TV Time

0800 position 17-05S 177-17E. At anchor in Somosomo Bay, Naviti Island, Fiji

Rob is usually the first one awake in the morning aboard Van Diemen, and his first activity of the morning is making a pot of coffee. That ritual is followed by a breakfast of granola with yogurt and whatever fruit is ripe. I usually wake up when I smell the coffee brewing and follow suit with the granola. That's what happened yesterday, but at 9AM Rob announced that there would be a trip ashore to the resort for breakfast. I wasn't hungry after my granola breakfast but the rest of the crew were game, piled into the dinghy, and took off. They returned a couple of hours later and said that the food was great but cost about three times what it should have.

Some folks the crew met ashore told them that the diving was pretty good on the point just south of the Blue Lagoon Cruises beach so Rob, Eric and I dinghied over to give it a try. There were quite a few fish but most of the coral was dead. I decided to swim back to Van Diemen and got twenty minutes of good exercise. Three large jack crevally about the same size as the one we were given for dinner in Yadua followed me for five minutes. I've never seen that before. During my swim I found that the best coral and fish were on the reef right next to Van Diemen.

After our snorkel we decided to head south for the next anchorage and powered south through the Blue Lagoon. The wind had died off overnight after a number of days of strong trades, and the postcard weather made the Blue Lagoon look a lot more attractive than it had the day before. It reminded me of a half sized Kaneohe Bay where I live in Hawaii except all of the shorelines here have beaches and resorts. In Hawaii its seawalls and houses.

The charts available for this area are neither detailed nor complete. It's no problem though if you follow the tracks of someone who has been here before. That's what we've been doing so far in the Yasawas, but yesterday's jump was a real adventure because we were going to be exploring new territory. The usual route is down the western side of the islands, but if we could head down the eastern side we could cut a couple of miles off of the day's journey. Our chart showed that we should be able to do it. With the sun overhead for good visibility Eric and I stood at the mast with the hand held VHF to warn Rob of the hazards we saw ahead. There were a couple of places where we had to slow down when the water looked shallow, but we never got close to any danger and made it into Somosomo Bay on Naviti Island at 3PM.

I hadn't been ashore in a couple of days and was anxious to do some beach combing on the uninhabited shoreline. Rob, Eric, and I dinghied in and split up to explore. Rob and Eric found an abandoned house slab on the north end of the beach and harvested a couple of papaya. I found a 19 inch color television down south. That's why beach combing is so much fun. You never know what you'll find.

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