26th August- Gary's birthday,we couldn't sail as it blew 20 to 25 knots, and even though we changed to the little red sail, neither of us was willing to get soaked. Farnaaz brought Gary a cake that she had baked in a cake tin inside her electric frypan. (She doesn't have an oven ) Yum!!! She made deep fried donuts too!!!
Judy our neighbour made fried rice and a BIG salad for lunch. In the evening there was salsa (chopped tomatoes, garlic, lemon juice, coriander )and corn chips at our house.

For desert we took 8 small pills and one large pill....Yes!!! Everyone in Fiji should take these pills to stop the chance of the disease filariasis- that's when your joints, or some part of your body swell up like a balloon, you stay like that forever...it is also called elephantitis, cos you can end up with bits of you looking like elephant's skin...
Ypu can get many disgusting diseases from mosquitoes, but this is a bad one. There aren't mosquitoes around today as when the wind reaches around 10 knots, they seem to blow somewhere else.

Gary always finds jobs to do on the waka, he calls it the Gig list, from the days when he was in the Coastguard, On a new command ship they look for things the builder needs to change or fix. These days he has more time to relax, like me! He's building the hiking seats.

While we were in Savusavu, Susanna, who is an anthropologist, invited us to Sunday lunch. She and her husband built an island style house. Separate kitchen, separate toilet, they sleep on the floor in their main house. This is some of the guests filling their plates. Gary sold them plans for one of his waka designs ages ago, it was really great to meet a builder of his canoes.



On our "birthday walk" yesterday, we met these two boys who have the job of ploughing the field ready for the next crop, sugarcane, or perhaps vegetables. There are many bullocks like these, all trained for the plough. They are not in paddocks, as no-one can afford wire and posts. They are tethered by rope halters along the roads, and do you know? I have never seen one in a disagreeable mood, not like the bulls back home. I said to Gary, "They need a Fordson tractor around here."
"They don't need a Fordson, they already have a Fartson," said Gary. Get it???



I would like to say I have been out shell collecting and snorkeling, but it has been gardening and sailing and fishing. These shells are from Judy next door. That's a helmet shell top left, strong like a helmet. Top left is a murex. Judy has one that is as big as the head of an All Black. A fisherman knew she liked shells, he took her to the edge of the jungle and pulled out a huge murex shell."We ate the meat,"he said. That is her favourite shell. The cone shell is the black and white one. The shell has a tongue, if a fish sniffs it, a dart of toxins paralyses the fish. The shell can then suck the fish. There are cone shells that are deadly to humans (that's you)
The orange and white shell is a mitre shell, named after the mitre hats worn by cardinals in the Catholic church.

Kaimoana

Heliconias I pinched from Savusavu when we sailed over there two weeks ago, I mean, we went on a ship.
I lugged three sacks of roots from these plants back to our place for friends to plant. I just cant stop gardening. Someone said the vege garden at school has been replanted, that's great.


Lover Boy really goes nuts over fish, even when it is a toothy old barracuda. This one fed us many meals, the fillets were longer than a 30cm ruler.


Here's Toothy again. The first big wriggly fish we caught. Gary refused to put his feet down until he was safe in a sack.


Here we are with the waka, no sailing rig yet, Gary is still making all the numerous sailing parts.


This is a waloo, or Spanish Mackarel. We are having lots of luck trolling, we were only out for fourty minutes, and back home with this fellow. Got him 17th August. The day Murray B. gets his operation. You kids make a get wwell card for him, will you??? Make it funny.

Off to Suva

25th July we took off for Suva. Our local bus driver stopped the bus, flagged down the Suva bus, away we went. Transferred in the middle of the main road.
The road was like the 309, one speed for the driver, foot to the floor.Not much traffic, some mini busses and a few cars. he bridges were quite narrow and scary. Jungle and hilly.


Suva is the largest city in the tropical South Pacific, it's like Honolulu might have been like 50 years ago.Taxi was $1.60 to our hotel, South Pacific Private Hotel, budget, could have had a double room for $30, like a prison cell. We opted for the room with bathroom, it had louvre windows on three sides ($54) and the only bug I saw was a scorpion, I flicked it out the door...
Suva was colder than Rakiraki, I had to ask for a blanket. I also asked for a thin pillow, I hate fat pillows.
Sunday only Mc Donalds was open, so we had coffee there early. One mall was open, I found a whole rack of fishing lures and bought three. Everyone was at church, or resting. You don't work, fish, play, mow lawns here on Sunday.
The Fiji museum has an 80 year old drua (battleship, says Gary)There are anchor stones from the old canoes, and a huge stone that the warriors rested prisoners' heads on- then WACK!
Tomorrow we are off to Savusavu on the ship.

Hard at work

Our neighbours, Dean, Fernez and Fasair live on 14 acres of sugar lease land in the name of their mother. The sugar is being cut by big machetes(cane knife) at present, the company buys the sugar, the farmers get paid in installments. but the price is low, and now the governnent is saying, "You should diversify." Which means there is no money in sugar for the farmers...
Fernez cleans at the place we stay n Rakiraki, she probably gets paid $2 or maybe $2.20 an hour. She has started to sell roti and curry at her gate on Saturdays to make extra money. We made her a sign the same color as the boat, black and yellow. " Tasty Food"


Gary is "Folding up" That is the part where the two flat sides and the bulkheads are joined, so the curve of the hull is there... quite exciting.
You notice I am nowhere to be seen, he did most of the work on the main hull without me, I was off gardening or just sitting around with my embroidery.

Here she is.... The main hull was finished a few days before we headed to Suva on the bus. Gary has very sore hands and wrists from all the screwing and painting, so ten days away will heal him so that he is able to work hard on the outrigger and cross-arms. That's a fish mouth you can see on the bow end, hope will entice fish onto our lines.

After ten days

Bulla, Room 7, and others...Our bure is the same distance from the sea as our house in Coromandel.
Mangroves here are bigger. There are crab mounds and holes in the grass. I think the crabs come out at night. I will find out.

We were 7 kilos overweight for the flight to Fiji. Cost us $70. Most of it was materials for the waka Gary has already started building. In my suitcase was a life jacket, bronze boat nails and stainless screws (very heavy) an electric drill, saw, box of small tools, two wheels for the hand trolley....I had lots of plasters and sunscreen too. Oh, and three big bars of Whittakers chocolate!

Our outboard motor crate was waiting at the shipping agents in Lautoka. It took two hours, a ride to Customs with a Customs agent, Gary, the taxi driver and the quarantine guy to get the $450, second-hand 2hp Yamaha out. $140 import duty and $67 to the shipping company. Finally four guys stamped four copies of the paperwork with two different stamps. We were off!

Davend, our taxi driver and a soccer referee, drove us to our new home,Seganaleqa (Singanalinga) with our two big suitcases, the wooden crate with the outboard, groceries, and our hand-carry luggage. My fishing rods rested between the seats, safe in their 6” PVC drainpipe.
. We had decided against the bus after the customs man pried the outboard crate open with a crow-bar and mashed the plywood. The top was screwed on, and they had no screwdriver. Too hard to tape it up for a long bus ride! The taxi cost $110 for all the running around Lautoka, and the two hour ride to our home. That's NZ $88.

The northern part where we are is dry at present, today it's a comfortable 27 degrees. There are lots of sugarcane farmers harvesting right now. Cane is cut with a machete if there is no tractor. I saw two bullocks pulling a plough yesterday. We passed trucks loaded with cane, on the way to the crushing plant at Rakiraki. There are narrow gauge train tracks everywhere, the cane trains stop and pick up cars full of cane and pull them to the crushing plant.

There are many small stores along the road. Most are built of tin, people hang out there out of the sun.


We also passed lots of mangroves, much bigger than ours in New Zealand. Women hunt crabs in the mangroves and sell them on the side of the road. There was one spot where pigs were kept in pens in the mangroves.


You may be surprised to find out that I do cook a bit when out of the Coromandel Kitchen. We have a one burner gas cooker. Last night I cooked our favorite Chow noodles (instant ) with long beans ( they are at least 30cm long ) cabbage and onion Yum! I like to make banana pancakes for breakfast sometimes, the flour is milled in Fiji, it makes light and fluffy pancakes that are delicious with golden syrup. Right now, as I sit by the open window, listening to the breeze and the waves, there is a pot of beans on cooking. Actually I will pass them on to Gary to finish off as a tasty bean dish to take to a party at the owners this Saturday. We eat lots of chicken, so Gary bought a Fijian cooking pot today. It's made of aluminium, you can buy all sizes so they stack on top of each other – really great for the loads of families who cook on a one burner cooker, or woodfire. We needed a pot to fit a chicken in!

Yesterday we stocked up on food. Gary looked for a skillsaw. The cheapest Chinese one was $189, so he made a deal with the owner who said “Use mine.” Gary will buy him a new blade- $30. That's Gary heading for the hardware store...

July 17th We are off to the resort where there is a wireless internet connection, so I can finally post this... I was going to add 7 pictures, but the connection is so slow that Gary said, "Only one picture."

We are a few days from having a finished waka. That is, without the mast and rigging. I have been helping by making cups of tea, and taking the sweaty builder iced water. There are no fish out there right now, says all the fishermen. They will be there when we launch the waka.

Room 7- remember the Key Competencies...managing self, and relating to others when you face your lovelt new teacher on Monday morning. It is all new for her too, you know. On Monday morning...Let me see... I will be eating papaya and banana with my weetbix. I wll be wearing shorts and a thin shirt. I will be at the end of a paintbrush, probably being ordered around by Gary.

Three Weeks to Go

July 6th Gary and I leave for Viti Levu Fiji for three months.

A continuing development of outrigger canoe designing, building, fishing and sailing.
I am indispensible, as I whinge and moan about aspects of design, construction and deployment, make the iced tea, and help with the building process - when I can be found.

We caught this Spanish Mackerel in theTamanu Gary built in the garden, under the Bower's giant lime tree back in Savusavu two years ago.

That's Gary, heading back from the chook and duck house at Sega na Leqa last December. Seqa na Leqa means "no worries." Gary wears his favorite lava lava. (sulu in Fiji)


It's 8 degrees, South-westerly at 20 knots outside right now, here in Coromandel.. We have the fire lit. Three more weeks of school before the term finishes.

Tuesday I will show my class my blog, and they will find out my plans.