sv evi

We have a pretty tight-knit neighborhood community back home. Thanks to Covid for that! Our neighbors Mary, Erik, Hannah & Simon bought tickets to come visit in Fiji before we left the States. 🙂 They also schlepped a lot of stuff for us, like home school textbooks and a new laptop to be used only for Open CPN & navigation.

We had 48 hours between visitors to wash sheets, clean the boat, and re-provision. I bought 150 eggs, 7 loaves of bread, 10 boxes of Ritz crackers, 140 apples … we had 9 people on board for 9 days without access to stores or restaurants, so the galley had to be stocked full.

We had quite an ambitious itinerary, as we planned to get to the western side of Fiji and visit the Yasawas in 9 days. We sailed 50 miles to Makogai the day after the Holbergs arrived, then rested and relaxed for 3 nights there. A highlight was snorkeling and seeing a sleeping turtle, who then woke up and swam away. Riki will post the video of it …. sometime. 🙂

We played Catan one night, the adults, Tomu & Simon — and that started a Catan frenzy where all 5 kids played at least one game a day.

The kids all had a blast together with a 10 game Cube Quest tournament, chess, jewelry-making, taking the paddleboard to the beach, swimming, snorkeling, Uno No Mercy … Tomu and Simon especially were so thrilled to hang out together again.

Our main objective in the Yasawas was Drawaqa Island, where you can snorkel with the Manta Rays in the pass. En route to Drawaqa we spotted humpback whales breaching and spouting! Our Navionics charting program routed us through the Manta Ray pass, but as we got close it looked super scary. So Riki decided to go swim it to check, and Erik was the dinghy driver accomplice. Meanwhile we drove evi around in circles. Riki saw a manta! (video coming in another post). And decided we should go around.

The Holbergs treated us to a 3 course dinner at the Barefoot Manta Resort, complete with piña coladas on “Sunset Beach”. The next morning we woke up early, and all 9 of us were in the dinghy at 7:30 am with our snorkel gear because we were trying to snorkel at high tide, the best time to see the manta rays. We did several drift dives with the dinghy but…no luck. The adults did another try later, at low tide, still no luck.

Then we sailed south to Navadra Island. It was a banner day: we saw dolphins, caught a fish (skipjack tuna) en route, fed the fish to the black-tip reef sharks that greeted us after we anchored the boat, and went to the beach for some quality relaxation time.

Fish photos:

and shark video:

and the beach:

and some more pics of the in-between times of life on board:

And then we arrived in Port Denarau, picked up a mooring, and went out to dinner. The Holbergs went to a resort for the next part of their Fiji adventure. We visited them at the resort one day and the kids had fun in the pool.

Riki, Tomu, Jade, Luz and I went to the Big Bula Waterslide Park for a treat. The kids were in heaven!

And the Holbergs flew back to Tacoma two days ago after a last dinner together. We had a fantastic time with them, and it turns out evi can hold 9 people pretty well! They were very gracious guests, always eating my food and complimenting me on it. 🙂

We are busy getting ready to sail to Port Resolution, Vanuatu. We leave at noon today! From now on, we are going to places that none of us have been to before, so… into the great unknown!