Vatia to Lautoka

 Stardate October 17, 2023

Had sundowners with the kids as scheduled at Vatia Wharf last night.  They came over to get me and we went to Nick's boat.  Got pretty dark before we broke up the party.  My anchor light was on; theirs was not.  You couldn't see their boat against any background - it's a pretty big bay.  I stood in the cockpit and held a small flashlight on their boat which you could barely make out.  They made it back.

Stardate October 18, 2023

Ok.  Time for a milk run down to Lautoka and Saweni Bay, just north of Vuda Marina.  Easy peasy, right? No wind, right?  Yep, for most of the way.  Full canvas up, motor sailing at 4.5 mph.

Then I come to the narrows just north of Lautoka Bay.  Now this is not a particularly narrow passage, as Fiji reefs go, but it does have nasty reefs on either side.  And it was right in the middle of this passage that my Navionics decides to take a vacation from working.  I had seen this previously - a pink circle appears on the bottom of the screen, the signal that "Ok, I quit.  I don't know why, maybe I'm tired, maybe I'm sad, maybe I just want to screw with you, but I quit."  And the only fix I have found is to reboot Navionics. 

Now normally this is not a problem.  Today it was a problem.  The wind had picked up and I was helming through the passage, trying frantically to get Navionics to come back up.  Luckily I had Zulu Offshore running at the same time and that has a Navionics screen that is pretty good.  You can see from the two pics below where the app quit.  Of course when you reboot you have to start a new track, thus two pics.

Anyway, the run across the harbor to Saweni Bay was uneventful.  I got there, anchored and tried to get in radio contact with Nick to warn him about the shallows that he was headed right for.  He hit two meters in depth before he turned.  Luckily he didn't hit anything else.

Anchored, beers, dinner, sleep.  Tomorrow I contact Vuda to see about a mooring.



You can see right where the Navionics app went down.  (Start of yellow line)



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