The elevator door opened on A deck.  Usually, folks wait by the side for us to get off but there was a solid phalanx of cruisers anxious to get on the elevator.  Getting off I felt like a Salmon swimming upstream.  We heard comments like “It was too hot,” “I need to get to my room,” or “It’s brutal out there.”  These folks had reached their limit.  I was about to reach mine in another way.

On the tender I made sure to sit by the open port to catch the breeze.

The tender let us off at the Copra Shed Marina serving the Savusavu Yacht Club.  We had allowed time to explore the town, but after hearing the comments of our cruise mates we decided to sit in the shade on the terrace.  The bar had a sign “$5 Charge for Whining.”  There was a reggae band, and the bar had cold coke and water.  This small port seemed happy to see us.  According to someone we spoke with they get only three ships a year.

We had booked an excursion “Snorkeling with Cousteau.”  It was a Holland America sponsored tour but came highly recommended by Lonely Planet.  Our friends John and Pam were also on the tour.  Jean-Michel Cousteau is Jaques Cousteau’s son. He built an eco -resort outside Savusavu.  It caters to families and tries to combine snorkeling, diving, and cultural immersion.  We were there to snorkel off lighthouse reef.  We took a boat from the Yacht club to the resort where they loaded up bottled water.

Along the way we saw a humpback whale before we tied to a buoy off the reef.  We were to swim to the reef to snorkel and take pictures.  Suzi and I had new full face masks.  But as I was making my way through the waves and currents, I realized that I didn’t have the breath to make the swim, especially wearing a mask.

I had never felt old until I was hospitalized for COVID in 2021.  That took my breath away, reducing my lung capacity.  After my hospitalization in Mauritius during the 2023 world cruise (there is a whole section on this blog on that) we went back to manage Raven Radio.  It’s a sedentary job and I gained weight.  A little less than 2 years ago, while still working at the station, I decided to do something and started on a doctor directed diet along with a regimen of exercise.  I was slowly losing weight, a little over a pound a month.  But I kept getting weaker, I could not stand from a chair.  Last summer, despite having lost almost 50 pounds I was using a walker for my trip to Minnesota and the Winnipeg Folk Festival.  I was discouraged.  I had lost weight but felt no stronger.  We stepped up the exercise and made some diet adjustments.  The doctors also started running tests to see what was causing muscle wasting.  But in about November, after I had lost more than 60 pounds things quickly picked up.  I was feeling better than I had since I was hospitalized with COVID.  I could get up from chairs and walk a mile on flat ground without stopping to rest and without shortness of breath.  The Doctors found that I had a parlayed right diaphragm meaning that I had lost most of that lung’s breathing function.  But I was doing better with exercise and weight loss.  We set off on this cruise.

In the past I’ve been able to snorkel pretty well, and I have always been a strong swimmer.  But my PT was in a pool without waves and a current.  I found I just couldn’t handle the situation off lighthouse reef.  I never got to the reef.  The excellent crew from the Cousteau resort got a buoy to me and I was back on the boat, breathless but ok.  I had learned one of my limits.  We’ll try another snorkel excursion later in the cruise without a full face mask and in more sheltered waters behind a reef without waves and with a lower current.

One other thing. While this was going on the current took off my swim suit. Fortunately it got hung up on the flippers on my feet so I got it back on. Since I have lost weight it has become loose and flappy. That’s something I’ll have to deal with before I try this again.

Back on the ship we had a good dinner and a fine sunset as we left Savusavu headed for Suva, the capital of Fiji.