Pitufa.at

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• Handy smurf at his make-shifting best!

  Our old, feeble deck lights were no longer working and we found a powerful replacement. Unfortunately the new light is square, while the old one was round… Christian make-shifted a solution, literally fitting a square peg in a round hole 2 trips up the mast and now we have a light strong enough to host a football game on deck! Another task ticked off the… Continue reading »

• Still in Suva

  During our first week in the capital we tackled our projects full of energy, but then I caught some bug (the air conditioned shops and offices in combination with coughing/sneezing people always get me…) which rendered me basically useless for a week. On top of that the weather turned windy and rainy, which complicates things as well and keeps interrupting projects. We hope to be… Continue reading »

• Our last day in paradise

  We were planning to return to Suva in May anyway, but now we are forced to sail there slightly earlier, because our fridge has developed a leak… As soon as we’re back in the capital we have to have that fixed, then an overhauled pump will (hopefully) arrive from the US for our watermaker, we have to fix our sprayhood (the material we got for… Continue reading »

• Sea snake!

  Here in Fiji we quite often encounter sea snakes while snorkeling and watch them foraging for food on coral reefs and heading up to the surface occasionally to take a breath. They are extremely venomous, but fortunately not aggressive and apparently their mouths are too small to bite something as big as a human (maybe a pinky toe would fit, but they are safely hidden… Continue reading »

• Gau

  Last week we used a light northeasterly wind to sail 30 nm to the next island. Gau is Fiji’s 5th biggest island and it’s pretty with lush hills and a barrier reef and lagoon on the east side (just a fringing reef in the north and west). We anchored in the big, protected bay of Waikama and went ashore to introduce ourselves and bring a… Continue reading »

• Encounters

  Many of the anchorages we visit even in remote places are devoid of life, no fish in the water around the boat, hardly any birds to be seen. Therefore we really appreciate lively surroundings, like here in Ovalau: most mornings a group of dolphins swims by in the lagoon, swarms of tiny, silvery fish are skipping over the surface fleeing some larger predator, we hear… Continue reading »

• Zipper with velcro protection

  Windy and rainy days are maintenance days on Pitufa. The zipper on our lazybag had broken due to UV exposure–even though we had sewn on a protective flap a while ago: the velcro pads to keep the flap down weren’t big enough, so it got blown open regularly in strong winds and that was enough UV exposure to make the plastic of the zipper brittle.… Continue reading »

• Tricky navigation

  We love Ovalau and its lively lagoon, but its shape makes sitting out strong winds rather tricky: it’s oval (hence the name maybe , there are no motu on the outer reef to hide behind, the few bays on the eastern side are all open to the east and southeast (where the prevailing winds blow from) and there’s no connection between the lagoon on the… Continue reading »

• Laundry in a bucket

  This morning we awoke to a perfectly calm lagoon, Pitufa was floating in a sea of turquoise surrounded by coralheads, so Christian took the dinghy out to take some pics of our pretty, little Sparkman & Stephens. Of course there’s laundry on the line–you’ll hardly ever see Pitufa without this kind of decoration When we set out we used to collect used clothes, towels, etc.… Continue reading »

• Levuka, Fiji’s old capital

  Levuka was founded by sandalwood and beche-de-mer traders and cotton/coconut planters in the 1830s and became Fiji’s first capital, but only for a short time, from 1874 until 1883. The surrounding mountains prevented it from growing and soon Suva was declared the new capital. Levuka froze in time and in 1989 it was designated a historic town and declared a UNESCO World Heritage in 2013.… Continue reading »

• A new AllAtSea issue, a new Pitufa article!

  Check out this April’s AllAtSea magazine for an article about the pros and cons of seasonal sailing versus all-year-round cruising!

• Lagoon in grey

  After some sunny summer months we’re having rainy weather (it’s the rainy season after all) and Kadavu’s lagoon gleams in 2 shades of grey instead of the usual 50 shades of blue and green. We are accumulating more and more damp things on the boat without being able to dry them out, below deck it’s steaming with all hatches closed and mould is growing faster… Continue reading »

• One of our articles in each AllAtSea Caribbean issue this year!

  Even though we only spent a brief time in the Caribbean, we’re still writing for the popular AllAtSea magazine there! January’s issue featured “Never bored aboard” about hobbies while cruising, there was a reminder to “Protect Parrotfish” in the February issue and now I’ve just downloaded the March issue and found our “Ode to the hydrovane” about our tireless helmsman Wayne Vaney You can either… Continue reading »

• Ashamed to be human

  Watching reefs bleach and die makes me ashamed to be human. All those fishies looking up at me, the little clown fish trying to seek shelter in his bleached and dying anemone, the chromis in the algae-overgrown skeleton of a staghorn coral–they don’t know why the reefs are dying. But I know. Because of overfishing, erosion, pollution and of course global warming. All caused by… Continue reading »

• 20% discount on Pitufinos this week!

  If you’re visiting the Austrian boat show in Tulln this week, come to the Pitufino stand to see the demonstration of its many features! We won’t be there, but our colleague in Austria. We give a 20% boatshow discount, but we have extended the offer to the online shop www.currently-marine.com, so everyone who buys this weeks gets the discount