We have been hanging out at the Musket Cove Yacht Club for the past few days. We are full fledged members of the club, you are only allowed to become members if you have sailed to Musket Cove from a foreign port, so it is an exclusive club!! The club is located on an island that is about 2 ½ hour sail from the marina we were staying at on a large island in Fiji. We are moored about 400 meters from the entrance to Musket Cove. There are several resorts on this island, New Zealanders and Australians come to vacation here, there are family time share situations as well as an adults only spots. There are several nice looking restaurants as well as a couple of small grocery stores. Cruisers are not looked upon as second class citizens here as we were in some resorts in Mexico. The resort provides a spot where everyone can meet nightly if they choose. There is a bar and tables and a wood burning bar-b-q. You can purchase prepackaged meals that you cook it consists of a half baked potato, your choice of meat and a salad, you are also allowed to bring all your own food in and cook it on the fire. It is a lovely location.
I have been taking big long walks every morning with friends we met 2 years ago, we leave at 0730 and today we wandered along the beach after climbing up one side of the hill and then going down to the beach. It was great to catch up with them and find out how their cyclone season had gone. Every afternoon we meet at the pool, where I manage to swim some lengths. We had dinner on another boat the other night and plan to have a dinner party for 6 tomorrow night.
I was hoping to do some diving here and went to sign up but they are unable to locate my Padi # so they will not allow me to dive. The dive shop asked if I was alone on the boat and I told them that my husband was with me but insisted that he couldn’t dive because he has problems with his sinuses. The dive master asked me if he could fly and I said yes and he said tell him if he can fly he can dive. SO I DID, and Barry decided to try it and signed up for the diving course. He has done 2 dives and quite enjoyed himself, he had no problems equalizing his ears and commented on the sharks, the turtles and the barracuda he saw underwater. He completes his training in a couple of days so we will be able to dive together, once I find out my number. That should be a lot of fun.
We are going to stay a week here and then head out for the more remote regions of Fiji. Our lowers are all fixed and Barry has managed to repair everything else we broke on our way here. Barry claimed we went sailing for 10 days and then we spent 5 days fixing everything. I haven’t been doing too many boat chores since we got to Musket Cove feeling the need for a bit of a rest having worked very hard for 6 weeks before we left NZ and then another week when we arrived. Someone lent me some Indian and Thai cookbooks so I scanned a whole bunch of new recipes, so I plan to try some out on our poor unsuspecting company tomorrow night. Hope all is well back in Canada.