Oh, man! To the best of my knowledge, I haven't one of these back incidents in over five years. That's a pretty good run, but ow, not enough. This is my fault. We had a cinder block I was trying to get rid of by tossing it off the boat, like it was a discus. For some reason, I was still thinking I was young enough to hit the shore with it.
No! That's not what happened. What happened is that I did absolutely nothing at all that would be considered a test of any part of my body. I think I had just flexed a minor muscle in preparation for turning to pick up my toothbrush. I lift much heavier stuff all the time, and crank winches, and do pushups every morning, and walk virtually everywhere, and this is what gets me. How disheartening.
Maryanne wanted to postpone our sail to let me recover, but I managed to convince her that it would be better for me to convalesce at the next anchorage, where I promised to do nothing between our arrival and going into the city the day after next.
Fortunately, because of a lot of the stuff above, my recovery was quick. I was a little sore in the morning, but promised to let Maryanne do anything strenuous during the sail. The next day, I was basically fine again. The day after that, I was feeling as good as if the whole thing had never happened.
Time for a big day of provisioning.
Labasa, which of course, Fijians pronounce "Lambasa", is the only place along Vanua Levu's northern coastline where it is possible to do any more serious provisioning than picking up a few canned goods at a small shop. The more we thought about it, the less Maryanne and I were looking forward to our upcoming stop there. {Maryanne: The north coast of Vanua Levu is very remote and poorly inhabited, Labasa is a giant anomaly - providing the nearest good size town for so many people - with a giant market, and multiple large shopping complexes (electronics, hardware, supermarkets, etc) it is busy.
The problem is that Labasa is several miles up the shallow, tidal river from the mouth. The delta is also so shallow that it is necessary to anchor more than a mile out from the river mouth just to find enough depth.
Varying reports said it might just be possible to get Begonia up the river at high tide, but what if it's not? We eventually dismissed that idea on the basis that we didn't want to risk being the big news story for the week.
That left going in the dinghy as our remaining option. As anyone who has read this blog for a while knows, our Portland Pudgy is not fast. It's a displacement vessel (meaning not able to plane) with a hull speed of about two-and-a-half knots. With the electric outboard operating at a speed that will last the endurance of the round-trip, we would likely be a touch slower, particularly when weighed down on the return leg. Also, the Pudgy's bluff bow makes it pretty slow and wet when pushing into chop. The river itself would be fine, but the mile-and-a-half long upwind bash to get there was going to be pretty miserable for us. I estimated that the trip, hopefully with a little help from the current if timed right, would take about two hours each way. To get everything done in the top half of the tide, we would only end up with two hours in town to run around and get everything before we had to be back in the dinghy. Also, this whole expedition was going to have to be done in one load, so purchase wisely.
Plus, there was another problem: it was a full moon. It isn't werewolves we worry about; they're very friendly here. The problem is that during the full moon, high tide is at sunrise and sunset. That meant that to be in town at high tide, we would either have to go up the river before dawn or down the river after sunset, take your pick. Eventually, we chose an evening return, since the stores don't open that early, and also so our moonlit return would be our second time traversing the river's length.
When the day came, I decided we would be leaving at noon. That would get us to the river mouth at 1:00pm, which was still pretty low water, but on the flood tide, going up. If we grounded, we could wait for the tide to float us, and then continue so as to arrive in Labasa at the very first possible minute.
The day was looking pretty windy and choppy. I was just about to get up the motivation to drop the dinghy and start our long slog, when Maryanne decided to try her secret option.
Since Labasa is the only sizeable city that is accessible to the north coast, lots of the local villages and outlying islands get to town by periodically taking skiffs up the river. She was hoping she could flag one down and hitch a ride.
At the start of the afternoon tide, most of the boats we saw passed way too far from us to hail, as we were way out in the middle of the sound, and they were running closer to shore. Then we spotted a boat on the horizon coming right at us.
Maryanne waved like crazy and they stopped. Initially, they seemed to think we might have run aground or something and were asking for help. When Maryanne explained that we were hoping for a ride, the eight or so people aboard rearranged to make room for us.
In no time flat, we were zooming toward the river at fifteen knots, slicing and then effortlessly pushing aside the waves Maryanne and I had been fully expecting to be wearing not half an hour ago.
The boat was from the island of Kia, twenty miles to the northwest. The first fifteen miles of their journey was in big cross-swells and headwinds in the open ocean. Now they were in the flat water of the lagoon and looking forward to the glassy water of the Labasa River. Everybody was really nice and seemed to enjoy the novelty of picking us up and riding along with them. Nobody could remember ever doing that before. It was certainly nice to chat away with these lovely people as Captain Reuben navigated us up the river. They told us that on most days, two or three boats a day make the trip from Kia to Labasa, so that the islanders can do their shopping. Forty minutes after picking us up, we were all dropped off along the riverbank in town.
Looking back, we probably could have got Begonia all the way to town, provided we had followed a local boat instead of the channel. The problem then would be that there is nowhere to moor to shore and not enough room to anchor out of the way of the traffic. I liked this way much better. The ride was fast and smooth and we got to meet some really nice people.
We snagged a Kia Island village boat that happened to be going into town for the ride up the river (and back). Each of the 3 villages on Kia Island run a taxi-like service for the locals to shuttle between the mainland or do a shopping run several times a week (but not every day).
{Maryanne:The villagers were as interested in us as we were about them, and the young girl on the right of one of the pictures also happend to be called MaryAnn. She was a keen history student and shared how the village of Yaro on Kia Island was considered to have invented tatooing (although that might not be fully correct, they certainly had a long history of tatooing). Here tatoos were limited to virgin girls; the art known as Veiqia (or weniqia) involved distinctive geometric body markings applied to adolescent girls and women around the pubic area, hips, and thighs by specialized female practitioners called dauveiqia. The arrival of Chiristinity instantly put a stop to that! Christianity has so much to answer for.}
Most of the other passengers had loose return plans. Some were staying with family overnight, some were not. Almost everyone told us they would "get the next boat". Maryanne and I obviously don't have family in town, so we were a little more anxious about not getting stranded than they were. In the end, Maryanne pressed Rueben (the captain) on exactly when he was going back, and then declared that we now had to do all our shopping so as to be back by then with time to spare.
This plan was foiled almost immediately as we stepped into the first store.
Usually, when provisioning, even in a big city like Whangārei, New Zealand, we end up having to spend all day trudging across town from store to store to fill the holes left in our big list from the previous stores.
Here, in Labasa, we walked two blocks from the boat to the Extra Supermarket and found EVERYTHING. Not just that, but lots and lots of everything. Do you want peppers? What kind? Bell? Jalapeño? Serrano? Green? Yellow? Red? How about plant milk? Oat, almond, or soy? Sweetened or unsweetened? The whole store was like that. The only thing we ended up not being able to find was tofu. They were sold out. After we checked out, Maryanne left me in charge of our bulging cart and hiked over to New World Supermarket to find some. There was none there, either. What kind of a backwater is this?
Between the busy market and the giant "Extra" supermarket - we returned well provisioned. The only thing I couldn't find was tofu (and even the nearby New World supermarket was out of that). On the fresh produce front, we both excited to puchase the first broccoli, mushrooms, cauliflower, etc that we'd seen for months!
Now we had a problem we had not expected: We had loads of time to kill before meeting up with Reuben later. Maryanne did an exploratory walk around and returned saying that she had found a place in a kind of food court, within shopping cart range, where we could have lunch. Our Indian meal turned out to be uninspiring and very greasy.
After a relaxed lunch, we pushed our cartful of provisions back to Extra, transferred everything to our own bags, and shouldered them for the walk back to the boat landing. We arrived with an hour still to spare. Looking at our pile, it seems like it would have been a tight fit for our dinghy. We would have been riding home perched on top.
While we were sitting there, enjoying some local people watching, Sabe introduced himself. He was another Captain, also from Kia, who was in the next boat to leave. Maryanne I would have liked a chance to get home earlier, but we felt like we made an agreement with Captain Reuben. We didn't want to miss out on a chance to give him the promised gas money, both for picking us up earlier, and for the ride home, so we decided to stay put. While we were waiting, a few people from the inbound boat recognized us and stopped to chat, assuring us that Rueben was around here somewhere.
At the appointed time, he did show up, recognizable in his bright yellow shirt. We loaded up our stuff, bucket brigade-style, and climbed in. Then Rueben took us the short distance under the bridge to the fuel dock.
There, he told me to hold onto the dock, then grabbed a couple of jugs and headed for the pump. It did not escape my notice that the only thing mooring the boat and its contents to the dock was my left arm. Uh, Reuben...
Then it got better. Other passengers arrived. The boat was away from the ladder and too far down for those above a certain age to be expected to jump. One woman started handing me down her bundles of shopping, which I had to stand on tiptoes on my seat to reach. I handed them down to Maryanne, who placed them on the floor of the boat. Periodically, I had to ask the woman to wait a second so I could pull on the dock. I was still the boat's only connection to it. Then came a big flat of eggs. Eggs, yeesh! Careful with that one! When they made it to Maryanne's hands, just as quickly as if it were the next package, she picked up the child clinging to her skirt and dangled her in the air for me to take.
I'm pretty sure virtually every mother in the world would characterize her child as the most important, beloved thing in their whole entire world. This woman took her BABY and handed it to ME, a man she met twenty seconds ago, hasn't ever said a word to, and who has only communicated with her in an exchange of polite smiles. What am I going to do?
I got on my tippy toes, reached up, and took her baby, of course, as if she were as fragile as... eggs? I kept thinking this would be a really bad time to lose my balance and end up in the river, floating away with a baby. I'm the same guy who did a faceplant on the rocks of the riverbank less than an hour ago while trying to get myself on the boat. Did I not mention that earlier? That was supposed to be a secret. I'm just fine.
Also, who is supposed to be holding onto the dock? Still me...
You could imagine my relief when Captain Rueben appeared on the dock above and told me it was time for me to pull the boat around to the ladder so that he and the rest of the passengers could board.
Since the tide was higher now, Reuben didn't bother to slow down for any of the river's shallow sections on the way out. We exited the river, skipped over the chop in a tailwind, and in no time at all, we were pulling up to Begonia. Sunset was way off. Maryanne and I thought we would just be making our way back to the dinghy for the dark ride home by now.
Reuben was keen to get to Kia before dark, but assured us when we offered that he had enough time to come aboard for a look. We gave him some money to help with the fuel, as well as a bunch of kava, for his kindness. Once Reuben was aboard, everyone else decided they also wanted to see. Most said they hadn't been on a sailboat before and were really happy to step aboard (Amelting Heart happened to be at Kia at the moment, maybe a different village).
Much later, I was remembering the visit. I was thinking in particular about the mate and I going to some trouble to make sure the bow line was properly secured to Begonia before he came aboard as the last person. Then I remembered that none of the people I helped aboard earlier had been carrying a baby. We assume she was probably fast asleep under a tarp, and they didn't want to disturb her. Fiji is so laid back.
Update: Not about the above boat. This is something else. Days later, a local boat, the same basic type as above, that was carrying six medical workers on a 2 hour passage, was swamped and lost engine power somewhere between Oneata, Moce and Lakeba Islands, in the Lau Group. Unable to restart the engine, the Captain left the boat and swam for MILES to get help (to the nearby Aiwa where he could get a phone signal). After an extensive search, the passengers were all found the next day. The boat had capsized and they were all in the water clinging for 36 hours to whatever floats. Most local boats carry little safety equipment (no radios, few life jackets, etc), so any incident is a serious threat to the lives of the occupants. Thankfully this particular story had a happy ending.
Anchorage location at the Labasa delta/river entrance >> On google maps
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