July 19, 2007 Savusavu

So I watched like 4 episodes of Lost last night, back to back! Addict! Ya I know, its really good though, and I’m just starting season 2. I even bought the 3rd season in town. The town of Savusavu is really nice. Just a couple blocks long, but with everything you need, the market, internet, bank, post office, shops, etc. Glad I got to get in to see it yesterday, and especially Skype Mom and Zac. Sorry I tried to call you pops, but I think it was too late. Oh and I got an email from Paul, telling me he was actually a little worried how I would handle life on the ship. Umm thanks for the warning beforehand Paul! It was nice to actually hear someone that raved about the experience so much, is still pretty weirded out by their “culture” on board.

My thoughts on the day are: “Be smarter than a dumb dog” like my dad always says. Its so true though, don’t make more work for yourself if you don’t have to. Well not too sure if the officers on the boat realize that vital tidbit of knowledge. They just assign us tasks and I don’t think they really think it through sometimes. I have plenty of examples from just being at anchor in Savusavu for 5 days. Soooo….5 days is not that long in a port, yet we put all the sail covers back on, the sun tarps up, and took all the dive gear out from below. Well 7 people of the 14 have dove, but we still lugged everything up and down from the aft cabin. Wouldn’t it have made more since for just the people diving to take their own stuff out of aft cabin? Ummm ya. Sun tarps are already down after only 4 days, and we will be sailing tomorrow so the sail covers will need to come off again too. Its just kind of getting to me, I prob won’t have the guts to speak up about it, but it still gets to me. Its like if the officers were actually doing the work to put things up and then take them right back down again a few days later, I think they would be like “Wow that was a waste of time and energy.”

I finished my book Motorcycle Diaries, so I’m anxious to watch the movie now (we have it on the ship). We are busy finishing up little odds and ends today and then picking up anchor to move to the fuel dock (which is really close) and get diesel. Oh another perfect example! We are going to pick up anchor, get diesel, and then come back, reanchor and wait another day for Kitty to arrive to Savusavu. Pretty ridic to make this separate trip to gas up, when you could just do it the day you’re leaving. Oh well, I’m not going to argue with the way they want to run things.

Getting the diesel was a pretty big event though. It is quite a production to dock this beast. 4 lines still; one bow, one stern, 2 spring lines, but still they throw these little balls (heaving lines) to someone on the dock and they pull the boat in from that. And Laser freaked out again. When we were coming off the dock, the wind pushed the bow out and the stern swung closer to the dock, ya he’s the only one freakin out. I didn’t even realize what was going on, I was untying a buoy and he was screaming at me and running towards me to untie that f-ing buoy and bring it to the stern. God the buoy is bigger than me, chill out man! Its ok if my dad freaks out on me like that, I expect it, but not a freakin stranger that doesn’t even do as much work as I do on this boat. This is the second time too. Its scary when he freaks out like that, yelling and cursing, and running around. And I feel like he’s always yelling at me, I just want to stay out of his way when he gets like that, but I feel like I’m always part of his problem! If it happens again I think I will say something to his “girlfriend” Gaie. Nothing even hit the dock, and I didn’t think it was that big of a deal all in all. Heather was in the dinghy and swung it around and stuck the dinghy b/t Infinity and the dock (umm not so smart in a rubber dinghy, ya you’re not as sturdy as a fender). But it was ok, there might be some scratches and small holes in the dinghy though from the barnacles. Hope not, that would suck.

Oh and on another note, I really miss having a cockpit on a sailboat. If you look at the tour online at www.studioofthesea.org you can see that there isn’t a covered cockpit area with cushions or anything of the sort. I just miss that aspect of the sailboat. Its always so nice to relax outside in the breeze and in the shade. Well I’ve covered the basic plan, and after Savusavu, its Namena for a week to dive, and then Ovaltau, Gau, and then back to Suva (end of August). Please don’t send me loads of packages and letters to the yacht club Mom, that would just be embarrassing.

July 20, 2007 Savusavu to Namena

The sail over down to Namena was sooo rough. I’m not that good of a judge of the seas, but they were prob 4-6 ft. Life went on as normal though, we still had an open table dinner. I was on the 8-12 watch, and felt pretty sick when I was down below, but never threw up. McKenzie was so funny. In the beginning when we were raising the sails she said, “Oh its just like a rollercoaster, I love rollercoasters!” Ummm that was before she puked like 8 times and slept outside on the deck with her mom, who was also pretty sea sick. I do ok with the breezed in my face, but when I have to be couped up down below, and trying to sleep with the pounding waves and no fan, I get pretty pissed off. Julia is like “oh I used to be like that…” and I’m thinking “ya I’ve always been like that, not a big fan of suffocation!” Ha! No I didn’t say that, but that’s what I was thinking. My bunk is the one in the middle too, so there is nothing really keeping me in it with the waves. Zac now has the middle bunk on the other side and he is talking about making some safety rails for our bunks, so that should be nice. I did finally get some sleep after my watch, just because I was exhausted.

July 21, 2007 Namena

Namena looks just like Florida! Its crazy! Picture the shape of Florida; well the outline of the state is all barrier reef, and then Lake Okechobee is the small island of Namena that prob less than a mile long and covered with trees. There is one expensive backpacker resort on the island, owned by some lady, but that’s it. It’s a huge bird nesting island and a prime spot for whale and dolphin migrations as its right in the middle of the two main islands of the Fiji chain. Anyways, we’re here! It was only 30 miles to get here, and we could have done it in 5-6 hours with the wind blowing like stink like that, but we just criss-crossed our path and it took us all night to get here, and we arrived through the pass in the morning. We paid our $20 a person to dive the marine reserve, but its another $50 a person to be able to go on land. So, we are just diving, diving, diving. Its also a really rough anchorage. Its prob blowing 14 knots, as we’re on protected by any land, just the reef (umm which seems kind of dumb). The crew figures its better to be closer to the reef than to the land, since we are just going to diving the reef when we’re here.

Drama, drama! Last night on watch I mentioned to Carol about my problem with Laser. She said its because he’s devoted his life to this, and he’s just really stressed out with things, ummm most of the time. Then this morning, I saw Julia had yet another wrist injury (it almost seems like a weekly event), and had her hand all wrapped up. I come up from below when she and Heather are in the galley, and say something totally sarcastic like, “Oh Julia, what happened this time? When are you going to stop hurting yourself?” Julia said nothing, and Heather (in a totally unnecessary, I didn’t get enough sleep, bitchy attitude) she says, “Ya Tanya, when someone’s hurt they really don’t like to be talked to like that.” Ummm ya like I wasn’t joking! Sorry to lighten your life up chick! God! So, I apologize to Julia later, and she pulls me aside, and pretty much tells me that she can’t take my sarcastic humor and jokes about her hurting herself, and me joking on her about James. Get a grip! Seriously! She starts telling me how she’s such a fighter back home, and she usually beats people up for even joking with her about things. Ya seriously Julia, I’m freakin joking with you not looking to pick a fight. Anyways, I’m going to try hard not to get into her business and just be cordial with her, not buddy buddy, b/c she can’t freakin take it. I thought we were going to be good friends, as she is smelly in the bunk next to me, but I guess not. Oh well, shit happens; she messed that one up.

On a better note, diving in Namena is absolutely spectacular. By far the prettiest diving I’ve ever done, even in really pristine Caribbean spots. I have like 6 new favorite fish! They might even be a couple of the same fish, but just juveniles and adult life stages. I kept thinking of “Finding Nemo,” its just like that. A lot of the fish from the movie are here in real life. I was also thinking, even though the tree huggers would totally disapprove, this would be a great place to open an aquarium trade. The fish are so small, abundant, and vibrant, and of all the colors of the rainbow. The dive we did was a huge steep wall with a drop off, and then some huge patch reef areas when the wall leveled out. Not only were the fish great, but the soft corals were amazing. Fiji is supposed to be the soft coral capital of the world. They were in so many different shades of green and purple, and all just almost translucent and flowing in the current. I feel like I took so many pics of the same things on this dive, but I’ve just never seen so much beautiful coral like that. We also saw a pretty big (6’) white tip, a wahoo, and lots of groupers in all colors, pinks, blues, purples, red, yellow. PCRF did a vitareef and coral/fish/invert study here a few years ago, man that would be a lot of work! I think we are going to do a small vitareef study just to check out if the health of the reef has changed since then. It’s finally Sunday tomorrow so I’m sleeping in, then cooking lunch, and I’m on a dive in the afternoon after that. So the bottom line for this blog entry is that all the b.s. work on the ship and all the petty shit that goes on between people on board, is worth it for diving like today…wow, you know it takes a lot for me to admit to that; I hate drama.

July 22, 2007 Namena diving

Ahh Sunday! So nice to not be woken up by a bell. I still wake up early though, just because I’ve been used to waking up early for weeks now. Sundays are relaxing though, there’s no morning meeting, no bells for breakfast or wakeup. Agate and I made a really good pumpkin soup, cucumber and tomato salad, and papaya for lunch today. The recipe was from this book, but she is still quite the cook, I just helped with the cutting up and the cleanup. This afternoon I got to dive the same reef again. It was really crap weather, rainy and windy, but it was nice to get down and dive. It wasn’t as dramatic as the dive the day before, b/c we looked at the back reef more, with more reef rubble and scattered coral heads. We did get a peek over the wall at one point, and there was a remora trying to attach to us. It was pretty annoying. There were lots of big white tip and black tip sharks schooling over the edge of the wall. I’m getting used to sharks now, not that I like them or anything, but I don’t freak out so much. I just keep my distance and watch them from afar. I still saw all my new fav fish on this dive though. They are….Moorish idols, Clown triggerfish, Anthias, and the Long nose butterfly fish. Those fish are just so elaborate and ornate, I love to just stick around and watch their behavior. I also saw 3 pretty decent size groupers on this dive out in the open, not moving. I know that’s what they do at night, but I thought all fish had to be swimming during the day, to get water into their lungs and also to avoid predators. I think these groupers were the rebels of the group. I’m really fascinated by all the different varieties of groupers here in Namena. Pink, red, blue, purple, green, brown, yellow, there are so many different colors of groupers on the reefs here.

McKenzie played the violin tonight after dinner. She is really good, and it was nice to hear some real music being played for a change. Getting to work tomorrow, doing 3 vitareef dives to study the health of the reefs here.

July 23, 2007 Namena

This morning I filled dive bottles until the compressor started smoking (but I didn’t break it! but I do despise that job!) and then that job was over. The wind has really calmed down a lot today, its really calm considering we’re not really protected by much. In the afternoon I did a vitareef dive that was on a pretty crappy back reef (where all the waves break, and the reef is rubble). There wasn’t much live coral and it was about 6 feet deep. Vitareef is basically categorizing corals with numbers according to their physical health conditions. I cooked dinner with Fred tonight and we made 4 excellent pizzas, everyone loved them. After dinner the girls and Michel watched The Notebook (from my DVD stash) and they were raving about that too. (Tell me I’m a bird Z!) The “us” members had a chill out party on the sugar scoop, drinking and listening to music, but I didn’t real feel like hanging out so I watched some of the movie and some Lost. Oh another officer arrived today, Kitty. She is really nice and pretty young, from Colorado, and looks like a real mountain girl…kind of built. She has been with PCRF for about 3 or 4 yrs I think.

July 24, 2007 Another Namena diving day

Today was emotionally and physically draining. I put the sail covers on with Agate this morning. She snapped at me yesterday for like two seconds, over asking her about Matt’s dive slate. She is a snapper though, I’ve seen her snap at somebody almost everyday, I think she just gets frustrated with the language and thinks people are attacking or picking on her all the time. Well it was fine doing the sail covers with her though. Its weird when you get in fights or little spits on board, there is really no apologizing, you just wait a while and get over it. As we were doing the sail covers, the officers were having meeting on the bow, and before I knew it, Julia was over there and Laser was yelling at her (umm as usual). P.S. if he ever yelled at me like I’ve seen him yell at Julia twice now, I’d prob leave the ship, and be like I don’t need to deal with this shit. Anyways, we all let the bow, and let them talk. Later we had a meeting, and it turned out that Julia had tried to kill herself the other night. I don’t think I mentioned it, it was nothing really. It’s Tuesday now, well on Saturday, we were all watching a movie, and she was on the floor in paradise with a crowd around her, I was told “there’s nothing to see here”, and later was told she was having a back ache. Well I guess she tried to kill herself, umm somehow (not too many options on board I’d have to say). Pretty nuts though! I’ve never been around a situation like that before, an experience for sure. She talked it over with the girl officers on the deck and they sorted it out, so she’s ok now. She has just been real sad all day (she produced today, and dove in the afternoon), must be pretty embarrassing, especially with James too. She obviously doesn’t appreciate my sense of humor, so I’m keeping my distance, I don’t want to piss her off more.

On a better note, I did intense vitareef diving today. Two dives, one in the morning, one in the afternoon. (Oh, the dive compressor is up and running again) The dive in the morning was great. Lots of diversity in the corals, and I saw a huge grouper and a big snapper that went into the smallest crevices in the reef. It was crazy that they fit in there. The second dive was similar to the dive yesterday, not that exciting, but we had to do it anyways (good practice, I guess). I’m pretty exhausted tonight though, really a draining day.

Yesterday I was really feeling like I couldn’t do this for eight more months. I just get frustrated with the crew on board, a little with how things are run (like having to sneak around using TP and make sure no one catches me, which has become pretty annoying. I think if someone catches me, I’m just going to say, “I’m going to use TP, if you don’t like it, refund my money and I’ll leave), but mostly with personality clashes with the crew. These people are supposed to be my “family” on board and I don’t even get along with some of them. I figured today though, that those crew members are 9 month volunteers like me, and will be rotating off with new volunteers throughout my time here, I guess which is good. Not sure if that makes sense, but… When you’re living in such close quarters, a good crew really makes the experience worthwhile. Well yesterday, I was considering if this it was worth it, as I wasn’t having a good time and I wasn’t enjoying myself at all. I was thinking that I’d prob be out a lot of money that I already paid for the trip, if I quit ahead of time, and that I wouldn’t get the chance to travel to all these cool islands and countries. So I guess I’ll stick it out, 8 more months isn’t that long (its almost 7 months). Its prob a good experience for me, to deal with living in such close quarters with all these people from all over the globe with such drastically different ideals and backgrounds.

Michel is cooking dinner tonight, yumm. Tomorrow afternoon we move around to the other side of the island to dive another beautiful pass over there.

July 25, 2007 Namena

This morning I got to steer the boat over to another anchorage about 2 miles away. I was on the helm when the anchor came up and steered the boat over to the new anchorage. I did good, it was easy to feel the boat moving as we were motoring pretty fast. The new anchorage is almost directly behind the island, so its semi-protected. I also had a chance to go on the afternoon dive at 2 today. Really a nice dive with big crevices and overhangs. It was a dive with a strong current that went out a pass. There was all these soft corals that looked just like wildflowers in all different colors, very pretty. We did see a turtle just hanging out, munching on something; he let us get pretty close and I got some good pics. Well I dove with my nice dive watch that Z gave me for grad/b-day and well I didn’t come to the surface with it. By the time I realized it wasn’t on my wrist, I was in the boat, and we were drifting with this strong current, so it wasn’t like I could just dive down and look for it. I can hear my mom now, “Oh Tanya!” I really felt sick to my stomach. Not only is it a really really nice dive watch, but its like the only physical thing that I have from Z and it reminded me of him all the time. Grrr! Still pretty pissed that it happened. Shit happens though, I guess I shouldn’t have taken it diving, and just have worn it for the time on the boat. Oh everything is timed on the boat, so I’m kind of screwed for a while until we get to port, and I can pick up a cheap watch somewhere. Sorry Z! Total accident, I really loved and needed that watch bad. It is just a “thing” though, I’m ok. South Pacific vs. Tanya 2-0 (shorts and watch lost to the deep blue sea). P.S. I’m sure that won’t be the last of my things lost at sea.

Of course there is a better note to the day, you know me…we had a great cocktail hour on the deck and Michel made delicious pina coladas for everyone. It was filmed in HD for another scene in Cynthia and McKenzie’s “A day in the life of the Infinity” film they are making. We all did toasts at sunset and Julia announced that she will be leaving the ship when we get to port. She didn’t really say why, umm but I’m sure it’s because she is not quite stable right now (…kind of scary actually). She is going to meet us in PNG and go out to see the canoe races with us in the end of Oct. Nice pasta dinner and then bed ahhhh. Stressful day. But wait! The anchor started dragging right after dinner so it was a mad dash to raise the dinghy and move anchor before we drifted right onto the reef. The dinghy was a hassle getting up as it was raining, the seas were getting real big, and the wind was howling. It all worked out though. Another crazy day on board the Infinity.

July 26, 2007 Namena to….

Well the dive compressor is busted. Carol and Laser spent all morning trying to fix it, while Agate and I used this mini stand-by compressor to fill tanks (that took like a half an hour for one tank). We survived all morning filling tanks though. The big compressor well ya, is shot for a while, and we are going to Suva to have someone come on board and look at it and figure out if what parts need replacing and repairing. Onward to Suva! Everyone hates Suva, b/c it’s a stinky city, but it’s good for me since they have fast internet to Skype with and lots of shops to look for a new watch. ( I just need something to get me by, since everything is timed on board, I’ve really felt out of the loop). I was on the 4-8 watch, umm which kind of sucked. I had to cook dinner with Julia, in pretty big seas. I hate being stuck in the galley in huge swells like that. It was like 6-7 foot monster swells where everything and everyone is sliding around everywhere. We were also on this tack last night where I seriously was scared of falling out of bed for the 3 foot drop and busting my head open. The waves were seriously right at the beam and I was on the high side in the middle bunk with nothing to hold onto. I think I got like 2 hours of sleep until my next watch, it absolutely sucked. Zach has the middle bunk on the other side of paradise, he was talking about putting in some safety rails for us…I think we should get on that before the next voyage for sure.

July 27, 2007 Namena to Suva

I did finally catch up on some sleep as we jibbed this morning to the other tack and I was not on the high side and in risk of falling out of bed anymore. It was nice to get some good sleep finally. Around noon today we made it into Suva. So a day sail from Namena to Suva, pretty good time. We wanted to get here with enough time, since its Friday and we wanted to order any parts we need for the compressor before the weekend. I think some of the sail was at 7 knots, during which we made really good time. Its Friday night, night out, so I’ll Skype and email tonight…after a hot shower at the yacht club. Still feel horrible about the watch, and I have to break the news tonight…grrr! Julia leaves on Saturday night, Orla leaves Monday, and Laser and Gaie leave on Thursday (if we’re here or not). Rachel (the student from USP on board for 2 wks) arrives Monday. I’m feeling there’s going to be lots of changes soon.

July 28, 2007 Suva city once again