sv evi

Guava anchored near the narrow dogleg pass (the 2 small slots at the right) at Varuna.

After 4 months of cruising in Fiji it is time to cut the ties from Riada II and crew.  Meeting them in the unique location of Minerva Reef, actually standing on the reef picking lobsters, and continuing to travel off the beaten path gives me memories to last a lifetime.  The sendoff was bittersweet, hugging goodbye on a busy street corner in downtown Suva after they cleared customs and I went to buy more kava.. Riada sailed to Vanuatu, Guava Jelly headed back to Savusavu to reunite with Jason on Bodhran.  The remainder of the time in Suva was spent provisioning as well as making some new friends.  I hung with the lovely Shawn and Chris on S/V Tao from SF.  Also spent some time with the crew of M/V Brigitte Bardot which is part of the controversial Sea Shepard  

Suva Kava Shop

M/V Bridgitte Bardot Deck and Dork

Great Graffix

After an overnight sail, landing a perfect 3ft Mahimahi for Jason’s welcome dinner I was back in Savusavu…again. 

Jason is home…

For the next few days we prepped Bodhran to cruise after he was working in Alaska for the last 100 days.  I managed to rebuild the nearly 30 year old Nissan 8HP outboard to the level of adequate but suspect. 

Getting out of town was as difficult as ever but we managed to embark on an overnighter to somewhere…anchoring at midnight for a quick stay in Matai.  

Bodhran taken with iphone thru binoculars

Here is a take on the navigation of Fiji waters…it can be treacherous.  Most of the islands here are of ‘middle age’, similar to the Tahitian Isles.  Unlike the young islands of Hawaii and Marquesas which are towering mountains rising steeply from the sea with little or no shallow, sandy shelfs for anchoring…nor the old isles, the numerous atolls peppered around the South Pacific where the island itself has eroded or sunk into the sea and only a fringing reef remains, Fiji has hundreds of small mountainous isles with a surrounding reef.  Usually there is a ‘safe’ passage or slot allowing access to the calmer, protected waters of the anchorage and often times those areas are scattered with coral heads of various masses.  Anchoring is a like a carnival game…requiring some skill and much luck to place the hook in a sandy patch and anticipating the swing of the boat on the anchor chain to prevent it from becoming fouled or wrapped around the hazards on the ocean floor.

Navigating these passes has become easier, tho no less unnerving, with the help or GPS and electronic charts which lay a track from previous travel…either from my own history or a borrowed track from another boat’s passage.  This will all be helpful when Jason and I revisit some of the places from the past 4 months.  The cruisers general rule is to transit the passes between the hours of 10AM and 4PM with good visibility from the sun, preferably with someone spotting by climbing in the rigging.  It is not a perfect world and many reasons could play into the need to move thru the reef riddled waters and passes during the night and Guava has made quite a few without incident…(knock on wood).