously this is done partly for the entertainment of the guests, Jenny insists that it takes place more for the pleasure and unity of her staff.

For which reason we "broke" for dinner to be served, so that the kitchen staff would be free to join the festivities. Dinner was something! For starters we had clams in seasoned coconut cream, followed by banana sorbet. The main course was mudcrabs in spicy black bean sauce. This is a helluva dish to try to eat at a table set witha white tablecloth and a full place setting of cutlery and glassware! Jenny sat with us, and we were a little self-conscious about the mess we were making cracking the pieces of crab and licking sauce off our fingers.

Unfortunately, I wasn't half way through dessert when I started having some kind of allergic reaction! Presumably it was due to all the shellfish, although that hasn't happened before, or perhaps to the tiny sip of kava before dinner. Although nobody could come up with Benadryl, Jenny did have a huge box of Kleenex in the ladies room, and so armed I was able to hang in for the after dinner dance.

The after-dinner presentation was of a series of songs and chants done to the fevered drum beat produced by none-other than Salote, our boat woman, basically on a hollowed out log.. The staff was joined this evening by a group of "old ladies" from the village who'd come out to earn money for a church event by working in Jenny's gardens. Clearly everybody knew the songs, and the harmonies were taken up in full voice. Five costumed women performed a series of dances exhorted, as is traditional, by the men behind. Following the regular dances, three of the "old ladies" added a spontaneous comedy performance, apparently to a child's nursery rhyme to the hilarity of the Fijian staff. Like all the dances and songs, we outsiders are pretty lost as to the storyline, but it is fun none-the-less.

At the end of the performance, one of Jenny's staff made a pretty speech to the honeymooners, complete with humorous observations based on their stay. Imagine our surprise when she had some words for their sailor friends as well. It seems we've set a record among their repeating guests by returning to Nukubati in only two weeks!

Following the performance, the musicians returned to more popular songs, and staff members took turns getting the honeymooners out on the dance floor. No one asked either of us to dance, but we took a turn around the floor together on our own. Since the music has a bit of a reggae beat, we Caribbean sailors acquitted ourselves pretty well.

Checking Out

The next morning I tackled the second half of the bottom cleaning job while Don made the rounds with the Cetol brush putting on the next coat. We'd tidied up the boat for a possible visit by Jenny, but she had some family show up and couldn't make it out. Instead we went ashore to pay our bill, arriving just in time to be added to the lunch table. Jenny's guests included her transport driver plus her niece Sophie and husband Gary, both of whom work for Air Pacific in Nadi. It was illuminating to get to talk to some young professional Fijians, quite the contrast with the villagers and resort staff people we've mostly been meeting.

Departure was even harder this time, and I do think that Jenny has really come to think of us as friends. We certainly have come to feel that way about her, as well as many of the staff, and we will hold Nukubati in a special place in our hearts.

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Labels: Diving, Fiji 2007, Vanua Levu Circumnavigation