Fish and mantas?

The day started with a lobster feast for breakfast. We boiled all of them in a pot, the smallest first, eating the cooked ones while the next ones went in. We decided to leave the last and largest one for later as we were quite full.

We ended up with winds in the mid to high teens for our sail from Sawa-I-Lau to Manta Ray Resort. The start was a bit messy as Sawa-I-Lau created a lot of eddies with the wind coming from everywhere. At one point we accidentally jibed, not good, causing one of the sliders on our main sail to pop out of the batton. Something else to fix. We made about 7-8 knots all the way down in fairly flat seas making a really nice sail. We had three lines out and at different times catching a skip jack tuna on each We kept each fish, bleeding it but not gutting it.

We anchored off Draweqa shortly after midday and settled down for lunch which included the leftover lobster from breakfast. Very delicious.

Shortly after lunch one of the pangas from the resort popped by to check to see if the mantas were out. We waved him over and gave him the three fish asking him to share them around with the other workers at the resort. He also agreed to let us know if there were any mantas around. Unfortunately, at that time there weren’t.

We decided to go ashore to the resort to look around and book dinner. There we learned we could watch the Fiji match which presented us with a bit of a dilemma as we also wanted to see the mantas. We decided to go and look for them ourselves first and come back to watch the second half of the rugby match. Again no luck though. Despite drifting through the channel three times, we saw no mantas.

So it was back to the resort where we took in the rest of the rugby match, an unfortunate defeat for Fiji against Samoa. We decided stay and watch the Ireland game and have dinner without going back to the boat. The resort was very accommodating allowing us to use their facilities, including the showers, free of charge. We did learn that the guy we gave the fish to kept all of them and didn’t share them. We live and learn.

Dinner was a pasta buffet. We’d shared a couple of pizzas a couple of hours earlier for an appetizer only to find the same pizzas bundled in with the buffet. Despite this the food was very good for the price and we ended up quite full.

This morning we’ve checked the weather and are finding it a little constraining. Today is the last day of half decent winds before a slight low pressure system comes through and messes things up for us. We’re now already on our way to Nevadra where we hope to stay tonight and will probably head on to Musket Cove tomorrow.