Fixing the boat in exotic locations: Tonga & Fiji

Tuesday 10^th October (Fiji Day), Port Denarau, Fiji.

Fiji? I thought we were going to New Cal? Well, you know how to make the Gods laugh – tell them your plans. So we're not in New Cal with our friends eating entrecôte and drinking Bordeaux Superieur, we're stuck in Port Denarau. On the bright side things are looking up again (it got pretty low there for a while) and we should be leaving tomorrow bound for New Caledonia at last.

So, long story, but let's start back in Tonga after the new stay and refurbished furler arrived (happy days!). The day finally dawned to get the new stay up and the crew of Mac kindly volunteered to assist. We got Karl climbing up the mast on a halyard secured to a deck cleat and when he was half way up the cleat started to rip out of the deck. Brilliant. Gráinne's literally breaking up around us. So we got him back down and used a different cleat (and added "fix cleat" to the to do list). Karl went back up, we sent the stay up after him, he attached it at the top, he came back down, we attached it at the bottom and hey presto we have a rig again! Winning.

Karl basking in the glory as he descends having put up the stay.

We took the opportunity to re-tune the whole rig with Chantey's nifty little bit of equipment.

Next we put the foil extrusions back on one by one, pushing them from the bottom up and putting in the connectors and bearings as we went. It took a while but went fairly smoothly. Then we just needed to pop the furling drum back on. But it didn't fit anymore. @#$%!!!!! The work done on it seemed to have introduced irregularities in the aluminium and the only solution to the problem was filing them back down. Lots and lots of filing. A whole day of filing. And some dremeling. And it still didn't quite fit so I suggested the old reliable "why not just drill new holes in a different spot?" and Karl thought "yay, I get to drill stuff" so that's what we did.

Next we realised that the two securing bars at the base had been bent out of shape so we started trying to get hold of someone at the boatyard who could fix it. Then Karl had a brainwave and decided to call into Rik (he runs the dive operation we used and is the only other cyclist we've spotted on the island) who seems like a man who would have stuff to fix such issues. And he did! One vice, one large mallet, a few good strikes and magic. Straight bars. Thumbs up to Rik. Now to get the sail back up. When we pulled the top furler section back down from the masthead it got stuck on the joint between the bottom two extrusions. Sigh. So the file came back out. Then we waited for a nice windless moment and put the sail back on before sitting on the foredeck with a cocktail admiring our beautiful intact rig. And the whole thing only took ten times longer than estimated (there's a rule I like about estimating boat fixes: take your initial estimate, double it and increase the unit of time by one. So if you think it'll take one hour that works out at two days, three weeks will end up being six months).

A thing of beauty.

Meanwhile we were also enjoying the events of the Vava'u Blue Water Festival. Opening night dinner, closing night dinner, pizza night dinner, prizegiving dinner, any excuse for a dinner. And we did notice at some point that perhaps we'd been in Vava'u too long when we seemed to have acquired a pet fish. A big fish just sat at our bow for days. Sometimes on the port side, sometimes on the starboard side, just hanging out. And the biggest reward for staying in one spot for a whole month? We finally won Thursday night Trivia at The Kraken!!! Fourth time lucky.

The dinghy had been left in the water for so long it got a bit furry so while Karl scrubbed Gráinne's bottom I got started on Enzo.

The victorious trivia team including the crews of Kumo (Irish rugby fans!), Tranquility (a Dutch family relocating to New Zealand), the local race committee and fellow canoe sterners Freya and Athena.

And eventually it was time to leave. It felt quite melancholy and lonely leaving somewhere that had been so welcoming and homely. And we were also leaving Polynesia behind after four and a half months. We had a lovely gentle sail out of the bays of Vava'u but things got a bit more lively once we were clear of the islands. Beam reach, 20-25kn, stuff flying everywhere, overcast skies and the foul weather gear came out for the first time since South Africa! We crossed 180 degrees longitude one morning on my watch but I was too engrossed in Michael Palin's "Erebus" to notice the exact moment of the crossing.

Then. Disaster strikes! Again. On my watch. Again. At about 0530, half an hour from the end of my watch (just when you're really fantasising about a soft, warm bed) Rover broke. Again. This time, unfortunately, it was not going to be able to be repaired at sea. At least not in those conditions. We were due south of Fiji so our options were: 1) continue to New Cal, a week away, hand steering intially and hoping to fix Rover when the wind abated or 2) hand steer for 24 hours to Fiji through strong winds that we'd been diligently avoiding. We went with bad option number 2. We gibed and headed north, reaching in 25-30kn gusting 35kn (Karl claims it was actually 30-35kn gusting 40kn), 3.5m seas, hand steering one hour on and one hour off. Both Karl and I each had a wave invade the cockpit and turn it into a bathtub and each of us had a wave wash right over the whole deck forward of the cockpit. The starboard side dodger/weathercloth ripped out its fasteners along the bottom. It was cold and very loud. It was not fun. Not one bit. And I didn't have a single coffee in the whole 24 hours!

The sad remains of the fasteners that got ripped apart by a big wave that flooded the cockpit.

And to add insult to injury the bloody doorhandle to the bathroom broke.

Finally, at first light the next morning, we arrived on the west coast of Viti Levu and went through the pass to glorious, glorious flat water. It was a two hour sail from there to the port and it was just what we needed to overcome the PTSD and remind ourselves that sailing can be really quite pleasant. And we had a coffee. And chocolate. There were jetskis, parachutists, helicopters and a jet plane! All very overwhelming. I think the last time we saw a jet was in Tahiti in July. We got to Port Denarau just as Matilda were leaving so we had a quick chat on the radio and they did a quick sail by for a wave on their way out. Maybe we'll catch them in New Cal.

And then things got really nasty.

I'm only going to talk briefly about our experience checking in because it'll just turn into a bitter rant. Also note that this seems to be a Port Denarau specific experience because we've heard only good things about the rest of Fiji and everyone else we've met here has been absolutely lovely. We had never planned to stop in Port Denarau so had limited information about it aboard. Because I'm very thorough we had actually submitted pre-arrival paperwork to Fiji just in case we needed to stop because of a weather change. Due to sleep deprivation and misunderstandings we went ashore to check in but that was a big mistake because we should have waited aboard. This gave the officials the opportunity to revel in exercising their power in the most petty, childish and nasty way possible. They were hostile, intimidating and frankly threatening. We were banished back to the boat and then re-summoned to pick up the officials and bring them aboard. Our dinghy is very small and the officials were not (actually half of them had to get a lift in Arakai's dinghy, thanks Arakai!). The sea state was gloriously splashy and they got absolutely soaked on the long ride out to Gráinne. I really enjoyed that. After completing the paperwork, getting paid their overtime and "confiscating" enough tins of meat for a nice feed they left with Karl to complete immigration ashore. That ended up with Karl locked in a room with the immigration officer for an interrogation. In the end it all worked out but my feelings towards Fiji at that point could best be summarised using another four letter word beginning with F. On arrival my plan (formulated during the long night hours of hand steering) had been to store Gráinne here for cyclone season and come back next year but by the end of that day we were both very firmly focused on getting out of here as quickly as humanly possible.

Let's end on a positive note. Rover was easy to fix and we had spares aboard. I sewed all the ripped stuff back together. We found microbrewed beer (Crimson Reef Coconut Red IPA). We got to see the Ireland-Scotland game. A weather window came up quickly. Assuming Customs allow us to check out this afternoon we'll be out of here tomorrow. Karl is already planning an entrecôte in Noumea.

The tiny part of Rover that broke cradled in Karl's hand for scale.

Microbrewed beer bottled to order at the local off licence/bottle shop.

The TV screen came out so we could enjoy the Ireland-Scotland game just like the good old days back in Reunion in 2019.

Addit: We checked out, yay! Suddenly, apparently, we're all buddy buddy with the officials. There were hugs (hugs!) and they wished us good luck in the rugby. I don't know. My brain can't cope with this. And Cerulean have just arrived so we buzzed by for a quick catch up on our way back to Gráinne. We watched the Six Nations with Cerulean in Panama earlier this year but now we're going to be bitter rivals in this weekend's quarter final. They made us promise that if we beat the All Blacks we'll go on to win the whole thing. Fair enough.

Checked out. Takeaway pizza. Farewell Fiji, we're out of here. Bula!