Aboard Dignity (Lagoon 420) Blog

In the morning Brian and I went ashore to try and find a memory stick John from Passages had loaned us the night before containing some pictures of us. I’d handed to Helen to look after but it ended up being left on the table. Although the girl working the bar had seen it when tidying up it was nowhere to be found in the morning. We picked up some sandwiches for breakfast and returned to the boat. I popped over to Passages to give our apologies as I felt quite bad. They were just leaving so I said our goodbyes too. They’re planning to leave Fiji from Savusavu so the next time we see them will be in NZ.

Brian and his family spent the day off the boat. Ben completed his scuba certification with Brian and Janine joining him on his last dive. Helen and stayed aboard for the relaxing and reading. I was particularly stiff from the evening games the night before. For some reason the balls of my feet feel as though I’ve been kicking a wall.

Helen’s previous Spaghetti Bolognaise had gone down so well the first time it was a firm favourite for our last night all together. It didn’t disappoint.

This morning Holly and Brian took the Dignity fun ride up the mast – or at least as far as each were comfortable. I’d found a washer on the deck earlier on so I went up to inspect the rigging to see if anything had dropped off anywhere. Everything looked fine so we have a new mystery.

By 8am we were ashore with all the family’s luggage. We had a final breakfast together before they boarded the 9am launch to go ashore. Under the guidance of the staff we all bid each other Moce, Sota Tale (Fijian for Goodbye, See You Again) while a guitar player sang Isa Lei, the Fijian farewell song.

We’ve had a good time with Brian and his family but now we need to detox and rest. First we took a walk around the island to work off a bit of breakfast and we’ve vowed, for today at least, to lay off the beer and wine.

Now begins the end game of our stay here in Fiji. For today this means I have begun the detailed weather watch on the area from Australia over to New Zealand and up to here. As the weather systems travel from west to east I can watch the systems leave Australia and cross the Tasman sea. Over the next few weeks I will become more familiar with the patterns and better able to pick a departure window late this month. This will become a daily exercise.

As soon as we could we paid the marina fees in Musket Cove and left the dock. The winds were light so we motored the entire way to Likuri Island using the headsail for a small boost. We had four lines out and hoped for a deep sea catch on the leg outside of the main reefs. All we caught was a plastic bag. We did lose one lure which suggests we snagged something of a decent size.

We arrived in time for lunch then went ashore to catch the daytime show for the tourists who come to the island for just the day. The show was pretty good although the dancing was very similar to the Polynesian dancing we saw in the Cooks and French Polynesia.

After the show we joined Pam and John from Passages for a beer and chatted for a while after which we booked Ben on a beginners dive course which he will do over the next few days.

We returned to the boat for a while and then went back to the resort for dinner. We’d been told it was ‘build your own burger’ night which got quite a few votes. It turned out to be pasta and fish curry night which turned out pretty good. While ashore the heavens opened so we waited a while before deciding to go back in the torrential rain. We did, of course, get soaked and the rain did, of course, stop as soon as we arrived.

The resort here is very low key and quite sleepy, at least when the day tourists are not around. It’s a good spot to while away a few days.

I forgot to mention that while in Musket Cove I uploaded earlier pictures. These have been added to the appropriate blog entries so for those interested I suggest a walk back through the last week or sos blog entries.