Category: Boys log

Weee! Over the last two weeks, me and Lukie went kitesurfing and wakeboarding.

Wakeboarding is when you get a kiteboard and you hold a rope with a handle on the end. The rope is tied to the dingy. To get up the dingy drives forward and you get pulled along while you hold onto the handle.

If you let go of the handle you will start sinking because you have nothing to hold you up (unless you are going really fast, then you skid along the water for about five seconds). Sometimes we fall off (it can be quite brutal, I fell and bumped my forehead). Here are some pictures, enjoy!

Wakeboarding is really fun but also quite difficult. Kitesurfing is also really hard until you get it. I managed to get up on the board and I went flying at about a hundred kilometres an hour. I flopped the kite on the water, so I could stop. Man, kite surfing is fun but also super-duper scary. I ham, I mean I am, so happy and grateful that I got up.

Lukie is about to get up, he is getting the feel for the board. We do this kite surfing on a sandspit in Musket Cove. The sandspit is perfect for starters and getting up on the board.

On Friday we are leaving for Vanuatu. It will be a four-day passage so before we go we need to reinforce our food supplies. Today we are leaving to Denarau to stock up until Friday.

For home-schooling, Lukie is doing an inquiry about saltwater crocodiles and apparently they live in Vanuatu, and we are going there! Oh no, I knew it would end this way. “Really?” says Lukie. “No, I didn’t know it would end this way.” But it might, you never know. Do you know?

Another thing is that saltwater crocodiles can swim very far. Maybe even to New Zealand!

Yesterday we went wakeboarding with a friend called George who we also snorkelled with. We went snorkelling just behind the sand spit on an abyss going down to about two hundred (I think) meters in depth.

Now, you might be wondering what we do on passage and on anchor.
On passage, Lukie and I spend hours on the tramp. We sit down and wait for big waves to come washing over us. We put on life jackets and run, holding on to things like the railing and the floor, to the wave zone (the tramp).

The waves crash up and we try not to swallow any water. We flip, roly-poly, bounce and fly onto the deck. Sometimes the cockpit gets filled with water or the water comes up through the floorboard just outside the door.

On anchor, I mostly spend hours swinging on the ropes at the front of the boat.

If the water looks nice, it always does, me, Lukie and Daddy jump in the water and do challenges.

Some of the challenges are: jump in and swim under both hulls, see how far down you can go and who does the biggest bombs. We are all trying to achieve the Triple Yoda.

The Triple Yoda is where you jump in the air and spin three times around before you hit the water. The best any of us have done is the Double Yoda.

 

On anchor, we (me and Lukie) play Lego Star Wars, Lego city and Lego random (lots of different types of Lego joined together).

The thing that we do the most now is play Lord of the Rings. We play that on shore, on the boat and mostly in forests. Just yesterday we all went up a mountain to a waterfall in the middle of the forest (perfect for Lord of the Rings). We went swimming in the waterfall but we didn’t stay long because it was so cold!

I’m a fifth through reading the Lord of the Rings books.

Me and Lukie also play a game called Dungeons and Dragons. I cannot explain much because it is so complicated. I can explain that it is a game where you use your imagination and lots of bits of paper. It is a fantasy land where you can do anything you like, and you have a character that you make, and you travel around and complete adventures. I make up the adventures and Lukie plays them.

When other kids come on board we usually play Lego, Minecraft and Pokemon cards. We also jump in the water with them and draw.

 

 

For the last couple of days, we were at a reef surrounded island called Taveuni. We went to a reef and saw many fish and coral. On the reef, we saw lots of fish that we had never seen before and odd colours of coral. Check out the one below!

 

Now we are on shore and we will go to a waterfall (three waterfalls) and hopefully swim in them all. On the path we saw frogs and toads and a crab in a small hole. The waterfalls were cold but that did help against the heat of Fiji. You could go right underneath and get smashed by the water falling on top of you.

 

To get back to the boat was a challenge. It was so shallow, so we had to row and walk the dinghy off the shallow place into the deep area where we could motor out the rest of the way to the boat.