[password]waiknot
[position]20 42.315S 167 09.66E

[status]
As soon as I had finished sending the yit update yesterday, the clouds vanished and the sun came out. We were treated to a glorious sunset! The days are warm, but the nights are a bit cooler than we are used to, so today the duvet is back on the bed! We had a blissful nights sleep last night. The first night after doing a passage always feels like a treat! Not having to wake up after four hours and go on watch - we can sleep the whole night. Yay!
Today we caught up on many maintenance and cleaning jobs. Our last few days in Fiji were in the Lautoka area, near the sugar processing plant. This factory pumps out clouds of smoke and soot. We try to anchor upwind from it but the wind changes and soon the boat is covered in soot. Being in that position also meant we could not do our washing! So today, with sunny skies, clean air and a nice breeze, the washing got washed and dried and the boat got a good scrubbing. While we were on passage from Fiji, some birds known as Boobies, about the size of the Gannets we have in NZ, decided to sit on our solar panels during the night. They seemed to think it was a nice place for a rest from flying around the whole day. Unfortunately they made a large mess on the solar panels while they were there! Karl did clean the panels a bit each day while we were on passage, but now they have had a thorough washing as well.
The island of Lifou has an interesting landscape. Close to the island in most places the water is 500m deep or more. Not very far from the island the water is 6000m deep. Yes 6km deep! The island itself is about 50-70m high and almost a plateau, with cliffs rising straight up from the ocean for much of the coastline. It is apparently a raised coral bed, an ancient reef that uplifted from the sea floor. The limestone deposits formed by all that coral years ago is now weathering into fascinating shapes. Caves have been eroded into the cliffs, with great stalactites hanging down inside the caves. Very scenic and quite unusual. The top of the plateau is covered by a mixture of vegetation and many birds can be heard singing sweetly from where we sit in the bay. There are only a few bays where the water is shallow enough to anchor and the one we are in, Donkin Bay, is well protected from the southerly winds. A very pretty spot.

[weather]10 knots SSE, 30 pct cloud, 1013 baro
[END]