Earlier this week some local guy told me about a yacht that was lost on the reef this weekend. He asked if I knew about it, but I had not heard about it. Then yesterday I ran into Pete from Nightcap, one of my neighbors from Tonga. He knew the details: it was Timella, a 30 ft English built ketch. Sailed by an oz: Cameron (who taught me the word seppo, you might not want to research that though). This was a quite an interesting character (and that is an understatement). He also had a Liz as a crew member. They were also anchored near me in Tonga, and more than once we had a party and jam session on his boat. In Tonga he had his engine completely rewired. How he ended up on the reef I don’t know. Apparently it was a charted reef (Fiji has numerous uncharted reefs to make life more interesting). When they hit the reef the mast came down and damaged their life raft. They did get the life raft in the water, but apparently it was badly damaged. Another yacht ended up taking them on board. That is a lot more excitement than any of us cruisers really needs. It is terrible to hear a story like this. First time I met Cameron was in Rarotonga, where his boat had been on the hard for a half year while he went back to Australia to make some money before he could continue his travel. The full story can be found on the internet in various places:
http://www.fijilive.com/news_new/index.php/news/show_news/9682
http://www.stuff.co.nz/4728317a6011.html?source=RSSsouthlandtimes/headlines_20081015
http://www.fijitimes.com/story.aspx?id=103423
Boat improvements
Took a bold step yesterday, I bought a new anchor. Thing was, my secondary anchor is a Danforth with 3 meters of 3/8 inch (10mm) chain. Anchor and chain have been rusting for two years. Repainting them in Curacao only helped for a few months. It was becoming a terrible eye sore, and the whole fore deck was get rust stained. In the local store they had some decently priced anchors. And, being it in Fiji, it helps to do a bit of haggling to get some off the price. Just used the hack saw to cut of the shackle and put it in the dinghy. The first Fijian I ran into was the lucky one: he was more than happy to receive my old rusty anchor. At noon I am going to pick up the new anchor. Also tried to by whole new chain for my primary anchor. But can’t get any imperial chain on the Pacific. And the primary chain has to match the gypsy of my Simpson-Lawrence windlass. Will keep looking for the right size chain, which appears to be high test with a pitch of 26.4mm. If I can’t find any chain, eventually I will have to change the gypsy for a metric 8mm one.