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