Tuesday, October 7, 2014

Will's Island Hopping...little diving, little snorkeling and sailing

It has been 3 ½ years since the last time I was on Interlude in Roatan. Since then Karen and Cheryl have sailed the thousands of miles across the Pacific to Fiji. Some people talk about sailing the Caribbean or the South Pacific, but very few people actually do it. Just having a chance to go for 2 weeks is a great opportunity so I couldn’t miss it. On the 11 hour flight from Los Angeles I thought how long it would take to do this trip by boat, the flight took long enough.

After arriving in Nadi I had another flight to Taveuni and a short drive to Paradise Resort on the south end of the island where Interlude was moored. Karen and Cheryl were there playing volleyball with the other yachties.
Interlude at Paradise
The next day I did a dive at “fish factory” at the rainbow reef. This was a very scenic reef with large coral growths and a lot of fish.

We went to Savusavu the next day. The ocean swells looked large to me, but Karen and Cheryl didn’t think they were that bad, they had seen worse. They caught a large Mahi Mahi on the way, so we had fish for the next few meals.  
In Savusavu we moored in a calm port and met with people on a boat called Monkey Fist that night. The next day we walked around the small town. I arranged to do a shark dive for the next day. I did see some sharks, but they were hard to get close to, the sharks stayed away from divers.
Look closely maybe you can see his teeth!!

We then went to the north end of the Yasawa Islands. We did a 120 mile, 24 hour passage.  This was timed to go through the reefs during daylight and open water in the dark. We each did 3 hour shifts to watch out for things. This auto pilot did the steering. I thought the waves at night were large, but Cheryl and Karen thought the water was calm, again they had seen worse. A large group of dolphins swam with the boat for a while just before dark.
 
 
 
We stopped at the north end on the Yasawa Islands where we went ashore to do the Kava presentation to the chief of the village. There were no roads in this village, only footpaths from one house to another.  The anchorage got rough by the end of the day so we moved to another site the next day.
North Yasawa beach
Yup Will had to wear a Sulu aka a skirt to do the Kava presentation
We then went to “Blue Lagoon” anchorage, near a large resort. This was very scenic and protected as well. The water was very calm and you wouldn’t know that you were on a boat. We did some snorkeling and saw several pipe fish and other reef fish.
The next day we anchored in Waya where everyone from the other yachts came to Interlude for a few drinks and food. It was a good party and the other boats commented on it on the radio the next day. The second day we did some snorkeling on the reef and then went ashore later in the afternoon.

 
For the last day of the trip we went to Denarau on the main island of Fiji, about 30 miles away. This was a resort area with a new marina and several high end hotels, not the “real Fiji”. We had dinner at a nice restaurant on the edge of the water.  This marina has some large mega yachts that must be 150 feet long or more.
3 sailors enjoying some local grog
From Denarau it is a taxi ride to the Nada airport, we went to the Nadi town and to a rum store for a tasting before I needed to leave to the airport. 

We sailed a total of 236 miles while I was there.  I keep telling Karen and Cheryl to keep notes and write a book when they come back to Canada, but they would have a lot of material and it could be a long time yet before this trip is over.

 

 

 

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