… and hanging at a mooring ball of Waitui marina to be able to leave very early in the morning – we planned to get up at 0600 and to leave at latest at 0630 – for Namena Island.

Originally I planned to drop the anchor but the water is more then 20 m deep and I have to considered that there are corals down there. Thus, to avoid any problems with the anchor I decided to use a mooring ball.

Friendly neighbors who wanted to go at land with their dinghy helped us getting our two bowlines through the eye splices at the mooring balls. But that’s not all, they even will pay for us the 20 FJD next morning when the money collector comes and we are long gone. Thanks nice couple from SV AKA.

The sunset behind the mountains was fascinating. Over a rather long time the sky turned from yellowish grey in dark orange and dark grey to almost black . An astonishing event we watched until it’s very end.

On Monday I got early the 2 spare parts parcels I was waiting for. First I replaced the parts at the watermaker. This was a bit tricky because I could not get Loctite 542 or 577 which are sealants. So I used 243 which is a medium strength thread locker. So far
the high pressure connection did not leak during the pressure adjustment process (80 bar switch off pressure, with a working pressure of 60 – 70 bar), and a 15 min water making test.

I also replaced the old Raymarine ST60 Multi display instrument with a new i70s and for that I had to replace another part of my old SeaTalk network by the new SeaTalkNG (Next Generation) network. While setting up the instrument I saw already 2 things, which I consider as bugs: First, the illumination adjustment does not work with in the group with the chartplotter, thus twice a day some 15 – 20 times buttons need to be pressed to change between daylight and nighttime view. A “perfect” design. I’m wondering what the developer thought when this cumbersome system was programmed. The second bug is that AIS cannot be switched off. Thus, in a marina or mooring field there is always an alarm going off. That’s the result of a programming by someone who has never been on a boat. “A few of the new Raymarine instruments have been designed by a cheap Chinese junior high school student” is the description I use often.

Tomorrow I’m send a mail to my Raymarine “guy” in Germany who supports me very well since I have MaRe and ask if he knows some tricks to get it better working.

On Sunday, I went with Norah & Peter by taxi in the direction of Jerusalami. (Joe stayed on board to work on her Bachelor thesis she needs to submit in August.) We had planned to look at this village. However, it turned out that it’s a very small settlement. Our taxi driver proposed to go to a waterfall not that far away. We agreed and he brought us there.

The area around the waterfall is under development for touristic events. However, beside us, there were only a group of about 5 Australians there.

We walked along the easy to walk trail into the forest – or better said jungle – to the waterfall. The lush green with colorful plants and blossoms make always a nice contrast I look at, a vibrant feeling. I like this scenario, which I saw so often on the Pacific islands since the Gambier islands a few thousand national miles ESE.

Norah & Peter took a swim in the not warm water at the bottom of waterfall. I stayed dry out side and explored the area at the exit of the pond is the waterfall.

From there we walked towards the beach. There is a small settlement with maybe 20 houses. Like all Polynesien islands I visited so far, the properties are kept very clean.

A lot of “Bula” (hello) greetings what exchange with people outside there houses. From the last house a lady came out and asked, “Do need a transportation? The village was quite a bit away from the mainroad so this question to help us and to make some money was pretty reasonable. We thanked her because Norah made an agreement with the taxi driver to pick us up.

The day ended with delicious simple meal at an Fijian restaurant, Joe and I consider before we met Jullie & Don the other day.