Musket Cove, Yasawa children and Kava

Bad Fun – Good Fun

I awoke at about 5:00 am to what I thought was lightening. I registered that the wind was indeed blowing and it was raining. I was about to roll over and continue my sleep when the lightening happened again (no thunder). Hummmm, better look out the window and see how bad this storm is! The good news is that the storm is not so bad, the bad news is that one of the sail boats is dragging anchor and is headed right toward us. "All Hands on Deck!" We rush around making preparations for impact which luckily doesn't happen – all the shouting and flashing of lights woke the fellow and he managed to get hooked in solid again.  Now there are three of us all huddled in very close anchorage vicinity.  When day finally breaks, the sail boat moves back to his earlier location and because the swing of the other fellow beside us is a little too close for comfort we decide to move also. Two moves later, we have secured ourselves where we are comfortable and NOBODY is going to bother us. This was the bad fun.

We have a taxi booked on the main island of Viti Levu for 10:00 am so off we head for the boat basin at the Wananuka Resort – a short five minute boat ride. Our taxi ride to Rakiraki (the town) was 15 minutes through sugar cane fields and farms on a very, very bumpy road. We only really needed to go to the bank for some cash to feed our diving habit, so once that was done we toured the town – all four streets – it is actually a big square. It is always mandatory to see the local market and there we found Glen's coveted radishes and his necessary watermelon. He has such fun chatting up the selling ladies. After only an hour we have the place covered so we ask at a furniture store (we were getting "top up" cards for our airstick – go figure) where the best place in town was for lunch. The helpful young man directed us to Raj's Wine and Dine. Wine and Dine turns out to be a clean, if spare place on the second floor above the trucking terminal office, we are the only patrons. In normal "safe" tourist mode, we order beer for our drinks and are slightly surprised when they show up in quart bottles – liquid lunch? As we are waiting for our lunches to arrive, the maitre 'd asks if we would like a lesson in making roti – our lunch roti. He traipsed us all back to the kitchen where a smiling young Indian woman (it is an Indian restaurant) showed us the finer points of making roti. We laughed and giggled and took pictures and we think we know how to make roti now. Lunch was very delicious. One final stop was made before we called our taxi for home – I am now the proud owner of a roti board and rolling pin - $6.00 Fijian. This was good fun.

We whizzed all of our goodies back to the big boat, hung out for a bit, cleaned our grubby little boat person selves up and sped back to the Wananuka Resort for a night out and a fantastic "lovo" (traditional dinner). We stopped to talk to their dive shop guys and were shocked to hear that they were going to be putting 44 divers in the water the next day. Boy, are we ever glad we didn't call them for our dive experience – what a gong show that will be. Our way back to the big boat in the dark (3/4 moon – so not too dark) the water is like smooth like oil and the air is a warm caress as we glide almost noiselessly along. Beautiful.  This was also good fun.

Nananu-i-Ra

This is an accidental discovery on our part. No tour books or cruiser advice directed us to stop in Nananu-i-Ra, it just looked like a safe place to anchor on our trip back to Denarau.  After wending our way through the entrance reefs we pulled into the perfect parking spot between two sail boats who where up against the island. Beautiful scenery of lovely resort homes to our front, the clear blue ocean to our rear – perfect sunset watching location and the main island of Viti Levu off to our right. There are a couple of resorts on the points facing us on Viti Levu and they are open to outside diners which is a plus, so we'll check that out another day. Diving looked like it would be the thing to do with all of the surrounding reefs (and you know we hate diving J) so we rang up Papoo Divers who are located on the island and arranged to go out the next day. Papoo and his fellows did not disappoint us. They arrived on time to pick us up from the boat and we sped off to the first dive site, Golden Dream. There are two other divers with us, so it is a small group which is the excellent (the only way to be better would be if it were only Glen and I). Golden Dream was exactly that – the tall rock pinnacles were densely covered with beautiful golden soft corals, there were enormous fan corals and of course everything else. It was a fabulous dive that only needed a touch of filtering sunshine to make it glow.  Our next dive spot was "Canadian Mushroom". We figured that Papoo was pulling our leg(s) with the name, but he said "no, it was named by a couple of Canadian girls who dove with him when it (the site) was un-named". It turns out to also be an awesome dive. O.K., so now we are hooked, instead of picking up and heading out to the Yasawa group, as was our original plan, we make the choice to stay here for the next four days and dive some more.

Ugly Weather Moves Us On

Today has been...well...just one of those days. First we had to move our boat to a less rough spot for the night which still left us rocking and rolling throughout. Namena Island is a small dot in the middle of an ocean level reef, so when the wind gets up and the waves start rolling there isn't much shelter. The weather forecaster seems to be off by a day with his predictions. So that was last night, the set up for today. We all wake at dawn, probably because we weren't asleep anyway. Before we can even have a cup of coffee to clear our heads, the first problem is discovered, the railing has torn off of the whaler. Usual practise is to tie the whaler lengthwise along the swim grid when it is not resting atop the big boat, kind of like our own little docking system. I guess the poor little Dear was just having a really wild ride last night and something had to give. $$$$$$$$ Well we are out of here! Enough of this. O.K. I'll put fuel into the day tank and the wing tank (so we have stuff for the engines to work on). Remember, I haven't had coffee yet...Is that really an excuse? Somehow, I make the error (yes, me)of not shutting the wing tank valve off as I move on to fill the day tank and overrun the diesel all over the raw teak decks. AAAAAHH!!!!@#$*&%@%**! Now we are scrubbing decks and pulling the anchor and trying to control the whaler off of the back deck..What a ZOO. We were planning to move back to Makogai island today anyway so our route is all in place. As we poke our nose around the edge of Namena, we discover that we have been in the "smooth stuff".
A bumpy three hours later we have our anchor set in the bay a Makogai and I can have my coffee for today as I sit and complain to the world in general about crappy weather.

----------
radio email processed by SailMail
for information see: http://www.sailmail.com

Be Amazed!

These are the words that suddenly pop into my mind as I am 50 feet below the water's surface staring up at a column of rock that is over-adorned with every conceivable hard and soft coral, with a million (yes, I mean a million)fishes in the most dazzling color hues that any human mind can possibly imagine (even those minds with chemical enhancements). There is no greater "high" than the thrill one gets from displays by Mother Nature(God), such as this. Be amazed! So in fewer words, we had a great dive at the "chimneys" on Namena Reef. The anchorage is a bit suspect as we are quite exposed while we cling to the edge of a tiny island on their mooring ball. We had a pretty stiff wind blowing us onto shore and we finally chickened out and dropped our own anchor several 100 yards further out. We were convinced that we were dragging the mooring ball (should have put our dive gear on and checked!) We are the only boat here. There are six guest "bures" (houses) on the island, but they are on the other side, so it is pretty quiet here.

----------
radio email processed by SailMail
for information see: http://www.sailmail.com

Be Amazed!

These are the words that suddenly pop into my mind as I am 50 feet below the water's surface staring up at a column of rock that is over-adorned with every conceivable hard and soft coral, with a million (yes, I mean a million)fishes in the most dazzling color hues that any human mind can possibly imagine (even those minds with chemical enhancements). There is no greater "high" than the thrill one gets from displays by Mother Nature(God), such as this. Be amazed! So in fewer words, we had a great dive at the "chimneys" on Namena Reef. The anchorage is a bit suspect as we are quite exposed while we cling to the edge of a tiny island on their mooring ball. We had a pretty stiff wind blowing us onto shore and we finally chickened out and dropped our own anchor several 100 yards further out.

----------
radio email processed by SailMail
for information see: http://www.sailmail.com

Viani Bay and Rabi Island

Apologies all around, I just re-read my last blog and the spelling and grammar could have been proof read a lot better. Hope you got the drift anyway.

Sooo, we met some boaters on our last night in Savusavu, three couples from New Zealand. Sat with them in the yacht club for a beer before dinner. They have traveled in Fiji for many seasons and provided us with a wealth of information regarding what to do and where to go. Sometimes it is interesting finding out what fellow boaters did for work in their "old life". We've come across many people who have been in the computer business - in one form or another, a financier, a dentist, a freighter captain, construction company owners (we fit in here), a pilot for Swiss Air (he was also an Italian Duke!) and now we've met a past dairy farmer. It is very interesting to discover other cruiser's reasons for being on the blue ocean, discovering new places and people.

From Savusavu we make our way to Viani Bay on the east side of Vanua Levu. We prefer to call it Jack's Bay as Jack Fisher is an old timer here who is re-known for showing off the best dive sites in his Fiji. We spend 5 days here and dive every day, sometimes twice a day. The "white wall" is surreal dive site at a depth of 100 feet. We drop into the clear blue water and swim down through a tunnel in the reef that opens from a sheer rock wall into the deep blue of the wide open ocean. We are suspended in blue. To our left on the face of the deep ocean wall is the most amazing display of perfectly set snow white soft coral. The ocean current gently nudges us along the wall so we can marvel at the breathtaking beauty of it all and then the current deposits us on top of the reef again where the multitudes of colorful fishes and other stunningly beautiful corals are found. This is a rather rough description of a fabulous dive experience. The diving here in Jack's Bay tops everything. I won't bore everyone with details, just let it be known that this spot is World Class Diving. On one of our evenings here, Jack's family puts on a dinner for all of the boats in the bay (oooh another social event) and we met several new groups of people. The dinner was a delicious mixture of Indian and Fijian foods with the best tortillas I have ever tasted - even better than Mexico.

Our next place of discovery is Albert Cove on Rabi Island, which is to the east of Vanua Levu. Rabi Island was purchased for the people of Ocean Island in 1945. They are from Banaba and are of Micronesian descent. So not really Fijians, though they are now citizens of Fiji. Very nice people. The families of the cove were happy to talk to us and arranged to get us some bananas and green coconuts. We keep asking the fishermen for lobster, but as yet none have had any luck finding some for us. We have seen the lobsters on our dives, but we keep their locations secret (we would really rather look at them underwater than eat them). Once again, the winds and weather are going to invade our beautiful anchorage so after only one night we have to move to a different bay on the island. But this is not a problem, as it is a new village and group of people for us to meet. There is a large Methodist church perched on the hill of the village, overlooking the bay. We visit this building during our walk on shore. A cyclone in April 2010 really did a lot of damage to it, but the villagers are slowly putting it back together. While we are walking, an engaging young woman invited us to a fund raiser for the church that they were putting on that evening. The ladies of the church do this - a traditional dance show with coconut refreshments (right out of the shell) - when ever they get a collection of boats in their bay. Today, there are five boats. What fun, they really put a lot of energy into the dancing.

Weather, weather, weather! We have to move again. The weather has been sunny and very warm, so no complaints there, it is just the wind that keeps switching around which makes certain anchorages not so comfortable to be in. We will head back to Jack's Bay. If we have to be stuck someplace, we may as well be stuck with awesome diving.

----------
radio email processed by SailMail
for information see: http://www.sailmail.com