Fiji Part III - Rescued

{this is continued from Fiji Part II - Fiji Time}

Thursday, April 28, 2011. Sand Spit, 5 miles off of Royal Davui Island

Five minutes until our boat was supposed to arrive, yet there was no boat on the horizon as far as we could see. It was clear that the crew was on Fiji time.

Our tent was occasionally being splashed with water from both sides and the Spit was just a sliver. There was a bit of higher ground and I had moved the cooler and our things to a dry spot. I decided to leave the umbrella tent standing because it may be the only thing visible above the water.

The boat that brought us out to the spit did not have gps and the process of finding the spit involved some zig-zagging around and arguing between the crew since there weren't really any landmarks to follow. When the boat got about five minutes away (don't know distance - just time) we could see the white bump in the water. 

There wasn't much of a white bump to see at this point. And there was no boat within five minutes of us.

In an act of defiant stubbornness I had pledged that I would not use the emergency satellite phone to get an early pickup. I debated with myself whether a phone call now would count as "early" since we still had five minutes on the clock - yet the boat was at least 20 minutes away because we would be able to see it otherwise. 

Since we had come this far, and Kim didn't seem too worried, I decided to wait. A moral victory of sorts.

I've always been critical of the men on the Titanic who went down in their evening wear playing music and shit. The first time I heard that story I thought - 'that's crazy. with all of the stuff on that ship and in the kitchen and laying around I could have built a raft out of an empty soup pot, a mattress,  and a cello! At least I would have a chance!'

So I looked around me and tried to imagine how I could build a raft on the sand spit.  I had an idea on how to do it - but then I decided that it would be impossible for the crew to find us bobbing around somewhere randomly in the Pacific on a raft made of out of an Eskimo cooler, an upside down umbrella tent, an empty wine bottle, and a tampon disposal bag. It would be much better if we could stay attached to the Spit.

Besides the logic of this thinking - the Portuguese spite in me liked the idea of the crew coming back to find us standing on top of our cooler and I could glare at them with an icy-cold stare and then slowly look at my watch. The image of that gave me satisfaction and I think I even rehearsed the slow glare when Kim wasn't watching.

Since we still had time to take action I decided to build a mound of sand that we could stand on. That might give us 10 more minutes or so. The sand was wet and heavy when I tried to shove it around with my foot and Kim was laughing at me - so I gave up and decided standing on the cooler would have to do.

It was officially 10 minutes past pickup time and we still couldn't see a boat on the horizon. So, with honour, I took the satellite phone out of it's protective case and followed the instructions to make the call. At least I didn't call early.

The two guys who had dropped us off had apparently been sent to the main island for some reason and they forgot about us. My guess is that Chief Captain crossed our name off the list when we were one minute late and at "shift change" they forgot to tell their replacements.

It took about 20 more minutes for a guy to arrive. The high ground was still dry. I held the boat, Kim got in, and the new guy took down the umbrella tent in ankle deep water. He didn't bother folding or wrapping or anything - jus threw the wet mess into the boat and we took off.  I asked him 'how long before the entire thing is under water". According to him we had 8 more minutes.

Later in the day we saw the Chief Captain hanging the wet umbrella tent out in the sun to dry. He apologised and said "was you standin' on de Esky!? Sometimes de people be standin' on de Esky when we get dem!" and he let out a hearty belly laugh.