Unfortunately the fuel lifting pump didn’t arrive in time for our Tuesday departure (29th May) from Vuda Marina, so Baobab are organising for it to be sent directly to the Copra Shed Marina at Savusavu where we will pick it up in a few weeks time.

 

It was a bit of dejavu as we left Vuda early on Tuesday with our first stop back at Vatia Wharf. 

This time we had a bit of company with 3 other cruising yachts joining us – obviously everyone was keen to get on the move again after the wet and windy weather over the weekend.

 

Wednesday we departed and this time made it to our destination at Nananu I Thake which is an excellent kite boarding site as it is pretty much windy every day.

Luckily our arrival tied in just beautifully with the low tide which is preferable for kiting here so after a quick bite to eat we launched the dinghy and packed the kiting gear into Lil Sal for a few hours of very pleasant kiting off kite point

 

Thursday was also another great day for kiting.  Mark had a great session late in the morning but the decision was made to inflate the smaller kite as the winds were starting to build.

Unfortunately as it was being inflated there was a loud bang and that was it – we had a hole in the bladder which was very disappointing to say the least

 

Luckily for us Warren from Safari Lodge, who gave us a couple of lessons last season, is just around the corner and was more than happy to take the patient away to see if it could be healed and was also able to provide us with a replacement 9mt kite so that we could continue our kiting while the winds kept blowing.  It would have been very sad to have travelled all this way to go kiting and be denied.

 

The winds lightened off a lot on Saturday and were accompanied by quite a lot of rain so we headed over the Safari Lodge to see how the repairs were going and also to stop in for a spot of lunch at the resort. On arriving we found that Warren has a fully stocked repair shop which looked a bit like a loft.  We arrived to find him fixing a mates windsurfing sail and the good news was that our bladder was repaired and like a new one... YAY...

 

 

 

 

It was a very informative afternoon with Warren as he showed us many of the tricks involved in repairing kites so we are just about to order some spare parts just in case we have another failure.

 

Warren cooked us a lovely tuna lunch and then we were on our way with happy faces and a kite back on board.

 

Today we have very calm weather which is great for us as we are continuing to travel South and East, which is directly into the prevailing trade winds, but unfortunately clouds often accompany calm conditions so we decided to only travel about 10NM today to a lovely little spot called Viti Levu Bay.  The weather is forecast to remain light for the next few days and hopefully we will have a bit more sun tomorrow so that we can continue on as we have to travel though some pretty tight spots with lots of coral on the next leg to Naigani Island which is around 30NM.