More Fiji

So far so good here with Greg and Chantel onboard! Having a blast. We hoisted the main sail for the very first time in two years Appearently. We also caught a nice size king fish and cooked him up for lunch on the way to the musket cove yacht club. We had a braii last night and many bottles of wine;) great time so far and we are now anchored off of a reef where they are diving at the moment. Going back to the yacht club tonight for another mooring since we had such a good time there lat night. Wish they could stay longer cuz this is way better than working working working all the time!!

Fiji

Fiji is awesome!!! Well at first it was rainy n not so great but then we moved to the west coast in Nadi and it's always sunny and pretty here so it's great! There are all kinds of boat shops here and if we had known what was available to us here we NEVER woulda stopped in American Samoa!! U can get so much work done here its crazy!!! It's a one stop shop for allllll boat needs! We went around yesterday and today and just like that BOOM! We are getting our steering wheel fixed and welded tomorrow morning...and we have a quote on all the cushions we need replaced...welding for the spinnaker at the top of the mast...dock lines that are way overdue....and I got a cute bikini cover up;) and new polarized sunglasses. ;P Greg and Chantel are finally here and we are soooo excited to see a familiar face and have great company onboard!! 

Fiji

So we are in Fiji now. Made it here yesterday. We pulled into the pass with hearts racing as we passed 6-7 shipwrecks....no really there like 6 boats half sunk on the reefs on either side of the pass as you enter Suva. Nerves. Shot. But we made it and we anchored and waited for officials to come on board and clear us. Today we went all over town taking the payments to all the officials and did a little bit of shopping too. Half the Fiji population is actually Indian so they have a ton of Indian shops here along with a couple of malls. Ty finally found some shorts that fit him and I finally replaced my beloved haviannas. I'm still in the market for some new shades tho. Some really nice ones. But they all seem really expensive so I keep holding out. I'm liking ray bans polarized glasses but they are around $250 US!!! That's just craziness!! 

It rains here every day in soggy Suva so I'm ready to get to the west coast and go to Nadi already! We leave tomorrow night and do an overnight passage so we get there Thursday morning. Sposed to be dry and pretty on that side. Here it's rainy because of the mountain so it's the same effect as American Samoa...except it smells way better...

Armed guard at the presidents house

Couple of sunken ships

American Samoa to Tonga

So we said farewell to all our friends Monday night and departed on Tuesday. Well it wasn't that simple. We were ready to leave Tuesday morning but had a few errands to run at the last minute. We also decided to make the passage alongside Wind Witch with Bob and the boys David and Florent so we helped each other get ready by making last minute water and fuel runs. They came over to help us with the two anchors we had out. Weeeellll they were both fouled:( nothing is ever easy is it.... So our hero Dane saved the day by diving down on both and releasing them for us!!!! We hung out free of the clutches of American Samoa while he dove on his own anchor that he lost recently and then helped Wind Witch get theirs up. Theirs was a bit easier so it didn't take so long. We said goodbye to Dane :( and we finally left around 6:30pm. Seems to be working out for us tho because we are about to enter the pass to tonga here in about 2 hours putting us in the mooring mid day! The passage was somewhat exhausting physically and mentally aaaand emotionally.... Ty and I decided on 3 hr watches so we just take lil micro-naps and then back on watch. Of course I was nauseous until day 3 like always. Then I started cleaning stuff around the boat and making food again so I knew my sea legs were back! :) the wind has been PUMPIN and we got the main up finally!!! Well to the 3rd reef anyway. Still waiting on more parts...but we have been flyin along having the best sail ever on this boat! I could do without this crazy southeasterly swell tho. We have been getting pounded and beat up by these 2-4 meter swells the whole way. Oh and we got stuck in a squall line or somethin last night. We just had squall after freakin squall which is stressful. You never know if its going to have crazy strong gusts or just a little rain. We have the main reefed already so we just took in the genoa a bit. Didn't even need the staysail but we had it set up on deck and ready to fly if we needed it. I think we would have used it had the wind been blowing 35-40kts but it was between 18-22 with gusts around 26-28kts. Although my nerves were shot we were just fine and she sailed beautifully thorough it all so first go with the new main sail was 'great success!' :).... I woke up today with Ty letting the genoa out all the way in 20-22kts and our speed over ground was 7-7.4kts!!! He said we are gettin there TODAY. Beautiful day no more squalls and clouds and we can finally see land! We figured we would e here about midday on Saturday so feels good to meet the goal for once. There are supposed to be a couple of cool caves here where you can dinghy into and snorkel into so we are going to spend a couple days here and then head off to Fiji.