Gabey

My cousin Gabe arrived in Savusavu one day at 5:30 am on a ferry boat. The first few days he was here Wade kept giving him a bit of the stinkeye–like, who are you? But then they became good buddies.

There was some confusion on Guava Jelly between the menfolk when I was talking as babe, Gabe, and Wade all sound alike.

I tried Stand Up Paddleboarding for the first time in the Savu Savu harbor and managed to stay afloat–didn’t even get wet. It was fun! Riki of course was a natural at it.

We spent most of the time with Gabe at Namena, which is a marine reserve. We stayed there 5 days and snorkeled at least once a day, sometimes twice. We saw a few black tip and white tip reef sharks, 2 turtles, and tons of fish. The water was crystal clear. Unfortunately I kept getting stung by little jelly fish called string-of-pearls, and they blister up bad on me. So at the end I was snorkeling with full wetsuit, socks, and socks over my hands to cover as much skin as possible.

We had one scary episode at Namena. We were anchored near the reef at the south pass in quite a strong current. We snorkeled and had lunch and were just pulling up the anchor to head back to the mooring when…the anchor wouldn’t come up. It was good and stuck. And we were in 90 feet of water, so Riki had to don his dive gear. Just at this moment a squall came and it started dumping rain and the wind picked up to 25 knots or so, blowing us towards the reef. Gabe had Wade in the cockpit, and I stood on the bow with my foot on the anchor chain, listening for Riki’s taps–3 taps meant let out more chain, several rapid taps meant pull it up as fast as you can. Riki was on the bottom moving the anchor and a pile of chain about 30 feet, next to the bommie it was caught up on, then he fed it by hand over the bommie as I pulled it up. Once I had the chain up I rushed back to the cockpit to put the boat in gear so we could get away from the reef. Riki surfaced and swam to the dinghy, and Gabe got in the dinghy to grab his BCD and tank from him. Then we were all aboard, happy and safe. 🙂

Riki saves the day!

We visited the village of Namalata and were folded into Annie’s warm embrace of hospitality. She made us lunch and lemonade, plus fresh coconuts to drink. We invited her and her family out to the boat….the next morning 7 children and 3 adults showed up at 8 am. We served them tea and Annie’s husband Paolo did the sevu sevu ceremony for us aboard.