TOPtoTOP expedition reports

Savusavu

We are just back from a climb and clean up together with local children and Lenard, Emily, Kati, Arne from "SY Iemanja" and Nick and Patti from SY "Pina Colada".
On Friday we have been in the secondary school and tonight we have a public presentation at the yacht club of Savusavu. You see, we are busy...

Fiji is a garden full of wonderful flowers and people! One half of the population in Fiji is Polynesian origin, - the other half Indian. The Fijian people are super friendly and always smiling. Everybody says "bula", that means hello, even when you are 100 m away!

One good example is Dolly, the manager of the Marina Copra Shed, who was of big help to TOPtoTOP. For more information download all informations: Download file (6 kb).

In the same complex of the Marina Copra Shed there is an internet and copy facility called "Xerographic Solution" managed by our friends Dharmendra and Savita. Thanks to them we are able to do our work more efficiently.

On the 25th of August Sabine and I celebrated our 7. marriage day. We made the right decision and we are also very happy to have two kids. Like Annemarie, they help us a lot: Salina can already close the sail cover, and Andri is the best cook.

Salina is always busy going to the local kindergarten, sailing, climbing in the rig together with Andri and playing with local kids on Pachamama. Sabine and Annemarie have fixed the Genoa and I still working on the radar...

On the 28th of August we all saw a full eclipse of the moon.
In that time I had the oppurtunity to deliver the Catana 475 Catamaran "Legaris" from Savusavu to Denerau (130 nm) to feed the expedition cash box. I have had a great time with Peter Edmunds and on the way back, I saw the reefs from the air.

Next we will visit more schools in Fiji before we leave for Vanuatu and New Caledonia…

Clean up the world day

We left Savusavu after a presentation in the local yacht club and to say goodbye to our new friends.
The people here are living from copra, the dried meet of the coconut. You press the copra and you get coconut oil. They earn about 30 Euro per 100 kg of copra. Normally they use the sun to dry it. In places like Savusavu where the climate got more humid, they started drying it in a oven and that produces CO2 ... another positive loop to global warming!

This year TOPtoTOP participated on the international clean-up-the-world-day on Makogai Island. It is located in the Koro Sea and fomous as THE lepra station untill 1968 in the Pacific managed by two nones from Switzerland.

First we made the traditional sevusevu. It is a present to the chief of the village in form of "cava". "Cava" is the root of the cava plant. Thogether with water you get a "special drink". If the chief accept your cava you are part of the family, if not you have to leave immediately. So that was the first step of our clean up activity.

Second, we motivated all kids to participate on the drawing contest and clean up the following day. The teacher Sophie was just great!

Makogai is a remote island and still we found a lot of trash. 80 % of it are plastic bottles which cross oceans till they are washed on the beach of a remote island. A lot of plastic is also eaten by turtles and dolphines. In the water it looks like fish and they die a terrible death because their stomack can not digest it. We filled the non organic material into bags and carried it to the a dump where we buried it.

After the work they climbed the coconut trees that everybody has some refreshement and danced to say thank you for the exciting event.

On the island is also a birth station for giant shells (Moerdermuscheln). Because of the difficult political situation in Fiji, Diesel is getting expensive and they have not enough money to run the pump to flash the brithing pools with fresh sea water. To be independent of political disturbances, solarpanels would be a perfect solution instead of the old generator that uses a lot of Diesel. TOPtoTOP is working on a concept to organize panels for this meaningful station to protect the biodiversity of the reef.

On the 16th of September we anchored near Lautoka (S17.35 E177.26) infront of the BEKANA GARDEN ISLAND RESORT. Manager Alex offered us his internet facilities and made this report possible. Helene from the reseption organiced an interview with the newspaper Fiji Times and Fiji TV tomorrow morning!

As soon as we have done the interviews we leave Fiji and sail to Vanuatu and New Caledonia. There, Annemarie will leave us after 5 months :-( ... and Andrea will join the expedition till December :-). From New Caledonia we sail to Lord How Island and Sidney.

Contact by satelite phone: 00872 7625 68 933

Vanuatu

After 5 days in a raff sea with bad weather we sailed from Fiji to the capital of Vanuatu and just got the message from Elise and John from Aveyron (southern France), that our new TOPtoTOP member Tigane is born. CONGRATULATION! Elise and John have been on the Expedition from Panama to Ecuador in 2004 and from Patagonia to Tahiti in 2006. We are on anchor in the centre of Port Villa in front of the Nambawan Cafe, where Ivan Kinneth Oswald offered TOPtoTOP his wireless internet access. Please contact us by skype or use our mobile number 0067847297. On the 10th of October at 6 p.m. we do a public presentation at the Nambawan Cafe. Everybody is welcome! We just arrived perfect for the annual music festival in Port Villa. Yesterday we have had also the first contacts with the minister of education, the minister of lands (environment) and the media. Today we already have had the first article in the "Daily Post" newspaper. Salina likes helicopters very much and likes to become a pilot. Yesterday she finished her solar helicopter from MEGASOL. Today Vanuatu Helicopters offered her a free flight. So may we are able to do a picture of Pachamama from the air. Tomorrow we invited the vice tourism director Joe Iautu with his family for lunch on Pachamama and on Monday we organize the school presentations in this beautiful country where you find the happiest people on earth (UN study). Our member Andrea Roner is supposed to join us on Tuesday. PLEASE HELP: The TOPtoTOP annual report is finished in German. We need a volunteer to translate it in French and one to do it in English. Please call us or email Gabi (gabi@toptotop.org), if you can do it.