Logbooks:
Fiji 2014 Part 1: Suva to Savusavu
Savusavu 21st July - 30th Aug
| Date: | Sept. 1, 2014, 1:47 a.m. |
| Position: | 16 46.70 S, 179 19.96 E |
After 6 weeks docked at the Copra Shed Marina we were beginning to feel like Savusavu locals. I am pretty sure we ate at almost every restaurant in town, we found it hard to go past the Taste of Hidden Paradise for consistency and price but actually you can get a good feed anywhere if you order well.
Savusavu is a terrific yachtie-oriented town and in spite of it's size you can get just about everything you could want. We shipped in the transmission parts we needed from the USA through DHL which was impressively quick. Jolene at the Waitui Marina is a delight and keeps on top of your packages to make sure they get to you safe & sound.
After the first week getting the lay of the land and diagnosing the transmission problems we ordered the parts and had a bit of time to kill. The teak on the boat now looks much better and we were quickly caught up on many of those long term outstanding projects. Mark also decided to reverse engineer the software for the radar for fun, this means that we can now run a super low energy navigation computer as we will not have to use a power hungry windows operating system. I decided to finally get my PADI Open Water Dive Certification which was well priced through Koro Sun Dive and included some great dives. We saw Hammerheads at 'Dream House', Turtles at 'Turtle Alley' and did some really fun swim-throughs at 'Dungeons and Dragons'. We also made great friends with the dive team and spent a lot of time hanging out with them over the next few weeks.
Savusavu was packed full of yachts for the first month of our stay and we barely kept up with the socialising. As we were dockside the back deck got a good work out most nights. We really enjoyed continuing to hang out with Liberation, Flour Girl, Silver Ruffian and the rest of the boats we met on the way up here and made many more new friends whom we hope to catch up with again. At one point there was a record of over 130 boats packed into little Savusavu! Many have now headed West to the much anticipated Musket Cove Regatta week.
Curly's morning Sched at 0800 is a great resource and his seminar was fun & informative as we had herd. We are looking forward to making use of his waypoints as we head to the Lau Group. Mark managed to find a few friends on the Sched to go Kitesurfing with him, they headed over to Nuku Balavu Village to do a Sevusevu ceremony to get permission to kite in their lagoon. The village had never seen anything like it and the school broke out early to watch the crazy flying Palangi's.
By amazing co-incidence I bumped into an Architect I knew from the University of Queensland, James Davidson. We had a terrific catch up on a hike/swim/drink to a waterfall near where he was staying and even got the chance to stickybeak around the construction site of his latest project over here. A beautiful tropical house which combines sustainability principals with local vernacular touches. The craftsmanship of the work he has achieved is terrific and while things have been running on 'island time' the finished product is going to be well worth it. (It even made me miss work a little...)
Mark did a really thorough job rebuilding the transmission and it seems to be running beautifully. We finally said goodbye to all our new friends including the ecosystem of fish built up under our boat. Perth surf buddies Jim & Alina have joined us and we have stuffed the boat full of provisions to survive up to two month in the Lau Group. Fingers Crossed for a nice weather window to get there.
Arrived in Savusavu
| Date: | July 20, 2014, 1:24 p.m. |
| Position: | 16 46.70 S, 179 19.96 E |
| Track to here: | Download |
We ended up having to motor to Savusavu but we took it easy, stopping for a couple of hours to let the transmission cool. We were kept entertained by Mahi Mahi schooling right under the boat and Mutineer Brodie finally manage to land a 4kg / 1m one on a handling. This helped to redeem us in the fishing competition with Flour Girl. Zack completely trounced us by landing 2 Mahi Mahi, a skipjack and three Yellowfin Tunas, I think he is all of 8 years old. We owe him ice-cream I think. They very kindly threw us one of the Yellowfin as they motored passed while we were idling. Liberation who had come up from Koro hooked up but did not manage to land one but again they beat us into port. We were joined along the way by some entertaining dolphins as well as a pod of Pilot Whales. The transmission held up to get us into the really well set up Copra Shed Marina but we would not liked to have pushed it any further. Lucky for us Savusavu seems to be every bit as nice as we have herd so it is a good place to be stuck while we sort it out.
Namena Is.
| Date: | July 17, 2014, 1:24 p.m. |
| Position: | 17 6.70 S, 179 5.61 E |
| Track to here: | Download |
We decided to skip Koro Is. preferring instead to stop at Namena which is almost on the rhumb line to Savusavu from Mokogai. We had a slow day making the 20NM, sailing in very light to no wind in between short stints of motoring so as not to cook the transmission. Mark is starting to think the oil pump might be the root of the problem so we shall see when we get to Savusavu. We sailed through several flocks of birds working the surface but despite the Mutineer’s best efforts we still did not manage to catch a fish!
The anchorage at Namena supposedly has some moorings, the resort even confirmed this on the VHF and that we could use them. However there where 8 other yachts there already and none using them, no doubt the situation is constantly changing but we would advise very careful inspection prior to picking one up. In spite of the hefty looking buoy a quick underwater peek showed one attached to two buckets of concrete… The anchorage is deep at 20-25 meters but was quite sandy so holding was good and the forecast was for a few days of very light winds. The marine reserve is quite extensive and in excellent condition, a quick snorkel and free-dive was all it took to see sizeable and very inquisitive fish, turtles and sharks not to mention the great array of coral with fun formations, walls, swim throughs et al. The boobys are so tame they seem to be considering landing on your head when you are in the dingy. Apparently the scuba diving is amazing but the sites were a bit too far away for us on this trip with our transmission troubles. We will hopefully have a chance to come back to make the most of our annual Namena Marine Reserve Pass at $30pp. A lovely place to be stuck waiting for wind.
Anchored at Makogai
| Date: | July 15, 2014, 1:24 p.m. |
| Position: | 17 26.37 S, 178 57.13 E |
| Track to here: | Download |
From Levuka we set off North East to the Island of Makogai, former Leper isolation colony now Turtle and Giant Clam Breeding facility. It turned out to be a rather special experience. This time we managed to beat speedy little Liberation by leaving the day before them. We enjoyed a stunning sail, right through the reef passage and only had to use the engine for about 10 minutes to anchor, which was just as well. We caught up with several boats we had met in Suva and made friends with a few more. As no one had brought a pontoon boat along we ended up with 16 on the back deck of Tuuletar for drinks, Mark popped down the front to see if he could clean out the bow thruster! It was a lot of fun and another very social occasion in between some excellent snorkelling amongst giant clams and turtles. Mark even ended up doing some Maths tutoring to one of the boat-kids (well almost adult) who was struggling with calculus. On our last night there we were able to piggy-back on a Meke (traditional song & dance) which was set up for one of the posh sleep over charter dive boats, Fiji Siren. It was our first but the veteran Fiji Cruisers ranked it as one of the best they had experienced, particularly for the truly beautiful live singing and music, we are told many feature canned music these days. The children were good enthusiastic dancers and there was even an unofficial line behind of toddlers copying the big kids which doubled the adorableness!
Levuka, Ovalau
| Date: | July 13, 2014, 1:24 p.m. |
| Position: | 17 40.91 S, 178 50.27 E |
| Track to here: | Download |
We ricocheted back North West to see the old capital of Levuka, Ovalau. Again we came in just behind Liberation but this time because we caught a ridiculously large fish. A Giant Trevally (53lb - 23.5kg!) which we sent back with Nick of Saltbreaker who had come out to help us land the thing. He kindly offered to take it into the village for us but I am not sure if he would have if he had realised that he and his petite finance Anca would end up having to lug the massive fish across the extensive reef at low tide, while the entire village gathered onshore to watch (Thank you guys!) Levuka is a very picturesque town but unfortunately just as we were anchoring the transmission began to misbehave... Aways something with boats. Thankfully we were all well settled and able to very quickly turn off the engine. Just in time too as several boats from up North sailed in just behind us and anchored around us.
Transmisson aside we really enjoyed Levuka, we had terrific company with some veteran Fiji sailors and it is a lovely historic town with well preserved high street buildings. It is small but has everything you need. Port duties were $4.85 per boat. They provided a rubbish disposal area, water and there always seemed to be someone around in the office to keep half an eye on your dingy. All of the other 6 boats had spent between 6-12 seasons sailing around Fiji but only one of them had ever had the right weather to see the historic capital before so we have come to understand how lucky we were. Needless to say they were all rather excited and we had some very entertaining nights ashore at the Whales Tail and at the Chinese restaurant above the Bank (both pretty good.) We also enjoyed picking their very knowledgable brains to help us make the most of our time here. Before leaving Levuka we picked up a couple of Mutineers we me in Suva. They were keen to take a break from their Captain and Suva while he attended to some business and join us along the way to Savusavu.
Gau Island - Herald Bay (17:59.64S/179:14.45E)
| Date: | July 10, 2014, 9:15 a.m. |
| Position: | 17 59.63 S, 179 14.48 E |
| Track to here: | Download |
After a few farewell drinks impromptu Kava session to say goodbye to the friends we have made during our time in Suva we headed off this morning at 0330 in the morning and followed our inbound GPS track to leave Suva harbour. We planned to get heading East across to Gau Island.
We had a lovely sail, although Bill & Hazel on Liberation snuck past and overtook us while we were distracted by a pod of Humpbacks. We checked out some anchorage options before settling on the more protected and shallower Herald Bay doing Sevusevu at the village just North. The water clarity was spectacular and we cleaned our boat bottom and Liberation’s while we tested out some dive equipment we have acquired. Don’t have a complete set up yet but we are getting there.
We had the most fantastic 50nm sail across. As it was a bit overcast and squally-looking weather when we set out we decided to just motor the 2 hours or so until sunrise. We then did half the distance with the genoa and the mizzen on a close reach making about 6kts in 15kts of southerly wind. When the wind dropped off to 10-12kts we threw up the full mainsail and cruised the final half with everything up. The boat loves sailing slightly off a reach at about 6kts and the motion is incredibly smooth, we could have played marbles in the pilothouse!
We arrived here at 1400 and passed through the north-west passage without a problem as the water had about 35m visibility and the reef was clearly visible. We motored down to the village of Somosomo but found the anchorage there a bit exposed to the southerlies that were wrapping around the headland and the depth was 30m so we decided to abort there and came up here to Herald bay where the depth is a more sensible 10m and the beach is much more tranquil and nice white sand.
We motored in the dinghy around to the village to the north to make our sevusevu which went on without a problem. The village is quite well developed as we heard that cruise-ships frequent this area.
We were later joined by Saltbreaker and all three boats took dingys to a spot the locals recommended on the outer reef for some great snorkeling. We had a dead flat, sunny day and it was pretty unreal to have the dingys anchored, barely moving, outside the reef with absolutely nothing but ocean between us and New Zealand.
Departing Suva
| Date: | July 9, 2014, 1:24 p.m. |
| Position: | 18 7.45 S, 178 25.49 E |
We finally said goodbye to the dirty town of Suva. In truth we had a lot of fun there, exploring town and socialising at the lovely Royal Suva Yacht Club, which has a great vibe reminiscent of the Darwin Sailing Club. Unfortunately in the short time we where there we met four boats who had recently had their tenders stolen while anchored in the harbour overnight and even one who was boarded by machete-wielding bandits. We were also not enjoying the dingy rides through the animal entrails and the rest of the rubbish. There is limited space to anchor and we were very grateful to the other yachties who came and tugged the boat around to avoid a large barge swinging on its mooring. All turned out to be fine and there was enough room in the end but we really appreciate everyone looking out for us. Mark made friends with the great guys running the boatyard and got some more welding practise on the stanchions, only one hole this time. I had fun finding all the asian grocery stores in the back streets of town and with the fresh markets along with the main street shops we were stocked and ready to go.
We were pretty happy to finally be gone from Suva as the pollution and smell was starting to get us down a bit. We weren't able to go swimming at all due to the pollution and we had heard of some guys that did dive on their hull and got rather sick. On top of that crime was a bit of a problem with two dinghies being stolen within 3 weeks, one while we were there. The dinghies just had their painters cut clean in the night so we had to lift our dinghy up on the davitts every night and drop it again in the morning. Not too much of a problem for us but it must have been a pain for the guys that mount their dinghies on the foredeck.
Still it was good to have the week in Suva. I managed to weld all the stanchions which was a job that has been outstanding since Coffs Harbour. We also got the windlass working again and managed to stock up on cheap provisions in Suva.
