Buddy, can you spare a...

 ...fly swatter?

Some boats have flies worse than mine.  I can stay ahead of them with my remaining fly swatter.  (Its brother was sacrificed to a too-enthusiastic effort a few weeks ago.)  Not all my fellow liveaboards have fly swatters, though, so I took it upon myself to rectify the situation.  With my naïveté firmly perched on my shoulder I walked from one end of town to the other looking for flyswatters.  I don't know what they're called here in Fiji, so I made swatting motions with my hand onto the countertop in most stores.  From the wide-eyed responses on the quickly retreating clerks I surmised that a different approach was needed.

So a few days later I took my existing flyswatter with me.  Walking into a store, I would just point at it and make a questioning gesture.  At least I didn't scare anybody.  I struck paydirt at J Dayram Enterprises, Ltd.  The girl there took me to their display - they must have had thirty of the buggers.  Cheap Chinese flyswatters, but any port in a storm, right?  I bought four and dropped one off on Nicolas' boat straightaway.  He made a trip all the down the creek the next day to thank me.  The beer he promised to buy me will pay for all the swatters.  




Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Taveuni tour

Image
 Stardate October 9, 2023 Marina at the Dive Academy in Viani Bay had suggested we contact Jass for a tour of Taveuni.  So today we had the tour. We started with the waterfalls.  They are on the opposite side of the island from Paradise Resort.  Think of a reverse question mark with PR as the dot.  Or you can look at the map below.  The red arrow is not the boat - it's the position of my cell phone at the waterfalls.  Paradise Resort is at the lower left. Now this is not a big island; about 26 miles end to end.  Now the road...  Jass had a Prius and we were traveling on Press on Regardless roads.  The first ten miles was gravel, ruts and rocks.  Did I mention potholes?  I asked Jass if the road was ever graded.  He said "Once every six months."  You could tell. It took us two hours to reach the waterfalls, but we got the entire island history, which houses were owned by which rich foreigners.  (The guy who owns Red Bull owns an entire island.).   The road was paved a mile
Read more

And back to Volivoli...

Image
 Stardate October 14, 2023 A milk run until the last hour.  We had planned on stopping in Viti Levu Bay overnight.  We had made such good time that Nick suggested we push on to Volivoli point.  I think cold beer may have been the deciding factor.  I did point out that we would be passing up our last chance to do sevusevu and get rid of some kava.  Beer won out. The passage between the island and the reefs is not as fraught as it looks on the chart.  Plenty of room, good visibility, and the wind had dropped considerably from the crossing. Until here.  By now the wind had shifted to the east and was on the beam at about 35 knots.  The Navolau Passage is rather narrow and I had the main full up.  I wasn't worried about the narrow passage, but making that 90 degree turn to port did give me pause.  Especially in that wind.  I elected to keep the main up, thinking that I could use it further on (which was true).   So I come up to the turn and pulled the wheel over.  I had the preventer o
Read more

"Somebody has to do it."

Image
 A quote from Nick.  We're sitting on the bluff watching the sunset.  Taking pics of our sailboats.  Drinking cold beers.  He comes up with "Somebody's got to do it."  Meaning us being here.  Yep, Nick.  You nailed it. Fleur. Peregrine photobombed by catamaran. Look at that sky!
Read more