Saturday 20 August Suva

Suva flower market

Cassava at vegetable market

We motor sailed into Suva yesterday afternoon after we'd finished diving with bull sharks. Suva is a typical capital city with working port; fleets of Chinese, Korean, Japanese fishing boats, container ships and tucked away in the north east corner, the Royal Suva Yacht Club. The name is far grander than the reality. Yachts with a draft greater than 2m / 6' can't get into the marina because it's too shallow. Where anchored out behind De Ware Jacob and Dreamtime. De Ware Jacob (Dutch for Mr Right) was with us in Whangerai earlier this year and we've know Swiss Dreamtime since crossing the Pacific. Claudia and Jurg are also keen divers.
We shared a cab into town with Claudia and Jurg for our urban grime fix, lunch at the food hall in the shopping mall and a trip to the large fruit and vegetable market.
Six weeks ago we noticed a drop in the performance of our house batteries; these 8 truck batteries feed continual power to the fridge, freezer and our navigation instruments and lights when needed. They were fitted before we bought Jackster which makes them just over 3 years old. Their deterioration has has continued and we now feel we can't wait until we're back in NZ to replace them. There are some suppliers in Suva; one is a manufacturer and the rest are importers but the range is limited with the majority being car or truck starter batteries. In an ideal world we'd like (I say we but it's David who's the expert not me) deep cycle batteries which are more suited to our need for a long, slow drain of power.

I could add a couple more paragraphs explaining and describing batteries but will spare you the pain. After 30 minutes battery talk my eyelids get heavy and I start drifting off to sleep so I'll spare you any further details.