day 148: Happy Fiji Day!
Miriam: The full moon rose huge and golden over Malolo Lailai Island as the sunset faded in lemon and rose behind heavy grey clouds low on the horizon. An easterly wind has been howling all afternoon stirring up chop in the harbour. Today was a recovery day for our weary surfers that allowed time for some provisioning and repairs to happen. I had a sweet bird sit this morning on shore, watching familiar Red Vented Bulbuls call and feed in the palms, Mynas everywhere making all of the noises, the brilliant little Fiji Parrotfinches flashing red and green jewel tones, an accipiter (I think) soaring in the distance, and the lovely little Orange Breasted Honeyeater with his jaunty red cap and slender curved bill. Another moment of wonder arose when, late in the afternoon, Jamie noticed our sea snake friend had returned to our transom! This time they hung out for a while as Jamie and Matt and I admired them, slithering through a scupper (one of the two holes in the stern that allows water to drain out of the cockpit) to explore the cockpit. They twined around the pedestal supporting the helm and wound themselves into the main sheet which camouflaged their black and white concentric rings very nicely. Their tail is flat at the end like a fin and otherwise they look like a thin, small headed land snake. Finally, rather than heading through the open window into Jamie’s room (where he may have well begged to keep it until NZ bio security insisted otherwise), the snake climbed up the port side and dove over the edge, undulating straight down into the depths. So grateful for the moments of wonder that light up even the most quotidian of days…
Naomi here, slowly my bruises are coming up from our surf days, a couple that I don’t remember getting and the good one on my thigh where the leash wrapped around my leg and pulled way too tight when I was getting put thru the spin cycle. This morning when I went to drop off a board we borrowed from a friends boat he gave me an embarrassingly obvious tip on how to fix the roller furling so me and Jamie and our new friend magnus looked at it and after many heated discussions fixed it honestly very easily :) hopefully it doesn’t get caught on the broken chunk as we furl and unfurl it but we will see. Then we unbent the bow roller also quite easily and then we spent a lot of time looking at how weird the dodger looks and scratching our heads. Eventually Magnus and I took part of the dodger frame into the beach whereupon some old sailors took it upon themselves to tell us how it’s done and how we were going to irreparably damage the dodger frame. We took their considerations into account, asked if they wanted to help- to which they turned to their beers and muttered- and continued on our way. We filled the empty tubes with dry sand and spent a considerable amount of time making sure the tubes were totally packed with sand so they wouldn’t crumple. Then we pushed the frame into the sand to have a mould for a reference of what the original shape was, and took it to some conveniently placed trees to bend it. It worked remarkably well!! Unfortunately bending shapes like that is actually very difficult, you bend it a little this way and expect it to get narrower and shorter and somehow it gets wider and taller. We spent a lot of time looking at the shape in the sand and the frame on top and wondering how we had made the whole thing bigger. Then taking it back to the bending tree and rebending it a bit more, then bending it back again cuz we bent it too far that time, then a lot more time staring and wondering. After all this bending and scratching our heads it was time for a beer and talking shop with a few other sailors so refitting it and seeing what shape we ended up with can wait for another day…
Bluebird out !