Fiji Week 3

Oct 26-Nov 1, 2014  Vuda Point, Week 3

The laundry is finally all done and everything sorted and stowed again.  Cupboards have been cleaned out and repacked and we are settling into living a lazy life here.  We hope to get out to the islands during the next several weeks while the weather is still good  We have been studying charts and asking other cruisers for waypoints. 

Alan has been working on various odd jobs, most importantly the sink.  The drain pipe rusted through allowing the dishwater to pour onto the floor.  A long day of walking from store to store in Lautoka finally produced the perfect replacement and one day later we were back in business.

We rented a car one day to explore Nadi, the next bigger town and Port Denaru.  It was fun go go exploring but in the end we decided that we have no real need to go back there.  There were more stores but they stocked just the same things that I can get in Lautoka.  Denarau is interesting.  We thought it would have lots of marine supply stores and places to get work done cheaply.  Instead it turned out to be mostly tour boats, tourist shops, restaurants and hotels.  All of the marine shops there also have representatives in our marina.  This will make life much easier, since we won’t have to rent a car or take a 2 hour bus ride to arrange for work to be done.

My big event of the week was gardening.  There are 2 nursery areas here, one behind the kitchen and one right by our slip.  The marina offers fresh fruit in return for help gardening so I decided to take them up on it.  I traced down the gardener to see what needed to be done since I did not want to just start pulling weeks or planting vegetables on my own.  He was amazed and delighted with my offer and suggested I take over the kitchen garden.  Someone had  laid it out, covered it with shade cloth and built a number of raised beds and then given up.  At this point it consists of about 50 pepper plants, all infested with white fly, and nothing else.  My first day was spent weeding and spraying with soapy water to knock down the whiteflies.  Next I tracked down the marina manager to make sure I had his approval before going further.  He not only approved but took me shopping to buy herbs; pots and pots of basil, thyme, oregano, dill, chives, rosemary, parsley.  I am in heaven.  The rest of the week has been spent planting,  repotting, and spraying the whiteflies. I am keeping one plant of each herd in the nursery by the boat where I can get to them quickly.  I have already been able to run out and get fresh oregano for spagetti sauce and chives for scrambled eggs.  I found tomato and eggplant plants in the market so they have been added.  The marina workers have become used to seeing me puttering around the garden and they area quite intrigued by what I am doing.  I think i have things under control so that they will be OK while we go sailing next week.

The marina put on a halloween party and it was amazing to see what people came up with on short notice from their very limited boat stores.  The day after, 2 of the cruisers hosted a pig roast potluck.  the pig was buried in the village up the road at about 3 am and by mid afternoon when it was brought back it was wonderfully tender and delicious.  We invited the whole star and polished off the entire pig.  Just as we all started eating the skye opened and we got our first real downpour of the season, good for my garden.

Now just to get everything packed away again so we can go sailing.