Join Us For This CHANNEL UPDATE / The Sailing Brothers

Channel Update: The Sailing Brothers Arrive in Fiji

Hello everybody, and welcome to our Channel update. Yes, we’re back with a brand new episode from the beautiful country of Fiji.

To start off, let us extend a massive thank you for all the amazing support that we have received in YouTube-land. Your likes, shares, comments and engagement are what fuel us to keep bringing fresh content to this channel. As many of you know, we release a new video every Sunday at 6:00 p.m., so thank you very much for sticking around!

The sailing journey from New Zealand up until now, where we’re currently anchored in Fiji, has been fantastic. It’s smooth-sailing as everything has gone according to plan – apart from our teabag incident, that is! Remember how we accidentally tossed a teabag overboard during one of our vlogs? We’d like to apologize for any concerns this caused about plastic waste in the sea. Our commitment to respecting and protecting our seas and oceans is genuine – we never intentionally throw anything plastic or rubbish into the water. It was just an honest mistake, a cheap and very papery teabag at that.

The Sailors’ Odyssey Continues…

While in Fiji, we’re making our way through western parts of this island nation before setting sail to Vanuatu. Following that, we’re planning on heading over to New Caledonia; however, there’s been a bit of civil unrest and riots occurring lately which have led us to reconsider whether or not it’s safe to visit at the moment.

We find ourselves cruising along these remote locations due to our Sailor hearts! But do you know why we’re choosing to stay up in this area until November, and then head down to Australia? It all boils down to cyclone season – we need to be out of harm’s way as our Visas don’t begin in Australia until that month-long period. So here we are sailing through the cyclone belt.

Although it’s 29 degrees in temperature, it happens to be winter in Fiji! This translates into lots and lots of rain as we’re currently situated near Nadi – the capital city where rain is quite frequent nowadays. We decided to take a little pause at Suva before continuing our voyage towards Pacific Harbor where we have plans for some trekking.

A Sunny Decision…

In the midst of our sojourn in Suva, another noteworthy upgrade took place aboard ‘The Sailor’. We were thrilled to strengthen our solar panel – news that those following us on Facebook already know about. But let me tell you why we decided to do this.

For the past few weeks since departing from New Zealand up until being anchored here in Fiji, where it’s a bit cloudy, we’ve been facing some challenges with our previous solar panel system not generating enough power for all of our needs. This led us into running the engine for half an hour to an hour every day.

Not very sustainable indeed! That’s when we figured, let’s see what the prices are like and potentially upgrade it in Suva. This 440W bifacial panel cost us £47 on each side (a steal!), plus welding at £120 – an incredibly cheap rate for a panel this size! It all worked out because the stainless steel shop we went to was inspired by our YouTube journey and gave us a deal.

We even had an extra good turn, matey. The yachty club where we stayed housed a professional welder, and he fixed us up for free using old parts off our previous fin! Cheers!

What’s Next?

In conclusion, today’s channel update was mostly about tea bags and solar panels. But we’re also considering our future journeys – post-Australia, shall we head north through Indonesia or veer towards Taiwan and Japan? Let us know in the comments which path you’d prefer to see on The Sailor Brothers’ Channel!

By now, you may have gotten an idea of what lies ahead for The Sailing Brothers. We’ve decided to head to Taiwan and Japan – then come back down and continue our sailing adventure.

We want to extend a big thank you once again for all your support; without it, we wouldn’t be where we are today on this incredible journey around the world!