There is a saying around here, 'you are on Fiji time', that people use when time seems to pass nonsensically. It has been 14 days since my last blog entry, but I would have guessed no more than a week.
We spent these past two weeks at Copra Shed Marina prepping the boat for the upcoming passage to New Zealand. We are talking of a departure date finally and have been watching the weather as it reports decreased storm activity in the south-western Pacific. So the day is soon upon us!
We installed a new oven on the boat that was shipped in the mail along with a new water heater. A warning to fellow cruisers, if you take ANYTHING off your boat here in Fiji (whether to sell, give away, or dispose of), make sure Customs is well aware of it and demand they come to inspect the item beforehand on your boat. They want to value it themselves and then charge you 45% of its value in taxes (even if you gave it away for free!). We ended up paying $75 in taxes on our old oven that we sold to a poor local for $150. We checked with customs beforehand and they said if we brought in a picture with a bill of sale, that would be fine. However, when we came to them with the picture and BOS, we were held in the Customs office while they considered impounding the boat because "we didn't have them inspect the oven beforehand".
We tried installing the water heater, but had a few bronze fittings that weren't the right size, so we had a local metal worked braise them for us. It only cost 20 Fijian dollars for 4 hours of work from him! But the pieces ended up leaking when we installed them and couldn't use them...I guess you get what you pay for.
Other than that we got a lot done on the boat in prepping her for the next voyage!
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