Week 13,, Jan 4-Jan 15, 2015  Vuda Point Marina, Fiji

With the holidays over and a new year started there is a different energy in the marina.  It is time to get serious about cyclone preparations.  Everyone who is going to leave has done so.  There are only about half a dozen of us left living on boats, either in the water or in the pits.  Security is going boat to boat, making a list of everything that needs to be dome.  Some have tarps and awnings that need to come down.  Some need to be turned around, stern in.  Some have dingus and motors and other things left on deck that need to be removed or secured.  Every absentee owner gets a letter telling him what meeds to be done and what it will cost for the staff to do it.  The local owners start showing up with work crews to get everything squared away.  Since we are here, we don’t get a letter but we start to get things cleared off the deck as much as possible.  Probably we will get the boat turned around just before I go home so that Alan does not have to do it all himself.  Once I am gone, the extra sails and the dingy can be stored in the cabin

One interesting wrinkle, we notified our insurance company in September that we would be spending the season in Fiji.  This week we finally got a response.  Our insurance will not cover us unless we are below 20 degrees south during the official cyclone season.  Fiji is at 17 degrees.  And it also does not cover damage from a “named storm”  Pretty useless.  Unfortunately it is set up as an automatic payment and they are not about to give us our money back.  So we just pray that there will not be a cyclone here this year.  Once the season is over in April we are covered again.

Update:  Alan read the small print over and over and finally decided that we are covered after all, at which point he sent an email to our agent.  Turns out we are OK!   Glad we did not cancel when we thought we were not covered