Day 33, Year 2: Calm Day with Exciting Ending
Date: Sunday, May 27, 2007
Weather: Most Cloudy Day with Rain Showers
Location: Suva, Fiji

Even when we have a calm day, we always seem to have some little twist that makes the heart rate go up just a bit. We were having an early dinner in the cockpit after a very quiet day. I looked over and saw one of the open wooden boats that the locals use for getting around out here not too far from our boat. There was no one in the boat and I mentioned this to Mark. He said whomever was in it was just probably bending down working on something, so I ignored it and we continued talking and eating and forgot. Then I heard loud voices coming from a boat near us. The boat is Sea Whistle out of San Francisco, and when I counted this afternoon it appeared to have 5 teenagers onboard. So I wasn’t surprised to hear loud voices. They seemed very excited, but then teenagers get excited easily. We continued eating and just as it was getting dark, the wooden boat that had been sitting near us with no one onboard started coming toward Windbird and looked like it was going to ram into us. Mark ran out and pushed the boat off, but the local onboard pulled closer again. Mark asked him what he wanted and he said he was a water taxi. He was obviously intoxicated and almost fell in the water as he walked over the seat in his boat to hold on to Windbird. I wasn’t sure what was really happening, so I went below and got ready to make a call on the radio for help if the guy was boarding our boat. But he finally pushed off and then took off, doing a U-turn and going really, really fast. So we thought or hoped that was the end of that. Then we heard Sea Whistle calling the Yacht Club on the radio. They called a number of times and got no answer, and I was still hearing loud voices coming from their boat. I called Safina, the other boat next to us and told them about the guy who had come up to our boat. I wanted to warn them of a possible problem, and I asked them to stand by on the radio in case of another incident. Then Sea Whislte called for us. We answered and found that the reason I had seen a boat with on one onboard was because the guy had fallen into the water and almost drowned. Sea Whistle threw him a life ring and Justin, the captain on Sea Whistle, jumped into the water to retrieve the boat. When he got the guy back in his boat, he took off. That’s when he came to our boat and then zoomed off. There is an old concrete structure on piers near us and evidently he and two young women had been sitting in the building drinking the day away. He left them just before he fell into the water, and eventually, the two woman swam to Sea Whistle. Sea Whistle’s three young men had their dinghy in at the Yacht Club, so they had no way of getting the young women back to shore. That’s where we came in. Mark went over and he and Justin took the young women to the yacht club. They were in quite a jovial mood and almost fell overboard while riding in Windbird’s dinghy. I could hear Mark giving them a lecture about calming down and not falling overboard as he motored toward the Yacht Club. None of us knows what happened to the young man. Hopefully he made it back to land safely and hopefully he doesn’t come back out here again.

So much for a quiet Sunday. Actually, we did attempt to do nothing today. Mark walked to the Mobil station this morning to get a newspaper and we did some reading. But I think doing nothing for a whole day is just not possible for us. We did some stainless polishing, and Mark’s applied rust remover to the side of the engine. We have a leak in an anti-syphon valve that has dripped salt water on the engine. That, of course, causes rust. So Mark took care of that today. Tomorrow looks like another quiet day, but I’m sure we’ll find some way to spice that up just a little.