Then off to Denarau to catch up with Moondance Carla and
Doug and some final okay more final provisioning. We did some provisioning at a place called
Pacific Meats. Karen phoned in an order,
they vacuum sealed the meat, packaged it perfectly and flash froze it. We walked in, it was boxed, we paid for it
and took the next bus back to the boat.
It was amazing.
Then a short trip up to Manta pass on the island of Naviti and the Mantas didn’t once again didn’t disappoint us, we will never get tired of
watching these amazing creatures. It is also awesome to introduce someone else
to the Mantas and we got to introduce John and JJ (Enchantments son and
grandson) to the Mantas. Their faces
just had that look the first time they saw them! We also took Moondance to the Mantas.
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| Turn right, turn left, turn right...no left just follow the yellow brick road nope okay the yellow line |
You can
look across at an island and see what looks like clear water….not so much,
there will be a reef or 2 under the surface, just for some excitement, between
you and that island for sure. But that
being said we had some really good waypoints to follow and off we went. It took us 3 days to get to the top of the
island only traveling in good light with eyes peeled stopping at around 2 pm at
an anchorage along the way. The crossing
of the famous Blight passage; Captain Blight after he was set a drift by his
crew navigated between the 2 islands of Viti Levu and Vanua Levu surrounded by
reefs as the men with him didn’t want to go on shore or wash up on shore as
they would probably be eaten by the natives or if they hit a reef by the
sharks. How he went through that passage
is amazing, he didn’t even have google earth, oh yeah no Wifi then.
After a couple of
days of playing with Mantas our plan was to make our way up Viti Levu over to Vanua Levu
then to Taveuni for June 16th.
We weaved our way up the west coast, along the north coast to about the
Northeast tip of Viti Levu, weaving our way is an understatement let just say
Fiji is really made up of reefs with an occasional island thrown in, so those
pointy bits just under the surfaces aka Coral heads always making it interesting
to move around Fiji.
Well we made our way we stopped at Naingani for a night then
off to Savusavu in Vanua Leva, a quick fill up of diesel and food and a walk
around town and then we are off to Viani Bay to see our friends on Somerset Carol/Caz and
Jim for some diving…yippy. So with a 3
am wakeup call we are left Savasava to head to Viani Bay the anchorage near the
famous Rainbow reef. We arrive to also
find our friends on Mystic Moon, Kathy and John, there as well and of course a
party complete with Champagne is arranged on a boat that we just meet through
Mystic, Bella Vita, Bret and Stacey.
Since we were all going diving the next day the number of bottles opened
was kept to a minimum.
A 7:30 am pickup by the dive boat and we are off , a strong
current and Cheryl had her inflator hose on her BC come right off during dive
so that made for a rather tiring dive trying to maintain buoyancy. Still we saw the famous blue ribbon eel,
beautiful corals and many colourful fish.
When we let go of the reef and sailed with the current is was like flying! The next dive with a rental BC; was good and
what a dive. Rainbow Reef is well named,
the fish are certainly colourful, the soft corals amazing and bright. The next day was another day of diving this
time we are doing the White wall, after a swim through we came upon this sheer wall with
coral puffs all in white. It was
amazing. The next dive was at Cabbage
patch and yup the coral looks like huge cabbage, so that must be where the
cabbage patch kids come from?????
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| Fiji Blue Ribbon Eel |
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| White puffs on the White Wall |
One of the local characters, Jack in Viani bay and his family put on a Lomo for
the anchorage. Which means for 10 Fijian they will cook, fish, chicken,
pumpkin, taro and other things we cannot pronounce in a fire pit covered with
banana leaves. Each plate was heaped
with yummy stuff. What a bargain.
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| Cole Slaw anyone? |
The weather was good for all so Mystic continued their
voyage towards the Lau and Bella Vita to Viti Levu and Somerset and Interlude
went off to Taveuni so that we can pick up our guest Jacqueline.
After picking up Jacqueline we had a lovey dinner on shore at Paradise resort,. They had a large party, so they set a table
up for us overlooking the water under a bure (which is really just a gazebo),
lovely. By the way this resort is so
friendly they even likes us cruisers. Plans were made for an island tour the
next morning. Jacqueline brought us meat
and cheese from New Zealand, a huge amount.
Beef tenderloin, Venison and lamb, complete with glaze to cook them
with. Not to mention some amazing
cheeses! And just to explain how nothing
goes to waste on a cruising boat, the Styrofoam container the meat and cheese came in was
prized by the resort, the cool packs have been shared with Somerset and the
meat and cheese will be slowly enjoyed over time on Interlude. We did have steaks all around (us and
Somerset when Jacqueline was down) but that was it as Jacqueline wanted fish
and hour old Mahi Mahi is hard to turn down!
Our tour with Kamal started at 9 am with a stop at the
market, the grocery store then off to the waterfalls for a verrrrry cold
swim. We hiked to the second falls but
we concluded as it was higher up it must be colder so we only swam in the lower
falls but did we mention it was coooooold.
After being cooled off, and very slow lunch in the big swinging village of
SomoSomo…not so much on the swinging part.
Off to the church and of course the date line to get the must have tacky
tourist picture of you standing on the 180 degree west line which we guess is
today and 180 degree east line so that must be yesterday or is it tomorrow…who
knows?????
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| Is this what we look like yesterday or tomorrow???? |
We had a day of just chilling on the boat and a day where we
went out on Interlude, fishing for a couple of hours where Karen caught a 5
foot Mahi Mahi on a hand line, which we shared with Somerset and gave the rest
to the staff at Paradise. Sushi was
definitely on the menu for Interlude.
Then it was back over to Viani Bay and yup
fishing…this time no luck. The weather
was not so great either in that the wind direction and swell was making the
anchorage a little rolly so we moved to the other side where the swell was much
less. Plans for the next day were to go
snorkeling or diving with Somerset. But
Somerset had to leave and go back to Viti Levu as they hit a reef navigating
through the anchorage. Once again we
said our see ya later to Somerset and we parted ways, us going back over to
Taveuni to drop Jacqueline off at her resort, after we untangled our anchor
chain that got wrapped around a coral head of course.
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| JUST TAKE THE PICTURE THIS IS HEAVY |
We could not believe what we found when we went to the
anchorage at the top of Taveuni…..a sandy bottom with no coral head to catch
our chain….amazing. Life is good. We dropped Jacqueline off with plans to meet
the next day for lunch and a massage.
Both where great.
Well it was time for us to head back to SavuSavu to start
our process of heading out of the country to clear Cheryl’s and the boat
papers. See, in Fiji you as an
individual can only stay in the country for 4 months and the boat for 18 months
and since Karen came back a month after Cheryl our paperwork is out of sync, so
we are going to a little French island about 250 miles northeast of Fiji called
Futuna to start the clock all over again.
On the way to Savu Savu Cheryl caught a Mahi Mahi that was
almost 4 feet long. We cleaned it on the
way, gave some fish to Matira, the carcass to the staff and again had Sushi!!
In SavuSavu we meet
up with Enchantment again did some provisioning and filled up with diesel again
and watched the weather for the perfect time to head to Futuna…okay perfect
weather is a fantasy but we can always dream.
The dream is starting to look good so with that and 4 weather forecasts almost
saying the same thing off we went.
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| Sushi |
We motor sailed up, a very fast and flat passage. We took Trouble down and rowed into town to
do our paperwork and French food shopping! We did manage to buy the last 3 duck breaks in
the store. NO baguettes, there goes our
breakfast plans! The anchorage in Futuna
is open to the south, which we were the swell usually comes from, so it is
rolly. The roll was not too bad, so we
opted not to put out a stern anchor. Bad
decision! We weighed anchor at 1:30 am
as the wind had clocked, as it was forecast to do and the swell associated with
the wind made the anchorage horrible!!
The forecast was for the wind to be no more than 20 knots and from the
SE. Our course was SW, so while not a
beam, it shouldn’t have been too bad! But
what we got was 12 hours of 25-35 knots, all on the nose and 3+ meter
seas. After that the wind died down and
clocked to ESE and the passage was fast and lovely, we made Matei by 1pm,
anchor down in sand and no swell!
