South to North

From Southern Lau to Northern Lau okay it is only 120 nautical miles, an overnight sail.  No problem????

·         A good forecast … check

·         Winds in the right direction…yup downwind …check

·         Seas 1 to 1.5 meters from the right direction...NOT SO MUCH…2 meters.. WRONG DIRECTION

·         Sleep….are you kidding see Seas above

·         Food…yummy  split pea soup courtesy of Ian on Summer Spirit.

·         Buddy Boat; Local Talent, Dean and Sabina …check
 

Okay the winds where not quite the 15 -20 knot but okay and in the right directions so Interlude with just a head sail was honking.  However the seas were in just the wrong direction, so no sleep, even for Karen.  Apart from the seas it was an okay passage it was great to travel with another boat and yak  about the winds and seas during a passage. So with Local Talent on the radio and with great food in our tummy we arrived in Vanua Balavu, the Northern Lau.

With the sun shining we lead the way in the pass, with Local Talent on our heels, it was easy.  This set of islands have such many large openings in the reefs that current in the passes is not an issue, the issue is that most of the charts are off by almost ½ a mile!  While we have several tracks from other boats into the anchorage we get a heads up from Mer Soliel on a reef on our approach, so we motored around it.  We tried to anchor at the south of the anchorage as we noticed less swell, but couldn’t get the anchor to stick, so we went to the back of the pack and parked .

We put Trouble, our dinghy, in the water and went and picked up Local Talent so that both boats could do their Sevu Sevu at the same time.  We presented our waka and $60 to the chief and were welcomed to the village.   Then  off we went for a little walk with Dean and Sabina, to stretch our legs  after a wobbly passage.  We walked through the village and several kilometers down the road, lovely views over the sea.  We passed pigs, goats, cows and horses, the school and taro and cassava plants, papayas and bananas, all is well in the world.

Yup a grass skirt.  The birthday boy

One of the reason we actual bee lined up to the northern lau was we were invited to a surprise birthday party for a fellow cruiser.  Bev on Mer Soliel had planned this surprise birthday for Robbie’s 70^th  (also known as Robin or his Robbieness). Bev had contacted fellow cruisers and friends to meet up on a his birthday at the Vanua Balavu way back last year.  Bev had arranged with the village of Daliconi that they would put on a feast; a Lovo for us, complete with a pig cooked in the ground and all the fixins  Yummy!!  It was a complete surprise and poor Robbie had to get dressed up in traditional Figian garb, what a great time complete with singing and dancing.  

Robbie checking out the pig in the pit

Teaching the village kids Bocce

The next we had arranged to go on an island tour with Local Talent.  So we went to Lomo Lomo, the largest city on the island, bought Voda phone top ups for our cell phones, Local Talent bought some fruit and veg, such as it was.  With shopping completed, off we went to the hot springs and caves complete with human bones and then to a lookout, all before lunch.  Our driver took us to a lovely backpacker place for lunch,  then to the other end of the island to the village of the former prime minister and a church leader and then back to Daliconi, the village we were anchored off of.  We had a dispute over the price, which was not a nice way to end to the day, but it was all settled and well worth the trip.

Outlook mid island

Cooking off the moisture

We then moved to Batavu Bay, where Tony’s (the owner of Vuda and Copra Shed marina) grandfather bought a place, many many moons ago.  A deep lovely bay large enough to hold good 10-20 boats, but the depth of the bay ranges from 15 meters to 22 meters; we lucked in and found a place that was 9 meters.  Here you are welcomed ashore and welcomed to walk all around the plantation, which is complete with hiking paths!  The plantation has sheep and cows, the village has chickens too.  Here they do the first press of coconut oil.  It is mostly manual process; they husk the coconuts by hand, and then split the nuts in two, keeping the water and cores to feed to the pigs and chicken.  They then use an electric coconut grater to get the white coconut meat out.  3 kilos of coconut meat are then put onto a steel sheet heated by a fire made from coconut shells.  They cook it to get off most of the moisture then put it in a press.  The 3 kilos will yield a litre of oil.  Of course we bought a wine bottle full of oil!

Pressing the coconut oil out

The plantation has roads and trails, substantial trails.  One has a look out over the Bay of Islands.  It is just beautiful and we were welcomed to pick mandarins along the way!  And they were awesome. Nothing is better than just picked fruit

From the lookout with a view of the Bay of Islands

We did the same walk 3 more times, with Fabio and Lisa on Amandla and when Mer Soleil and Local Talent arrived, with them too.  Everyone was happy with the Interlude guided tours!

We celebrated Canada Day with Exit Strategy, Tom and Lisa fellow Canadians; we had met back in Bora Bora.

As the American boats soon took over the anchorage (Domino, MerSoleil, Amandla and Local Talent) and July 4^th was coming up so a potluck on shore was planned, at the Yacht Club, actually bocce followed by the pot luck.  Great food and great company.  Robbie took this day as an opportunity to light his birthday sparkler, courtesy of Interlude.

Follow the bat to the bat cave

Since we were just around the corner from the Bay of Islands we went there the next day, all of 7 miles.   In between rain showers we explored by dinghy as there is nowhere to go to shore.  We found the mother of Bat colonies!  It was something watching them climb the trees, like monkeys and watching them fly around. Didn’t see Bruce Wayne though.  They have these rocks that look like ship wrecks…well kind of or maybe if you are on drugs or something, but the anchorage was peaceful and flat worth the stop over.  We left the next morning to head for Savu Savu.

Do they look like ships to you????

Definition of a flat anchorage

From Northern Lau to Savu Savu another 120 nautical miles

·         A good forecast …

·         Winds in the right direction…

·         Seas 1 to 1.5 meters from the right direction…

·         Sleep….

·         Food…

·         Buddy Boat…nope.

STAY TUNE!!!

Falanga The Mushroom Islands



Yup The little islands look like mushrooms....kind of...sort of....maybe.

Anchor down just inside the pass in Fulanga, in the southern Lau, the eastern most islands of Fiji after an almost perfect weather window for heading in the wrong direction of the normal trade winds.  With the sun shining, off we went with Erie Spirit to snorkel the pass we just drove through. Lots of little fish with an occasional big one and a turtle swimming like something was chasing it and yup pointy edges that we happy made it through.   After that a glass of champagne and a relaxing dinner, then a good night’s sleep! 

More Mushrooms

Next day we moved to the village anchorage were we went in to do our Sevu Sevu, with Erie Spirit and another boat that had just arrived from Savu Savu, Local Talent, with Dean and Sabina on board.  Once at the village we put on our Sulus (long skirt or wrap) and asked around for Joe and Tara, who were Mystic Moons hosts last year.  We had pictures and a letter for them from Mystic Moon.  After a friendly hello, we exchanged some stories about John and Kathy.  Then Joe took us to see the chief, grabbing a sulu off a line on the way.  The chief is in his 80s and doesn’t speak English, so his son, Simon, is there to interpret.  We pass on our Waka and $50 and are welcomed to the village.  We are then get assigned a host family, it got a little confusing as they thought that Erie Spirit and us were on the same boat, there was no way 2 girls would be on their own boat so they must be crew of Erie Spirit.  So we had tea with Tie’s family Erie Spirit’s host , and then he realized that yup 2 girls can be on their own boat, so then we were assigned our own host family, Bis and Joanna as each boat has a host family.

Bis and Joanna are a young couple, both have degrees from the university of the South Pacific.  Joanna is from the village and Biz is a city slicker from Suva, they married a couple of years ago and are enjoying village life.  Sunday sees us at church, yes, again!!  The service was all in Fijian, so all we can say is the singing was lovely!!  They were probably 30 or 40 cruisers there, a greater number than the villagers!!  After church we went to our host’s house for lunch.  We were served fish, two different ways, both awesome and coconut water, so Karen was happy. To soak up the sauces we had coconut bread cooked in an earth over, lovely!! Interesting that we were given cutlery, our hosts used their fingers, then passed around a bowl of water after to wash our hands.  No dinner that night, way too full!! Do they normally eat that much….WOW!!!

Joanna took us clamming!  Awesome, she was very successful, Cheryl was also productive, I found a few as did Mark, Susan found 1.    Since you have to float in the water and find the little cracks in the sand where the clams are breathing let’s just say after 2 hours in the water we were FROZEN TURDS!  So we dropped Joanna off at the shore and went back to our boats to warm up.  We cooked a bucketful of clams and made clam fritters,   we then took them over to Erie Spirit for the feast of our bounty.  Cheryl picked up Bis, Joanna and Tie and we had clams as fritters, clams boiled and dipped in garlic butter and a sea weed salad a la Interlude(we call the sea weed sea grapes, not sure what it is really called.  Poor man’s caviar?).  Lovely.

Next low tide we went crabbing, at least Mark, Susan and Karen did, with Cheryl staying on the boat as the once a month delivery barge anchored right in front of Local Talent and us a little too close for us. Karen, Mark, Susan and Tie took the dinghy two bays over to where Tie has his farm.  We went up and down and onto Mangrove flats.  Tie caught a mangrove crab right away, a BIG one!  Tie caught it with his bare hands, crawling in the cave with half of his body into a ‘cave’ to pull it out.  We then spent the next hour or two wandering around the mangroves, where there were rocks behind for the crabs to hide in.  I had a Bahamian spear with me, while I saw several crabs, none large enough to kill, so they got to live another day, to grow.  Then as we were walking around we saw an amazing sight it was the migration of thousands of small crabs with large red claws, quite a sight to see.

Tie with dinner

On the way back Tie pick some Cassava, the root of a tree somewhat a cross between a hard yam and a hard potato.  Tie showed Susan and I how to make a basket to carry our Cassava and Papaya back to the dinghy.

We picked up Cheryl and went to Erie Spirit.  The crab was cooked, Tie peeled the Cassava, then Susan and I cut it up.  Mark cooked it as pan fries, making it very tasty.  We had made a salad, so once again we had some nutrition.  Another feast yummy

We had Joanna and Bis over for lunch.  Phad Thai was served, with fish.  After a second helping for our hosts, the Phad Thai disappeared.

We moved over to the sand spit anchorage to see what was there.  We walked the beach with Susan at low tide and saw some amazing turquoise pools and white sand beaches; we walked from one end of the beach to the other, just another lovely day in paradise.

Mark on Erie Spirit has to be back in the States for work, so they moved on.  Our playmates were gone! What a great time catching up with them but we know we will see them again real soon.

One day in the village in between rain and wind the village had an inter village competition:  volleyball, singing and dancing.  We watched some great volleyball being played by the villagers both men and women…boy they are good, then it was our turn to play a bit it was truly an embarrassment.

Being good cruisers we listen for weather everyday on the SSB when we don’t have Wifi so as we had been listening on Gulf Harbour Radio, an SSB net run but a retired meteorologist, who gives an awesome weather summary.  (on 8752 at 0715 our time)  So we found out Moondance was on her way.  And then we heard Moondance on the VHF, saying they are at the pass waiting for the tide to come in so we waited and waited and waited.  They made it in but they got lost and went to the wrong anchorage!  So we had a laugh about that, (yup they even said they wondered how they made it to Fij). So with plans for them to move over the next day to where we were as the forecasted was for the winds to pick up and we had hunkered down by the village as it was the most protected anchorage in Falanga.  And boy did we get wind and rain.  Moondance finally made it over, two days later along with all of the other boats in the other anchorages.  We took them into the village for their Sevu Sevu and show them around and as we passed Joe someone grabbed him a Sulu off the clothes line and he took Moondance off to see the chief.

One day in the village we made poor Tie teach Cheryl how to make a basket.  You see the Fijians make these baskets out of palm fronds.  They use them to carry everything.  Last year we had one made by Sepo at Paradise and put fruit in it.  It seems to us that the fruit lasted longer in the baskets.  While, Cheryl was successful and Tie still has fingers, but it was close, the question really is would Cheryl finish the basket before Tie ran out of patience.  So now we have two baskets holding our fruit, one made by Cheryl and one made by Karen.  Tie was a great teacher….Cheryl was an okay student but need more instruction for sure. 

Right over left or is it left over right??????

So with new playmates we had dinner on Moondance and played 42, a domino game.  We had Doug and Carla over for dinner and played more games! They are such good company it was sad when we had to move on!

Next stop:  Vanua Balavu, in the northern Lau

The Dreaded Pizza

What can change your course or plans.  The weather.. new information…a piece of pizza?  What?  Cheryl made pizza, not unusual on Interlude but then she bit down and broke a tooth.  Oops, so off to Suva we go.

Instead of heading the next to the southern Lau, to island called Falanga, we are off to a dentist 50 miles away in the capital city of Suva. We chose to go to Lami just a short bus ride outside Suva, where Tony, the owner of Vuda Point and Copra Shed Marinas has some mooring balls.  Karen called him and he said sure go ahead and use the mooring balls if one is free and gives Karen the caretaker, Sonny’s, number to see if one is available.  Yup we are in luck. We called Sunny when we were close, as it is Saturday, he had left for the day, but gives us some details and we are fine.  Cheryl had written to Ian on Summer Spirit and he contacted some people in Suva to get a name of a good dentist.  Cheryl has an appointment for Monday at eleven so all is good.

Sunday we go for a walk, after finding out the place to leave the dinghy which is behind the police boat!!  No problems the gentlemen are lovely.  We walk into Lami, a nice suburb of Suva.  As it was a Sunday we could hear the singing from all the churches in the area and we even lucked into a make shift local market, on the street.

Like all cruisers we had some parts come in but we didn’t get it in time when left Vuda so we heard a friend of a friend was going to Vuda and heading to Suva so arrangement where made.   As it turned our delivery person is the one who gave Ian the name of the dentist a good friend of both Colleen and Ian on Summer Spirit and who is currently looking dog sitting Koli, previously introduced as Wiggle Butt.  So we met up Nirmala lived in Lami, or so we thought and so she did until two weeks ago!!  Anyway we meet up with Nirmala and her daughter Angel, and instead of just passing on the goods, we gabbed for a couple of hours and made plans for the weekend if we were still in Lami.

Monday we headed into Suva, a short taxi ride.  We locate the building with the dentist and get there an hour early.  No issues, the dentist had a cancelation and Cheryl was done, before she was scheduled to go in.  There she stood at the reception with her tooth in hand, or rather the rest of the tooth in hand and a prescription.  We fill the prescription and head back to the boat. Now with another hole in her head…hummm

We had met a couple diving in Kadavu, Gail and Don.  We phoned to say that we were in Suva, certainly sooner than they expected to hear from us.  Anyway, we arranged to have dinner at their place on Friday.  Gail has done a lot of travelling and figured that one of the things we would want to do was laundry.  So in the end, we had lovely company, a lovely dinner and clean laundry!!  Heaven.

It looked like we had another weather window to head to the Falanga so we provisioned on the Friday and then it window slammed shut.  Okay we are in Suva, there must be things to do!!  Lets call Gail and Don.  Oh, Victoria Wines is doing a wine tasting, awesome.  And Gail and Don have been before, all we need to do is see if Cheryl is up for it after all it is only a day after she had her tooth pulled.  The night was great fun and good wine to taste, yup even for toothless.

We are in Suva, so of course we must go to Cost u Less, but really once or twice is enough.  We went to Cost u Less before the dentist.  Then 2 days later we saw a movie, Futureland, actually quite good and of course since Cost u Less is by the movie theater visit number 2.  Then we went to Sunday Jazz at Bad Dogs restaurant beside Cost u Less  with Gail and you guessed it we went in to Cost u less.  Okay 3 times is enough we need to get out of Suva.

Then Karen got the bright idea she wanted to see rice paddies and after searching the internet found a study about rice growing in Fiji.  Gail is selling a friend’s car, but not before she takes us in search of rice.  While we had a lovely day, we didn’t see and rice paddys.  Talked to several people at several government agricultural sites around the east end of the island.  Talked to a man who had been growing rice, but the government never fulfilled its side of the deal, and the land has been let go fallow, so no rice paddies but a lovely drive anyway.

Saturday we had dinner with Nirmala and Angel.  We went early so that we could be part of the cooking process.  Karen was very happy, got to help, got to make roti, had great company, great food and were sent away with leftovers for a very hardy lunch the following day.   

So I am to roll this thing and make it round not the shape of Texas ...hum I need some more work on this.

Moondance arrived in on Tuesday, yes there was a free mooring.  They had a very rough passage, parked just inside the reef at 3 30 in the morning, coming into our anchorage the next day.  After some food and a nap Carla and Doug joined us for a walk into Lami and then we took a taxi to the Royal Suva Yacht Club.  Karen was staring at a lady, finally said “where do we know you from”.  The answer, Erie Spirit, it was Mark and Susan who we had spent some time with in Panama!

While it seemed like we really did have a weather window, so we left on Wednesday afternoon for Fulanga along with Erie Spirit.  The seas were lively for the first few hours, then we sailed and motor sailed for 18 hours and then took the sail down and motored the rest of the way, a swell from the south west, no wind.  Took the pass into Falanga just after high tide, in the slack time, experienced no current.  Just the way a passage should be!!

 

Finally Falanga Southern Lau