A Surprise Breeze

No, I’m not talking about the weather. I’m talking about our friends on a boat called “Breeze.” We had last said good-bye back at The Blue Lagoon in The Yasawas, and we had absolutely no idea they were in the vicinity, nor did they even know we were still in Fiji. I was standing at the galley chopping some vegetables for a salad for lunch when I looked up and saw Breeze right off our stern. “No way!” I shouted. This was such a nice surprise, because we had been alone in Dere Bay for a couple days and the weather wasn’t turning as quickly as we had hoped for us to head north to Taveuni.

We first met Breeze way back in Papeete. Their boat was on the hard getting repaired from an encounter with a whale, while we were just blowing through Papeete as quickly as we could. So, at that point who knew if our paths would ever cross again. Well, it turns out that they did, several times more as we were together off and on in Tonga, New Zealand, and Fiji. But the thing is that we were always with a group of kid boats, and even though Tim and Per share a passion for spear fishing, it seemed that we hadn’t really gotten to know Per and Sabina all that well. So, that makes this visit in Koro all the more special as we spent pretty much every evening together: drinks on Exodus, drinks on Breeze, drinks on shore… we shared rum, good stories, and even ventured into a little political talk as we shared observations about our countries (good and bad) and we got to learn a little bit more about Sweden.

Alex and Brenden had sadly accepted that they would be without their kid boat buddies for a while, so they were glad for another chance to hang out. Ella is right in their age group, and she and Alex share a lack of passion for the cruising lifestyle, so I was glad that they all had a little fun together, even if a lot of it was video game playing and trying to get internet on shore. They were being typical teenagers together, and sometimes that’s just what they really need.

We had heard from some of the local expats that the resort restaurant serves dinner sometimes if you make arrangements ahead of time. It was a bit of a challenge finding someone to make such arrangements with, but we managed to sort it out and one of our last evenings there we had a pleasant dinner on shore, although it was a bit strange since the resort continued to have that deserted feel and there was only one other table of customers at the restaurant. The curry I had was good if nothing special but the best parts of dinner ashore was the company and, as always, that I didn’t have to cook!