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August Update
Bula Bula one and all!
We have just returned from the bow where we were having an after dinner satellite spotting contest – (guess who won – I’ll never beat the telco out of him!) and also taking in all the sounds of the locals preparing Kava and singing in their boats whilst waiting for fish to hop onto their lines! Such is the hustle and bustle of night life in Fiji!  So for those who have not heard from us for a while, we made it here! We had an interesting 10 day passage which was a good first outing for Yoki and crew and kept us on our toes at places. Still had time to enjoy a dive into the ocean at our 1000nm mark, just awesome! We spent a week or so in Savu Savu to restock, take stock, and get over waking up in the middle of the night and wondering who was on watch. I lost track of the number of times Rick had to remind me that we were on a mooring, not going anywhere and that no-one needed to be on watch! Having established our lack of motion, we took off for a journey to the most Southern and Eastern group of islands in Fiji, it took us a week to get there, and was just soo fantastic that we stayed there until just a couple of days ago. This is why we have been so incommunicado for so long! The Lau group is stunning and completely unchanged and untouched. There are some pretty special anchorages and beautiful golden beaches with snorkelling and fishing thrown in for good measure. Needless to say we now know 100 ways of cooking fish which we have been eating now for about 5 weeks with not a lot else! The cravings for fresh vegetables (that aren’t grown at Lau due to lack of soil, water and people) and luxuries of cheese and chocolate finally drove us to undertake our 50 mile passage back to civilisation; that and the fact that we are growing fins. Having got this far though, with the temptation of a small grocery store just a couple of miles around the bay, we discover yet another stunning anchorage! We visited the village today and Rick has promised to go back tomorrow and teach the Fijians at the school how to do the triple jump. They have a competition coming up in a couple of weeks with a neighbouring island and Rick did not feel there was much in the way of skill level there – hence the head teacher was delighted at the prospect of Rick, being the athelete that he is, imparting his knowledge!! I am still giggling at the prospect and am trying not to question him as to where this hidden skill of his was developed, but no doubt I will be impressed tomorrow, and if not entertained for a few hours!! The Fijian children will have a chance to get their own back afterwards as they have challenged him to a game of touch – so what I can’t work out that’s the whole school versus Rick, oh and they don’t have a Referee!?  Yesterday we were on another island, Taveuni, ‘The Garden isle’ where we went for a hike to some waterfalls, and had the first freshwater bathe (off the boat that is!) of our trip. A group of 3 waterfalls in progressively deeper jungle all provided some stunning scenery, close encounters with fresh water crabs and refreshing breaks as we had a quick dip to revive ourselves before returning back to sea level once more. It was great fun, and good to be able to walk for more than 3 minutes before running out of beach and having to turn around and walk the other way for a change of scene! It’s also interesting how strange standing at the top of a hill and looking out and down to sea level felt! So it will probably still be a couple of weeks before we get back to Savu Savu and the opportunity to plug in to something as high tech as an internet connection. In the meantime we aim to re-stock at the ‘promised land’ grocery store, and then head off to another couple of little anchorages on the way back. We are also hoping to dive the world famous Rainbow Reef and White Wall on the way. So that’s us, apologies if you have been wondering where we are and why we are not replying to your emails! Trust all is well with you all, and look forward to catching up on your news. Take care, Helen and Rick on the good ship Yoki. Xx PS a few pictures attached for good measure 278 – swimming at our 1000nMile mark in 3000 metres of water 222 – ‘Red Day’ during the NZ-Fiji passage 3280 – just another beach lunch – baked fish on beach bbq 3365 – leaving our beach in Lau 296 – Yoki – through the trees in Lau group |