Ovalatu

July 31, 2007 Suva to Levuka, Ovalatu

So I’m going to skip a few days of hanging out in Suva. Nothing really exciting went on for the rest of our stay there. I was producer again today and made scrambled eggs with tomatoes and onions (papaya and pineapple on the side) for breakfast. And spent the rest of my morning preparing burritos for lunch. They turned out pretty good too, spicy! I even made soft flour burritos from scratch. They were missing that Mexican spice mix flare though. I think I’m missing one ingredient from the spice pack. If anyone can pick up a packet and help, let me know. I just used chili powder and paprika, and it just didn’t taste the same. Hopefully I’m missing a real spice in there, and not just some freakin red dye #7! We left for Ovalatu this afternoon, oh with Rachel on board. She is really nice. Shy, but wants to help out with everything which is good. After talking to my shocked mom that couldn’t believe I wasn’t taking anything for sea sickness on these voyages, I decided to play it safe and take something ahead of time, before leaving port. It really worked too, I’m not too drowsy after taking just one Dramamine and it’s lasted a long time too. I guess I feel a little different, my stomach and head feel stronger I guess. Definitely getting my sea legs this trip though, as the whole way has pretty much been down wind, where everything rocks and rolls. We are just motorsailing with only the main up, which I like; the boat is a lot more responsive when you’re at the helm. (the misson sail is ripped, and the gib was jibbing a lot) It was a nice 4-8 afternoon watch. We saw a pod of like 10 small pilot whales at sunset. They looked just like dolphins, one even passed right under the boat and got real close to us. (sorry no pics, too quick for me!) Pretty cool to see whales though, can’t remember the last time I saw a whale really…I think it was prob on our Slippin Away trip. Anyways, the 4-8 night watch sucked though. There were like 5-6 foot seas right off the stern, with the wind blowing 20-22 knots, and rain just howling, side swiping us on the beam. Pretty interesting watch for sure. Wasn’t too bad, I kept singing Jimmy Buffet songs to keep my mind off it. I did jib once with just the main, but it wasn’t a big deal or anything. We just ended up going more downwind, which was ok. Are we there yet?!


August 1, 2007! Suva to Ovalatu

We arrived in Ovaltau this afternoon about noon. Really rough getting through the pass to get to a good spot to anchor. The anchorage is nice and calm though. The town looks cute. There’s all different pastel colored buildings right on the shore. Levuka, the actual town we are at on the island of Ovalatu, used to be the old capital of Fiji. There’s supposed to be lots of historical sites in town, I’m interested to go check that out. Semi-relaxing after getting anchored, there was still ship’s work to do though. I’ve now finished seasons 1 and 2 of Lost. Great show, but I need a break for a while before starting season 3. Kitty made a nice American dinner tonight. BBQ chicken and potatoes…yummm. Went to bed pretty early, exhausted.




August 2, 2007 Levuka, Ovalatu

This morning was pretty hectic. We had a science meeting to discuss what each of us will be working on in Gau. I will be doing coral ID, still photos of the sites, and invertebrate ID. I need to get familiar with inverts in the So Pacific so I started looking into that after the meeting. Then Carol starts yelling my name and Fred. I run up the stairs like there’s a fire or something, and it turns out I was supposed to be helping Fred run the deck dive compressor to fill tanks, but he had already set it up and it was raining on the compressor. She literally freaks out and makes us lug the thing back downstairs and dry it off. She then insists that we have to get all the tanks filled today, rain or no rain. We must build a shelter. I ask, “Do we really need all the tanks filled today? We have a lot filled already.” Well I guess you don’t talk back to Carol, you just do what she says. Umm, I wasn’t brought up that way, if something seems wrong, I’ll ask about it. Be as smart as a dumb dog. She then comes back with, “Well Tanya if you don’t want to dive today…” “Well no Carol, I don’t really need to dive today, that’s fine. I just don’t see the point of getting all the bottles filled in the rain (when its such a big deal when the compressor gets wet!) when we’re going to be here for a couple more days.” So, Fred and I built a shelter and filled bottles all morning. Sucked. After lunch, I went on a dive to the pass near where we are anchored. Not too bad of a dive, considering we are right near a main port and a fish cannery. There were lots of fish, small patch reef areas, and a big wall. We even saw a hawksbill turtle just swimming by when we first went down. Fred and I were buddies and about halfway through the dive he said his air was bad and we came up. Turns out when we got back to the boat, the air in all the tanks we had filled was bad, b/c there was a piece of charcoal in some valve that made all the air bad. Ha! Karma’s a bitch Carol!

Dinner tonight was interesting. Zac and Matt (with some of my help) attempted dim sum. Like steamed dumplings with pork and veggies. Tasted like mushu. I liked them, but they were pretty bad. It was non-linear night, so we watched a short weird Salvador Dali film that Zac had. It was made in the 20s and really bizarre, especially for that time period. Def non-linear. We discussed it afterwards, about how there was really no point, it was just really twisted images strung together.


August 3, 2007 Levuka, Ovalutau

Ahhh! I’m sipping on a cold rum and coke while I’m typing this entry. Such a luxury. Fred got involved in his book during his watch last night and let me sleep through my night watch. So nice. I did actually wake up in the middle of the night though, and wondered why no one had woke me up for watch…but then I went back to sleep.

This morning we put up the repaired misson sail, and took down the main sail which had a few rips in it too. Then I tended a dive for a couple of the guys in the pass. I almost backed out at the last minute, just cause I’m new at tending and it was kind of an intense area to just putt around over your divers. But I stuck it out. It was real sketchy though. Glad I stuck it out, I feel like I can really handle any kind of tending situation now. They dove the pass in really big swells, and when everyone was out of the dinghy it was quite hard to control. The bow always raises up really high, and with the strong winds and big swells, there was a couple times I thought it was going to come right over on top of me. I managed though, and did ok.
After the tending, we got back in time for lunch, which Michel was producing today (first time he has been producer since I’ve been on board…yumm). You can always count on good food when he’s cooking. He made delicious humus and flat bread with homemade sausages and tomato/cucumber/onion/garlic mix for the humus. So delicious…prob better than humus from my fav…Publix. Oh I miss Publix! I had 2nds and totally stuffed myself…at lunch! The afternoon was filled with small mostly maintenance jobs around the ship. There was a town trip in today, but I’m saving my time off the ship for tomorrow when James, Zac and I will try to arrange a trip up to this village in the volcanic crater on the island. Sounds pretty cool in the guide book. Only problem…freakin acting class! We can’t get started with our day until like 11, which sucks. Again I’m getting pretty tired of following all these rules and regulations. I guess I switch on and off from being ok with it. I just feel like someone is always ordering me around to do something, I can only have a little time to myself at certain designated times of the day. Its like you’re always on the job! and never get off the job! ahh! Open table dinner tonight. The compressor part still hasn’t come, so I think we will be discussing our next plan over dinner tonight.