Tuesday 28 September 2010

Picton Castle at anchor at Suva, Viti Levu, Fiji; Tuesday 28 September 2010 בס"ד

Stood my anchor watch this morning at 0130-0245, with nothing out of the ordinary. Before breakfast, Dapper cut my hair with the clippers, bringing my whole head down to a #1, so I went from looking like a rabbi yesterday with a huge beard to now looking like a “Mexican gangster” with my buzz hair and big moustache, as I was told by several surprised crewmembers. I had found out the other day that I'm going to need additional visa pages in my passport since I'm going to run out of space before the end of the voyage, so Bronwen had given Brad and I the forms we'd need and told us she'd arranged something with the US embassy. Once we got ashore, we first helped the sailmakers lay out a sail and then headed to the embassy. Not knowing how long we'd be, we told our fellow bros who were headed out of the city to meet us at a certain time at the yacht club and if we weren't there, leave a note with the bartender. We got to the embassy at about 0900 and things seemed to be moving quickly, although we were skeptical about the speediness of the bureaucratic process. By 0930, we were in line and handing over our passports with our paperwork and the nominal fee involved. They told us to come back in an hour, so we went out into the city, and I bought a new backpack to replace my disintegrating tiny one and a pair of gym shorts, and then we got a quick bite to eat. Headed back to the embassy, and saw the Captain there waiting too (I imagine his passport needs to have 10x the amount of visa pages the ordinary one does). We were quickly called up and received our passports with additional visa pages, and that was that. Crazy how fast it worked, but so it goes. We headed back to the yacht club and found a note with the bartender saying to meet at 1700. We managed to hitch a ride on a conveniently-timed sailmakers' skiff run back to the ship and had lunch aboard at noon. Caught the 1300 skiff back ashore, and I headed into the city to do some shopping. I just ended up purchasing some miscellaneous things like twine and such, and I checked out the municipal produce market and bought some ground kava (which is a root plant that is a big part of Fijian ceremonial drinking and apparently it gets you kind of drunk, but in a different way than drunk? I don't know yet, haven't tried it). Made it back to the yacht club at 1700 and hung out for a bit when Liam came by and told me that there is no way the bros can get back here tonight seeing as how they are in a town about an hour away and he had the rental car. However, tomorrow morning Rebecca would be taking the rental and heading back that way. So caught another conveniently-timed skiff run to the ship at 1800 to drop my stuff off and have a quick bite, and then caught the 1900 skiff back to shore. Hung out at the yacht club til 2000, then met up with people and went to the city for a proper dinner. Afterwards, we went out to O'Reilly's club and did our usual PC takeover dance party. Back at the yacht club for the 2300 skiff run and now bed aboard.