What have we been doing since Deb left???

We meet up with our friends Enchantment (Vern and Michelle) who just sailed up from New Zealand and where waiting for their son and grandson to arrive from the States.  For us that meant a hair cut from Michelle’s son John, so upon his early morning arrival his first introduction to us was a ‘Hi’ ....pause….pause…. “when can you cut our hair???”, so by noon Cheryl and Karen sported new haircuts!  The next couple days were final provisioning and then a Birthday dinner for Karen, with Enchantment, providing the crown and scepter for the "Queen for the day”.  Just one day ONLY… right Karen?!

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.

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 16^th.  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.  

Fiji Blue Ribbon Eel

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????? 

White puffs on the White Wall

 



 Cole Slaw anyone?

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.

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?????

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.

JUST TAKE THE PICTURE THIS IS HEAVY

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. 

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!!

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.

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!