With Michelle winging her way home to SoCal, today was reorganization day aboard Raven. Taking advantage of the fact that we are berthed at the Denarau Marina and enjoying shore power and full water tanks, we washed loads of laundry, dismantled and repaired a dripping water faucet, and ran a lot of errands including visits to the hardware store, the dive shop, the propane works, Fiji customs in the town of Lautoka (clearing ourselves both in and out of Fiji), the internet café (where I uploaded the latest batch of photos), Jack’s Handicrafts store (best tourist shopping in Fiji), the bank, the grocery store and the market. We squeezed in a delicious lunch at an Indian curry house named Tata’s which came highly recommended to us by the Schmidts and Dashews. And Carol and Mike took a side trip to the Garden of the Sleeping Giants – a tropical garden with a fabulous orchid collection first started here in the 1970s by the actor Raymond Burr (Ironsides).

All this action was facilitated by our own personal taxi driver, an Indian man named Satya. Michelle and I caught his cab for a quick tourist shopping trip into Nadi yesterday – and couldn’t get rid of him!

He was happy to wait and transport us on each and every leg of our sightseeing journeys, and made arrangements to come knocking on Raven’s door at 9:30 this morning (he showed up at 9:15) to be at our disposal the entire day (about seven hours all told). We got back in time to meet the diesel fuel crew to refill the tanks. Quite a busy day, with lots accomplished. We will be heading to the more remote islands and won’t be able to access all these conveniences for a few weeks.

An email received today from Jan Twardowski (Raven’s previous owner) alerted us to a recent article in the September ‘Sailing Magazine’ that named the Sundeer 64 as the best boat in which to sail around the world! Since that’s our plan, it’s reassuring to see it in print!