Friday, August 14, 2009

Adam's visit and our farewell to Fiji



















BULA ADAM!! Bula is Fiji's national greeting, you hear it everyday from most Fijian's lips, anytime of day or for any reason. We have found the Fijians to be a very friendly and open people. Adam has come and gone(back to Canada via Australia) and it was great to have him here. Linda was in heaven-so were Pat and I as he daily made the galley his own, concocting delicious dishes, cocktails etc. He should have his own eatery! We always eat well on Don Pedro but its a treat to have someone visit who has a passion for creating exotic and different dishes. We miss you, Adam, our taste buds miss you, come back anytime. The weather cooperated and allowed us to anchor for the night at Monoriki Island where castaway was filmed. It was dead calm so we took the grill to shore, lit 2 fires, 1 for cooking steaks, potatoes, onions and veggies over and 1 big one to sit around after dinner, looking at the millions of stars above and trying to imagine what it would have been like to actually be stranded there for 4 years. Wilson was not there but his buddy Spalding kept us company. Linda and Adam substituted Bar B Q sauce for blood to give him is face.
We had the whole gamut of weather while he was here so we sailed a lot amongst the Mamanuca and Yasawa chains of Fiji's beautiful west coast islands. His 3 weeks with us went too fast and suddenly he was off to Australia for a week then home to Canada after a 6 month absence.
We left Fiji 4 days later for our voyage to Vanuatu where we now are. The 531 miles took 3 days and 14 hours. We ran into good winds, squalls full of sheeting rain, and periods of lulls-typical South Pacific passage weather. We arrived at the capitol, Port Vila, early Friday morning, ran the gauntlet of Health/Quarantine, Customs and Immigration officials who were all very friendly. If you think your lives have too much paperwork in them, spend just 1 day in a third world country where EVERYTHING goes down on numerous reams of paper again and again. I need to rest my wrist and writing hand after each arrival-complain, complain, complain!!! As you know, its all worth it. Vanuatu was ruled for over 100 years by both the British and French-AT THE SAME TIME!!! You can imagine the cultural mix(and clashes). Charming to say the least. So far, so good as we are enjoying the Melanesian and ex pat population. Vanuatu has a fantastic beef industry and the French restaurants serve a great steak au poivre so we are in culinery heaven. We will be here for another 5-6 weeks before heading for New Caledonia and on to Australia. Don Pedro continues to turn out to be a great cruising boat and home. She is sea kindly, strong, spacious and quite fast-a great combo. Thank you, Beneteau-you build good boats!
Thats it for now. Love to all. John Linda Patrick....oh yeah, The Red Bastard