Aboard Dignity (Lagoon 420) Blog

We’re here at the Grand Melanesian Hotel which would be better called the Functional Melanesian Hotel. No complaints. It’s good for what we paid.

We’ve had a good day. It was great having David and Marion along from Kilkea for the drive from Suva. We ended up in Port Denaru where they are berthed. Couldn’t help having a couple of beers (multiple wines in Helen’s case) aboard before we all went for dinner in the tourist center there. A little intense after what we’ve been used to but a change is a change. We ate Italian and enjoyed it.

So now we’re in the hotel not too far from Nadi Airport. We know from checking online that Anne and John’s flight has departed and it’s schedule to arrive about 5:30am in the morning. I’m not going to blog at that time so here it is earlier than normal.

We had our morning trip to town. I did pick up some clothes, though less than I had intended. We did pick up some local craft for gifts though not yet enough. At least that’s progress. We ate a rather mediocre lunch in one of the many food courts in town before picking up some frozen food and returning to the boat. In the afternoon Helen went into her final round of cleaning in parallel with baking some cakes and muffins. I did my part by staying well out of the way. In the evening we watched a movie.

I nice surprise after the movie was getting into email contact with David and Marianne from Kilkea II. There boat is in Denarau near the airport and they were planning on taking the bus back today. The upshot is that we’ll now be taking them and having the pleasure of their company for the ride.

That could have been it for the day but it wasn’t. We were woken in the night by the boat shifting 30-40 knots of SSW wind which had blown up from nowhere it seemed. We’d dragged about 150ft before the anchor had reset. Fortunately we had room but we were now closer to another boat than we cared. The sudden wind had the bay to work over and soon a bit of a chop had picked up making the situation a little worse. In cold, driving rain we let out about 30ft more chain which, when anchored in 10ft of water, is quite a lot.

Worse was yet to come. One of the other boats hailed Suva Port Control reporting one of the commercial vessels in the harbour had gone adrift and was bearing down on the anchorage. Looking about we could see the vessel sliding sideways relative to us. Port Control advised the calling vessel to move out of the way. He was in the middle of engine repairs and was immobile. The upshot was that the huge commercial vessel came under control within 2 feet of the calling yacht. Their crew had their life jackets on and were prepared to jump should the worse come to the worse. Quite a scary moment.

This morning we’ll be moving Dignity onto the slip that’s been prepared for us. After last night I’ll be glad we’ll be leaving Dignity safely tied to the slip rather than out here.