Birthdays, Music, and Cocoa

We are back in Lautoka and about to check out of Fiji and sail for New Caledonia. Our remaining days in Musket Cove were spent hiking around the island and with friends. There is a common barbecue area where we would meet up on most evenings. We also celebrated our friend Bob's 65th birthday. Bob and Linda are cruising on 'Bright Angel' and made the crossing from Mexico around the same time as we did last year. Rani made a cake for the party and Bob and Linda treated us and 3 other couples to beer and pizza at the Musket Cove restaurant.

Bob and Linda celebrate Bob's 65th.

Rani walks the path leading to the chapel at Musket Cove

Chapel windows

Chapel angels

We also finally met Paul and Catherine from the British yacht Kahia, whose boat we had first seen in Tonga last year. Among other skills, they are musicians and we spend a fun afternoon on Kahia playing uke, guitar, and flute and singing. We exchanged song books and plan to get together in New Caledonia after we have practiced some tunes. I also played some music at the resort. On Saturday night we watched the resort band play some Fijian and western numbers. Rani told them that I played uke, so they invited me to do a number with them as well as sharing their (very strong) kava with us.

The resort has a large organic farm where they grow lettuce, cabbage, tomatoes, herbs, and many other vegetables and fruit for the restaurants.

Tomato beds at the Musket Cove farm. They use mulch and seaweed to improve the soil.

We finally got around to roasting the cocoa beans we collected on Rabi and Kioa. Bob an Linda had helped us process these back in Kioa (by sucking the tasty sweet-tart fruit off the beans) and they asked us if we had finished processing the beans yet. Today we roasted the beans in the oven (about 100 deg C for 20 minutes) and removed the husks before grinding. We then made our first cup of 'from scratch' cocoa by boiling a couple of tablespoons of ground up beans in three cups of water and adding whole milk powder and sugar. The results were quite good with a lovely chocolate aroma and especially satisfying because we picked and processed the pods ourselves.

Cocoa beans roasting

Roasted and de-husked beans are ready for grinding

We use a small pestle and mortar to grind the cocoa into coarse powder

Chris enjoys a cup of steaming cocoa..

Return to Musket Cove

We sailed back to Musket Cove a couple of days ago, departing the anchorage of Bekana Island at Lautoka under sail. The winds have been strangely at variance with the forecast southeast trades for the last few days, swinging into the northwest and sometimes the southwest. As we sailed past the city, the plume of black smoke from the sugar mill rose straight into the air. We were just able to make headway with a couple of knots of breeze from the northwest. This very light breeze proved to be only an interlude between wind shifts and the wind swung back into a nice solid southeasterly coming off the land.

We rolled in a bit of the big jib and tucked a reef in the main, setting up the wind vane to steer us on a reach down the coast. There are many reefs and sand patches on the route from Lautoka to Musket Cove (on Malolo Lailai), so we entered a couple of GPS waypoints provided by Curly, a local cruiser out of Savusavu, to keep us in deep water and pass just clear of two barely visible sand patches.

As we cleared Vuda Point, the wind and fetch began to build, rolling at us across several miles of open water. By rolling in more jib and adjusting the traveler to de-power the mainsail we balanced the boat and the wind vane steering was able to handle the odd gust with only a tweak or two to keep us running true. A big ketch under motor hoisted her sails as she saw us approach and for a few minutes we sailed together before she romped away from us.

Chris removes the shells from tamarind pods we collected in Momi Bay. We will dry the fruit and remove the seeds.

The entry to Musket Cove was very easy this time. It is amazing how much more comfortable you feel on approaching a tricky entrance the second time. We were now quite familiar with the hazards from our slow exit a week ago, tacking out through the channel and around sand bars and coral patches. The only stressful moments were when we had a 'discussion' over where we should anchor.

We share a drink with our good friends Bob and Ann from Charisma

There are quite a few cruisers here whom we either know well or have bumped into over the last two years. It was a treat to catch up with our friends, Bob and Ann, on Charisma and we managed a hike with them around a good portion of the resort island, despite their recent colds. They have a very detailed blog with great photos you can check out at  sailcharisma.com.

The Musket Cove resort provides wood fired barbecue facilities on a little coral spit beside the dinghy dock and we met up with friends there last night and shared a meal and drinks. Most people are starting to plan their escape from here as cyclone season approaches. The majority, like us, are heading south to New Zealand, but a few will sail north to the Marshalls (as we had originally planned) and some will leave their boats here either in an earth pit on the land or in a marina.  

Farewell to Our Guests

We dropped our guests, Chris and Vladka off at the sea wall in Lautoka yesterday after a peaceful day sail from Mana Island in light winds that ranged from southeast to northwest. The four days we spent with them were a lot of fun. We enjoyed sharing with them what it is like to cruise on a sailboat and they were great guests, pitching in with the cooking, cleaning, and sailing.

Here are a few more photos from our stay at Mana Island. Most of the underwater pictures were taken on the reef outside the pass into the Mana island lagoon.

Vladka and Chris pose for a couple shot

Mushroom coral - photo taken by our guests

Vladka enjoying a swim on a very calm day

Damsel fish

Lagoon triggerfish (Rhinecanthus aculeatus), also known as the blackbar triggerfish, or Picasso triggerfish.

I think this is a wrasse of some sort.

This fellow is quite large and has the most striking contrasting colours - oriental sweetlips.

The reef outside the pass at Mana had very clear water and some larger schools of fish like these convict surgeonfish.

Nurse shark. We also saw an octopus on this reef

I like this shot of Chris and Vladka upside down

It was nice to have someone else take a few pictures of us as a couple.

Sunset at Lautoka

Mana Island Walk and Snorkel

We had a full day today snorkeling on the reef just off the beach here where no fishing is allowed. The fish are plentiful and there are more varieties than we have seen anywhere else in Fiji. The visibility was not bad and improved as the wind died out this morning.

We always see these little fish in among the corals in pairs.

Squid

Squid detail

And another squid shot

Not sure of the name of this fish

Moorish idols

These fish puff their fins out like this when alarmed

Military style camouflage

The reef was home to many larger schools

Later we went for a hike around about half the island following volcanic rock shelves and beaches including the spectacular Sunset Beach on the island's west coast.

Fisherman hand lining.

Heron in flight

Romantic walk

Our guest, Chris took this nice shot

These shelves made walking around the island easy.

From Momi to Mana

It has been a while since we posted, so here is an update on the last week. We sailed to Musket Cove (Malolo Lailai) from Momi Bay and stayed there for a couple of days while the winds howled and the rain poured down. There are three resorts on the island, an airport, and rental and private houses. Roads lead all over the island and provide some fine walking with views in all directions. It was a bit of a shock sharing an anchorage with 40+ boats after so many weeks on our own! The anchorage is deep (about 15 meters) but the holding very good and we safely sat out gale force squalls and torrential rain.

View over Musket Cove

Anchorage at Musket Cove

Next we sailed to Lautoka and anchored off the container pier and sugar refinery. There were several boats in this anchorage, about half of which were in the process of checking out of Fiji to head for Vanuatu and New Caledonia. We were here to meet our guests - friends we had last seen in Auckland. The next morning, we awoke to a boat coated in a fine layer of black ash from the sugar refinery. I would not want to spend more than a day or two here because of this. We rowed in, re-provisioned, and returned to the boat where I left Rani to pack things up and returned to town to meet our friends.

Anchorage at Lautoka

Ash from the Lautoka sugar mill

Chris and Vladka were waiting in the market when I arrived and we returned to Ladybug and set sail for Tivua, an island we had passed on our way here. The winds were gusty and strong and we put two reefs in the main and beat our way out of the anchorage, with our guests taking turns at the helm. An hour later, we dropped the hook off an extensive reef and went for a snorkel. The visibility was not great here, probably because the higher winds had stirred up the sandy bottom.

Our guest Chris kicks back on Ladybug

Vladka prepares a salad for the potluck.

Today we sailed to Mana Island, stopping for lunch and a snorkel at a sand quay that lies south of Elevuka Island. The pass into the lagoon at Mana Island is very narrow with a dogleg. Strong gusty winds swept across the channel and the sun was in our eyes, making the whole experience hair-raising, despite the poles that clearly mark both sides of the channel. However we made it safely into the lagoon, seeing nothing shallower than 9 feet below our keel. Our friends, Bruce and Craig on Gato Go are anchored here and we are just back from a very pleasant potluck evening on their lovely catamaran.

We plan to stay at Mana for a couple of days snorkeling the fringing reef and hiking on the island.

Cane Cutting in Momi

I am not sure why Chris volunteered to cut sugarcane at 0730, probably a mix of curiosity and gratitude to our kind hosts, but he hardly slept last night and woke me up at 0600 this morning! Last night I baked a peach upside down cake to take to our host family together with some yogurt and yanqona. Thankfully it was high tide when we rowed to our landing beach and no wind, as it is quite far and there is a reef guarding the beach.

What the well dressed cane cutter is wearing today

The farm dog heard us long before we tramped up the hill and Fulwati popped her head from the garden hedge and pointed at the hill where the cane field was being harvested. We unloaded the cake and other items and asked her to keep the backpack until our return. She gave Chris a long sleeved shirt belonging to her husband so he would not get scratched and sunburned out there and we were off! We heard the men shouting and laughing as we approached the field. To our surprise there were three men and a boy slashing at the cane and they had a pile cut already. Chris confirmed that Subas Chand was amongst them and parting the rustling cane stalks at the road's edge, tramped over to begin his labour. One of the men shouted to a young girl at a house nearby to tell grandma that "aunty" was here but she answered that dadi (grandma)  was sleeping. I had no intention to disturb anyone that early and told them I was going for a walk to get some exercise.

This machete is quite heavy. Subas later gave Chris a lighter one, more suitable for beginners.

Some of the cane is quite tall and straight, but many canes were bent and harder to clean and stack.

The young boy gave over his machete and a glove to Chris and walked over to ride the raft-like sled pulled by two oxen to the bottom of the hill. Small loads of cane are taken to a railcar parked on a piece of track in the field in this manner.

On Saturdays the three older men who cut these fields have the help of a young man. Here he is skidding a load of cane to the bottom of the hill for loading on the rail car.

Cutters at work. These bullocks are just  grazing.

Subas demonstrated the cutting and cleaning of the cane to Chris and I took a few photos for our album from my roadside stance. I watched Chris swipe at a few canes and then hiked up to explore the valley. It was very hot already and it was not even 8 a.m. yet!

View out over Momi Bay. Ladybug to the left and a pilot boat that guides large ships through the Navula Pass. In the distance is an unfinished resort - apparently a sinkhole for government money.

In one valley I saw a little Mosque. There is a small Muslim community here.

By the time I returned after my two hour walk, Chris was cleaned up and schmoozing with Subas and Fulwati at their house. I took a walk up to the cane field with him to see the amount of cane that they had cut. The rail car was full and we found out that it probably weighed about two and half tonnes. Four men can harvest this much in less than four hours. Subas pays a local farmer F$4.50/tonne to pull the rail car by tractor to the small gauge railway a kilometer away. The car is left on a siding where it gets picked by a daily sugar cane train and taken to the Lautoka sugar mill. The rail car has a farm number on it and this is how the mill knows whom to pay. The farmer gets paid F$75-$80 per tonne of cane on today's market. A few years ago, the price was only F$45/tonne and the cost to produce amounted to almost F$20/tonne plus labour.

Rail car loaded with about 2.5 tonnes of cane - a morning's work for 4 men to cut and stack.

Close-up of cut and stacked cane

The day's load of cane awaits the train

Back at the farm, Subas had another bag of goodies ready for us - cassava roots and more oranges. Lunch was also ready - a table laden with curried fish, beans, dal, boiled eggs, rotis, rice and a delicious tomato chutney. Almost everything was fresh from their garden and very flavourful.

Fulwati explains how to de-seed tamarind

After lunch we set off to see the World War II gun batteries on the hill. You have to pay $5.00 per person to walk around the compound which affords a great view of the valley below,  the passes into the lagoon, and the islands in the vicinity. It was hot and we felt very dehydrated when we finally returned to Ladybug at 3pm. We both jumped over for a refreshing swim. It was a very full day!

Two of these guns guarded the nearby passes from Japanese advances. US, New Zealand, British, and Fiji troops were stationed here.

Momi gun battery