day 131 so many birds after me
Jamie here: Today we settled into our new anchorage by sleeping in and going snorkelling! After my promise to the friendly school children to meet them after school for sports time we were tight for time. We boosted over to “bird island” in our wonderfully efficient 2 horse power dinghy ( about 40 mins either way). This island is a small sand bar surrounded by coral reef and rocky channels of about 3-12m deep. Really fun snorkelling with cool land features. Big tall rocky bommies interspersed with deep channels of gravel and broken coral. It was so nice to put the weight belt on and go for a good dive. Floating down in the still water getting the breath hold back was super refreshing after the confines of the city. We had a picnic on the sand consisting of cucumber, tomato, cwackers, pate and mango chutney (with an annoying amount of mango stone in it?). We finished off our dainty picnic in style with mackintosh lollies from Jennie and bob sent with Malcom and Janet (thank you!) Harrogate flavour is named after Harrogate in England and no specific flavour. Egg and cream and coconut seem to be big hitters. We ate two mangos on the dinghy return trip too. After we returned to bluebird I flossed out the strings of mango from my gnashers and made for shore in the dinghy. I jogged along the track up to the school and was immediately greeted by an amazing horde of 10 year old girls I met yesterday. They rushed up to me and said collectively “it’s 2:40, you’re late you’re ten minutes late!!” - so I’m so glad I decided to go! They grabbed my hand and rushed me to the netball field and asked me football? Netball? Rugby? - we played 10 minutes of each game and I thought there was no method the the madness until I was briskly told during netball that as a defender I had overstepped the zone I was supposed to be in. They were taking it more seriously than I thought. After 20 minutes of running around with the 10 year old girls, the 12 year old boys had cottoned on. They had been playing rugby over the line on the next paddock and quickly yelled at me and got me involved in a game of touch rugby. The girls tried to join In but were firmly ushered back to the netball pitch. I waved goodbye to the girls and had a very fun game of touch rugby with the boys. They thought I was fit and able and I was going to be the best rugby player ever, like everyone from Nz right? Boy were they mistaken. Already fatigued from netball I was able to sprint a couple of times before collapsing on the side mumbling “5 minute break”. They couldn’t believe it and were genuinely worried I was having a medical problem. So we sat for a bit and they asked questions about the queen and tattoos and names of family members. They were just so lovely and fun it was such a great afternoon. Great for me to run around on grass and get dirty knees and skid around like when I was a young fulla. For the record I scored 2 trys. Tonight’s word of the day comes from robin! WOD: hibiscus. Hibiscus: a flower that’s red and has 5 petals. U.I.a.s: a treats cupboard. The toffees sit daintily on the shelf, talking amongst themselves. A packet of cookies suddenly enter the cupboard. The toffee greets the new arrival: “hibiscus!”
Robin here, how’d I do in my first word of the day contribution? Tomorrow I plan to spend at least some of our sail thinking of more so this won’t be my last wordplay mark my .. words. Today we motored our way on the lil outboard all the way to Bird Island! Which is a little patch of sand we passed on our way in here, about 2 miles away from where we anchored. When we were out there we had a fantastic snorkel and a picnic. Really cool large shelfs of coral, several meters high such that you could swim along the surface and be quite close to the coral garden or dive down below and check out the layers of coral variety providing many hidey holes for myriads of colourful fish. At one point something shiny caught my eye and I dove down to collect a lovely whole abalone about 2 inches long. Not soon after Naomi tried to pull my fin and scare me but I sensed her in the water and foiled her tricky plan muaha! Other highlights of the reef include a big lobster, more nemos and big scalloped edge clammy shellfish. When we got back to the boat I read a considerable amount of my book and did a DIY dinghy fix that featured zip ties which I call out specifically for Raj who loves zip ties, handy buggers eh? (Read in kiwi accent) now we are watching Finding Nemo, the documentary about our snorkel adventure today.
Naomi here, Our first snorkel in weeks! The coral seemed not as healthy as some other places we have been but it came in loads of different colours and sizes and shapes, and some places it seemed like rock but when you dove down it was like, coral ground cover, in blue and purple and yellow and coral colour. Plus new fishies we haven’t seen before ! Like the oriental sweet lips which I saw the adults and the juvenile version which looks very different. And very cool anenomes and anenome fish! A new type of anenome which looked like bubbles…. Also “we” found , while looking at the reef fish book, anenome fish is very easy to mis-read as a-nemo-fish. Also guess what! In Fiji there are new types of shells to find, of which i found quite a few and possibly have infected robin with shell envy. Also I saw a cute baby eagle ray doing all sorts of dips and dives besides its caring mother or father or parental guiding eagle ray until the adult eagle ray zipped off real quick one way and the baby hung around for a bit checking me out before zipping off real quick the other way? Which made me feel unsure about their familial relationship. I was very happy that our good little 2hp made it the 2 miles to bird island and back again on only 1 tank of petrol! Today we had banana pancakes by our resident chef robin with real maple syrup!! And our little picnic (no cheese, we forgot to look for any?) followed by a couscous salad by our intuitive chef Jamie with roasted Kumara and potatoes, it also had sun dried tomatoes, olives, dried pears, bok choy, balsamic glaze, and to be honest I don’t know what else cuz we ate it in the dark.
Miriam here, That was my first time watching Finding Nemo; what a cute movie! It’s now quite late though (I couldn’t write blog and watch the movie) so this will be brief. I woke early and rowed the dingy to shore for the exercise and stealth of no motor for a bird watching mission. I was captivated by the White Rumped Swiftlets swooping and diving in the coconut grove. A mongoose bounded and stalked below, their little face that of a fierce predator as they glared at me (through the binoculars). The Red Vented Bulbuls also made an appearance with their handsome black crests. I identified a few other species and saw or heard so many more, enjoying the cool of the early morning with the Morning Glory blossoms still open in royal blue and brilliant white. The snorkelling was fantastic; I loved how many shapes and colours of coral there were from velvety caribou horns to lavender spikes to rose crests to bulbous green brain like mazes. And so many fish! My favourite new sighting might’ve been the Longnose Filefish with their yellow spots and light blue base, though it’s hard to play favourites when all of them are incredible. The Noddys and Terns (these ones lightest pink with a black tonsure) greeted us when we landed at Bird Island (alright, more like fled and circled, scolding us). Now we are packed up to head out early in the morning for Kadavu Island. This has been a wonderful reentry into cruising life, such a different rhythm from city errand stints or liminal passage time. Let’s see what happens next…
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