S/V L'ORIENT

A dyslexic celebration of our 20th anniversary We dodged Cyclone #2 of the season and began limping back to the hurricane pit, crossing between Fiji's main islands and heading Southwest. Leaving Nawi Marina and its category-5 cyclone certification (still untested, but great for marketing) was profound because should a cyclone appear we could get caught between theoretically "safe" locations (our pit in Vuda and our Marina in Nawi, 180 miles distant). L'ORIENT is showing some wear and tear, including a leaky transmission, damaged sails, and various subsystems that now work intermittently. In short, we need a fix of spare parts and weeks in a boatyard to put things back together. The reality of Fiji is that there are just no good chandleries. Our idea was that we would stop frequently along the way as we work our way Southwest. Fiji is very poorly charted, so this was out of necessity. Moving L'ORIENT can only be done in bright sunlight to avoid the killer reefs, ma