Monday 27 September 2010 (FIJI)

Picton Castle at anchor at Suva, Viti Levu, Fiji; Monday 27 September (local) 2010 בס"ד

On Friday, they let the 12-4s sleep in, and I was awoken by the sound of us dropping anchor. Nothing too exciting while we waited to clear in, then the skiff took us in to the Royal Suva Yacht Club, where our time and date instantly changed from Friday at 1100 to Saturday at 1000.. From there, Dan and I dropped off laundry with the club service, and a group of us headed in to town. We ended up stopping at an internet cafe for a bit, and I went on for a few minutes. After I bought a USB keyboard at some small electronic store and Brad carried it for me since it didn't fit in my disintegrating backpack. Then we went to a Chinese restaurant. Dapper, Bard, and I continued exploring and made our way to the Fiji Museum, which has a great exhibit on the Vakas of Fiji, as well as other things. I also bought two books at the shop on the Fijian language. After the museum, we went to the nearby Holiday Inn, and I got ar oom for the night. We hung out drinking in the hotel bar and lounge, watching a very important Australian Rules Soccer (I think) game, which I didn't understand at all, but the Aussies in the bar were going wild for. After the game, went around town looking for clubs or bars and wound up at a really seedy sketchy karaoke bar with an awesome laser light show. There were about six other people there and we rocked the mic. After this I headed back to the hotel, started typing up my logs since Raro with my new keyboard, and took advantage of high speed internet to upload a ton of photos, videos, etc.

On Sunday, I woke up and got to work typing and posting things online with plans to meet Dapper at the lobby at around 1100. I managed to call the USA on Skype, and I spoke with a few people, including Karla and Camille (who were at the hospital because Grandma wasn't well). At 1145 I was tired of waiting so I went walking into the city to find a bite to eat for lunch, when I ended up running into him anyway at about noon. After lunch, we went walking around to check stuff out, but the city is pretty quiet on a Sunday afternoon. We did investigate a big event going on in the park across from the government building, which turned out to be a “Pathfinders” jamboree event (Pathfinders being like Scouts) and the kids were having competitions of various kinds. We tried watching it but it was kind of the thing that you only watch if you have a kid participating in it, so we moved on. After a while, I just went back to the hotel to take a nap since I'd been up all night online, and we planned on meeting a group of us at the Bad Dog Cafe at 1600 to have drinks before we headed across to the cinema to watch a Bollywood movie. Got there at 1600, but Bad Dog was closed, so we all just kinda hung out on the sidewalk for an hour and then went and got tickets to “Dabangg.” The movie theater had it's own candy shop, with the pay-per-kilo scoops, so I bought a 1.5kg bag of CANDY including several varieties of HARIBO COLA DUDES! Pretty much like throwing a crackhead into a “Best Crack in the World” convention. So we watched this movie Dabangg, not knowing what to expect, and it was easily the most awesome movie I've ever seen in my entire life. After the movie there were 25 of us going crazy outside imitating what we just saw with nonstop laughter. We all headed over to this Indian restaurant called Maya Dhaba and had a huge Indian feast, and afterwards I was too hung over from candy and Indian food to move so I went back to the hotel, used the computer, and passed out.

Woke up today bright and early at 0615, had some Continental breakfast at the hotel, and then caught a cab back to the RSYC with some of the other crew who were on my watch staying there. Got the 0730 skiff back to the PC, and after domestics my job was to remove all the rigging hardware from the starboard aft corner of the sole with Brad so that we could access the holding tank for the salon head. Had good fun doing that, and Brad and I decided that we both enjoy moving stuff so we should open up a moving company called “Frad Movers” (Bred not sounding quite as good). After that, went to rustbusting on the port quarterdeck rail with Brad, but he went with the sailmaking team ashore (we're laying out a good number of sails here at the RSYC since we have the open space to do so). Kept rustbusting, and after a while the Captain came upon the quarterdeck and asked me if Brad was around. I told him Brad had gone ashore. He asked me if I could operate the skiff. I said that was pretty sure I knew how but I had never done it before. So he was like, “Well, come find out.” I dropped my stuff and went with him in the skiff, and he drove it to the Yacht Club, only telling me once to avoid this one spot because it's shallow. We came alongside, and he hopped out, and said, “Do it like that,” and then left, so I was on my own to be a coxn and get the skiff back to the ship. Fortunately, I wasn't lying when I said I was pretty sure I knew how to operate it, so once I figured out the feel of the throttle, it was a piece of cake bringing her back and I even had a decent docking with the ship as I swung the skiff around and put her in place. I felt pretty cool, although it's not terribly difficult in the fairly calm waters of Suva harbor. Then I went back to rustbusting and corrosealing the rail. I then went with Sophie to do the 1700 skiff run after work and was the coxn again, this time getting pointers on how to do that perfect eggshell docking alongside at the RSYC. After dinner, I used Shawn's clippers to take my beard down to a #1, except my moustache, which I left full length and just trimmed appropriately. I'm scheduled for a 0130-0245 anchor watch since we have a small watch and we're doing one hour and fifteen minutes of watch.