Fiji SE

This is King's Wharf, Suva Harbour.

Here's the old tub just after arrival. It's about noon but you wouldn't know it, owing to the almost perpetual overcast one finds at the E end of Viti Levu, the largest of Fiji's 300 islands.

Most of the cruising guides we have were written 15 years ago. We had read that we should expect a boarding by quarantine officials and would have to tie up to the wharf seen above, but the reality was that the Captain had to walk into town (no money for a cab) and proceed to Customs at King's Wharf, where they were very nice and really didn't seem to care much about how many cases of beer we had or about our fresh meat, etc. One thing that hadn't changed since the guides were published is that there's tons of forms to fill out; once again, you could declare a bazooka and they wouldn't care, but you did have to fill in the blanks anyway.

This is Suva Prison, conveniently located across from the Royal Suva Yacht Club; note the frescoes. It was built in 1913 and is probably not as festive inside as out.

We spent a week in Suva, half the time looking for a special tool to remove the fuel injectors from the generator. After finally finding one, we discovered it was just a dirty air cleaner, i.e. we didn't need the tool at all. Such are the adventures while cruising. Someone once defined sailing as "fixing things in exotic places"; this is only half true. The other half is looking for parts & tools in exotic places.

The picture above shows that we can still be tourists. This is a blurry photo of one of the last Fijian sailing canoes, or druas, built in about 1910. The sails are woven from palm leaves. The white things are cowry shells, which were deemed to have spiritual powers.

Here the admiral stands next to a house post, with a canoe in the background. If the post was used in an important building, a human sacrifice was buried beneath as spiritual protection. Fijians were enthusiastic cannibals, one chief having racked up 872 victims in his career. You can buy the special forks they used for dining on "long pig", but we found such souvenirs rather tacky.

After a week we finally left Suva. We felt like there was more stuff we needed to get, but places like Suva can hold onto boats like a magnet, i.e. you can buy most anything and leaving a land of plenty can be difficult. The photo above is of the island of Beqa, about 25nm SW. It is surrounded by a lovely lagoon and we hoped to finally get some sunshine and nice diving. We ended up anchoring in the bay you can see to the left, i.e. the saddle which is really an old volcanic crater. This is Malumu Bay and not described very well in any of our guides. It proved to be a great place to obtain shelter from the winds and seas.

This is a view of Viti Levu from the mouth of Malumu Bay; note the glassy water. The main downside to this quiet environment is the water is murky and the shore is lined with mangroves. An additional problem is that Fijians are very territorial and you don't go ashore without getting permission from the local chief. This requires a ceremony called "sevusevu" which involves an offering of the semi-narcotic plant known widely as kava. The challenge in this case was trying to determine which village owned the land and water you see above. We decided to just stay on the boat.

After a day at Malumu we decided to sail for a small island to the west named Yanuca. There we hoped to find some great diving. The diving there may be great but the weather sucked big-time. We anchored in a coraline area with poor holding and had to listen anxiously all night while the anchor pretended to drag us toward the fringing reef a few hundred yards behind us. We could barely see the bottom because it was totally overcast. After rolling and grinding all night we opted to return to the cozy confines of Beqa's Malumu Bay. Our decision was also influenced by the fact that the pious Fijians don't approve of recreation on Sunday. Anyway, the photo above purports to show a quaint Fijian village. We didn't visit it but suspected the village was really a prop for a resort located slightly to the right, sort of a "Six Flags Over Fiji".

We had resolved to maintain this website on a timely basis once we had something created. This has been facilitated by the fact that we have been stuck on the boat for almost a week now, imprisoned by lousy weather. As an expat in Tonga pointed out, the great secret to the South Pacific is the frequent crappy weather. The great deserts of Australia spawn a succession of high, lows and fronts that sweep eastward and often increase as they do so. Oddly enough, the highs are often worse than the lows, because they reinforce the prevailing SE trade winds, making a pleasant 15kts more like 30, which means rough seas and poor visibility. The fronts add their own contribution in the form of unsettled skies and squalls. However, after 5 days of gusty gloom we plan to sally forth in the morning, to we hope a more pleasant stay near the island of Kandavu.

We departed for the islands north of Kadavu in the Great Astrolabe Reef. We figured this would be an awesome place to dive. It probably is whenever the weather permits, which was not while we were there. We made our first sevusevu at the island of Davuni. The natives were very friendly. We were forced to leave by a sudden onset of strong west winds, which made for a sleepless night as we had no protection in that direction save the modest west side of the reef. We found a much better anchorage on the island of Ono called Naqara Bay (you could win big in scrabble if you could use Fijian words).

Our sevusevu at the village was very nice. We were invited to a dinner and kava-fest. Their singing was most enchanting. We wanted to show pictures but naturally the camera battery died.

Here the admiral stands next to some friends we made, a French woman named Estelle and an Italian named Piero. They own a resort on the east side of Ono and loaded us down with veggies from their huge garden, including a whole stalk of bananas! We found Kadavu basically devoid of stores, i.e. if you didn't grow it or get it as a gift you didn't eat.

Ah, the myth of cruising. Here's a rare moment of decadence on the foredeck, savoring a brewski at sunset.

The unfortunate reality in this case is we'd spent almost 2 weeks dodging nasty winds and seas before having a day nice enough to put out hammocks. But, you have to take your leisure when you can get it.

It wouldn't be complete without a lovely island girl...

We left Ono and began a surprisingly arduous circumnavigation of Kadavu. The weather was usually cold and we were hit by nasty squalls and strong SW winds, which are rare in these parts and naturally happened when we when we tried to go SW, i.e. the wind was on-the-nose at 30 kts.

Here's a moment of tranquility at Galoa Harbour. Some locals wanted to show their kids a "yacht" so they piled on and we played host for a bit. These kids are great, some of the best-behaved in the world; the dads are properly proud.

We finally made the west coast after days of beating; this is Denham Island in the sunset.

Here a fat tourist walks past the communal shower in the village of Nabukelevuira.

Here's a busy street scene in the village. The bures (houses) are simple but clean. Most people here live by fishing or subsistence agriculture.

We naturally departed on a day of rough seas and rain so thick we couldn't more than a mile or so, making the whole sea a gray void. We sailed up the north coast back to Ono; in most cases the visibility was so poor we had trouble making out the reef passes and we were frankly sick of bad weather.

But after a rough night at Naiqara Bay we had a great sail back to Suva, making the 47nm passage in 6 hours, which is fast for a sailboat.

We not only had a fast passage but we caught some fish! Here the proud admiral stands with her prize dogtooth tuna, so called because it has really nasty teeth. We also had 2 mahi-mahi on the lines at one time but they conspired to foul the trolling lines and got away as we tried to sort them out.

So much for fickle weather in the southern parts of the islands - now we go to find better winds and water in what we call Fiji Northeast.

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