The crew from ‘Fiji Express’ were still celebrating when we awoke at around 8:30am. Amused, we sat in the sun and watched as they stumbled around the deck in the 20 knot winds, before we wandered back up the hill to make a call from the Satellite phone that the caretakers had kindly offered to charge for us the night before. Even though fully charged, the battery would only allow us to make one phone call. Frustrated and annoyed we wandered back down to the beach stopping only briefly to talk to the friendly group from Sale that we had met the night before, as they made their way to the lighthouse.When we got back to the beach we were confronted by potential disaster. In the strong winds, the largest and most expensive of the yachts had dragged its anchor and was drifting rapidly towards the rocks on the west side of the cove. It quickly became apparent that the crew must have been part of the large group we had passed on our way down the hill. There was no-one on the boat. I turned and ran back up the hill to alert the owner as Nick swam out and boarded the ‘Sea Wolf’ in an attempt to start the motor and steer her away from the rocks and avoid certain disaster. With some quick thinking and assistance from the one of the other yachts, the crisis was narrowly averted.
The rest of the afternoon was spent searching in vane for an elusive and miss-directed box that had been air-dropped as part of the weekly supplies to the island. The forecast for tomorrow was far from ideal, but we agreed to re-assess the conditions in the morning. We enjoyed a restful night’s sleep in the comfort of the empty and unused 2nd caretaker’s residence. The howling wind outside was almost soothing as I drifted off to sleep.