We’ve had a few boat jobs to do, some socialising and some diving - so here’s a quick update.

First up was fixing a toilet problem. The usual issue of limescale build up in the pipes, which required the pipe to be removed and cleaned with acid and plenty of water. Sounds simple but turned into quite a saga. The pipe runs through 3 compartments, with holes cut to allow that - but of course, once fitted onto the seacock and toilet, the ends of the pipe flare which makes removal and re-installation somewhat harder. The pipe is also quite long, so it took quite a bit of time to clear. However, once done and reinstalled, the bilge was cleaned. Then the bilge pump sucked up a bit of dirt and it stopped pumping. That was the next days job as I had to recover from the various nicks and scratches of the pipe installation!

The bilge pump turned out to be relatively easy - I’ve previously serviced these before, so know the general principle of a diaphragm and 2 1-way valves. Once cleaned and reassembled, and the filter cleaned - it worked fine.

Next up was some diving. We wanted to do the White Wall which is an iconic dive in the Somosomo strait. It has 2 swim-throughs and a wall that seems to drop off to infinity covered with white soft coral. The swimthroughs make it hard to do whilst towing a dinghy, but there is a mooring there. Its underwater though (not sure why). We had a GPS location, but couldn’t easily see it when we arrived - however the boat from the (very very very) expensive Laucala resort was there, and they happily pointed it out to us. That is so typically fijian. Once on the mooring, we waited 20minutes or so for the current to ease, then dropped in.

The first tunnel runs from the bottom of the mooring out onto the wall. Its a nice easy descent and you come out around 24m or so on the wall itself. Its very easy to drop too deep at this point, so you do need to watch your depth. The second tunnel back up is along the wall (to your left) at about 18m.

Along the wall there are lots of things to see. We’ve seen an octopus, huge amounts of fish, this rather menacing moray eel.

The second tunnel had a stone fish right in the entrance, so be careful if you’re one of those divers which tends to hang onto things. We’re not, fortunately. There was also a small lion fish (endemic here, but a pest in the caribbean and also has poisonous spines).

After the second tunnel, we loitered around on the top of the reef for a while, looking at fish and coral before returning to the dinghy.

The next day we were going to dive another site, but the wind got up - so rather than trying to tow the dinghy, we opted to head back to the White Wall. This time we had it to ourselves and with our updated GPS co-ordinates, we found the buoy first time. We’d also nailed the tide, so there was no current. We had a great dive, very enjoyable.

Once back onboard, it was a swift rinse of the kit and ourselves, then ready for a night out at the local dive resort. They’d laid on music and invited all around to join them. Tourists from the resort, yachts and locals. We were invited to join Willy and his extended family. 2 fibres went from this village, one picking us up on the way. We headed over to the area of the bay called North Pole by the locals as it gets the sun last in the morning! The music was good, the beers were almost cold and we had a great time.