Fiji Time

0800 Position 16-47S 179-19E. On a mooring off of Savu Savu, Fiji

The Van Diemen crew increased by one yesterday morning when Eric Mutzke, Rob's nephew, arrived after an epic thirty plus hour trip from Prague, Czech Republic. Eric was in Prague for a friend's wedding and he will cruise with us until we depart Fiji.

Yesterday was also Monday, and our cruising permit was supposed to have been issued. We checked with Horace in the morning. No permit yet. Hmmm. Perhaps the squeaky wheel gets the grease. We bugged him off and on until the end of the business day without effect. Horace said the permit "can take up to twenty four hours to process, sometimes more." I guess we are in the "sometimes more" category. Then again, maybe he meant twenty four hours "Fiji time". We'll find out how long that is.

I went shopping for some kava so we can perform sevu sevu, if necessary, at some of the remote villages in the outer islands that we plan to visit. Sevu sevu is the formal offering of a gift of kava to the chief of the village when asking permission to anchor in their waters and explore ashore. Sevu sevu isn't required, but it is expected by the villagers in some remote areas, and if you don't do it you will start off on the wrong foot with the locals.

The new dinghy cover showed up at 7PM last night while we were eating dinner at the marina restaurant. Six burly Fijians helped transfer the hard bottomed dinghy plus cover from a pickup truck into the water. We towed it back to Van Diemen with our smaller spare dinghy. The new cover looked OK last night when it was dark, but Rob was a bit disappointed with the quality of the work this morning after inspecting it in daylight.

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