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| Bet your school bus wasn't like this |
Three and a half weeks in the Yasawa island group and we encountered exactly two sailboats. This is the Fiji cruising in cyclone season "dividend". The Yasawas are a thirty-five mile hop from Fiji's international airport in Nadi but feel a world away. While there are tourist accommodations ranging from hostels to five star hotels, the local communities feel very much the same as places we have been in Fiji far from any tourists. Fijians come from across the country to work at the resorts in this area and, from our outsider perspective, it doesn't seem like an easy existence. Many people work 24 days in a row and then have four to five days off during which they travel back to spend time with their families who may be on the other side of the country. Then they come back and do it all over again with the warmest smiles and happiest laughter.
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| The Fiji cyclone season dividend |
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| Five hundred years ago or 2024? |
After leaving Vuda marina we did find a stowaway. And it appeared at the absolutely worst moment. After settling in for some Netflix with most of our interior lights off Kirstin hissed TOM at me. After 20 years of marriage I know this is the start of something bad. She pointed a finger at the wall and in the television light I suddenly am entering my own horror movie. A massive spider - easily five inches across - is quickly crawling up the wall. Kirstin screams and grabs a can of Raid. I proceed to spray easily half a can at the beast. Finally dead. After my heart stopped racing we concluded that this guy may have hid in a sail we had brought back from being repaired. We made the mistake of bringing it indoors while the boat was on the hard. The next day we tore the boat apart looking for any others and I am pleased to say that five weeks on we have not had a repeat intruder. We believe the culprit was a Huntsman spider (Google it if you dare). We subsequently met an Australian family who pointed out that they have them in their Sydney home and that they are great for bugs - each to his own.
Until May 1st we still "own" the rights to scramble back to our hurricane pit if something big forms, but we are thankful for being out of Vuda Marina which was too hot, remote, mosquito laden and wet for our liking (how is that for a review). Why be in a marina when you could be seeing all of this?
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| Reminds us of Moorea without the people |
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| Days just fly by here - how is it April? |
We ended up in Blue Lagoon a little ahead of schedule. Our plan was to make a quick hop up to a village called Somosomo. On the trip up we saw that someone had started a fire to clear away brush in one of the plantations - given that we had around 20 knots of wind we were a bit surprised by that choice. The smoke was going slightly over the hill where we were going to anchor but we assumed that the fire would be over by that time. Wrong. Twenty minutes after we anchor the fire crests the top of the hill and now a cloud of ash is encroaching on the boat. Black ash pieces begin to land all over the boat . Just about everything on our boat is flammable.....and we carry diesel, propane, gasoline, paint, thinner, etc. We're a floating bomb. Blue Lagoon here we come.
Over the past 14 years on the boat there has been no shortage of places called Blue Lagoon. Each has been stunning in its own way. None before has had Brooke Shields. Yes, this is the Blue Lagoon where the famous B-movie was filmed. Maybe infamous is more accurate as the IMDB description is of a movie that would not be made today - an innocent 14 year old stranded on a South Pacific island with her cousin who she falls in love with. What? I haven't seen this movie and apparently Brooke Shields has never watched it either based on a podcast interview Kirstin listened to. Regardless of it slightly cringy cinematic past, this is a beautiful spot.
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| The one downside of being the only boat - you are also the only sales opportunity |
This is John. He is the local fruit hustler and now the proud owner of a few of my T-shirts. He offered to rent us a plot of land to build a bungalow for $100 a year. We passed on that opportunity given the boat. His next offer was that he could use my wetsuit until the next time we came to Blue Lagoon. I also passed on that offer. We did buy a few coconuts and more plantains than two people could eat in a year.
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| You can almost imagine Brooke Shields down there - 44 years ago |
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| A little cloudy but still... |
A tropical low was passing Fiji at the time when we were in Blue Lagoon so we had one day of sun followed by cloudy conditions, but even in some drizzle we could hang out at the beach the entire day. Any day I get to play with a dog is a good day in my book. This one, Rover, had a unique style - a couple he had befriended the day before was out snorkeling at a distance he did not approve of. He swam out to the couple and gave them a heck of a shock when he bumped into their legs and they surfaced to find a dog bobbing alongside them. He next tried to get a ride in our dinghy but that was not in the cards for Rover.
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| The tide here is currently around six feet so you time your trips ashore |
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| The Yasawa Flyer - the way in and out of paradise |
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| Brooke is not the only one finding love in Blue Lagoon |
We've stopped believing that we were just one or two projects away from the "boat-work peace dividend", that magical three or four months we would CERTAINLY enjoy due to the fact that we've worked so hard on L'ORIENT that nothing would go wrong for a while. The cruel truth is that we live on a 20 year old boat that gives us her best, but has a lot of systems that were never designed to work for 20 years. Even new things are breaking............our carbon fiber super dinghy blew out a support strut due to too much rain that accumulated in it as it hung on the davits (our fault despite having the bung opened and pumping daily). We were both taken aback when our fiberglass virtuoso confessed that he repairs a lot of "these Kiwi dinghies". I guess our expectation of life aboard has to evolve. Never expect anything to work when you push the button. That's our new outlook.........and we're happier that way.
But we've also been improving the boat. Starlink has been a game changer, giving us 5G Internet anywhere in the world. And since we will be spending more time in marinas when we arrive in Australia, we decided the boat's air conditioning needed to work on generator and shore power (unlike now). So out with the old and in with the new. We bought 3 new A/C units and shipped them from (shocker) China via Fiji Air Freight in LA. These are well traveled units. We then tore the boat up for 5 days and now we have a coooool boat, at least in a marina or if we are willing to run the generator when anchored out. Another cyclone season dividend - plenty of space in Denarau marina and a week of dinners out. During season you can only get into this marina for any period of time with a reservation secured many months ahead of time.
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| Out with the old... |
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| Contortions to put in the new |
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| Cyclone or boat repair project?? |
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| Eating out tonight with mattresses in the galley |
Despite our very generous patronage of all hospitality and marine related businesses in Fiji, these otherwise lovely people are kicking us out (again), although we never stay gone. We are gaming the six month visa limit by flying to New Zealand for a week and then returning, where our "shot clock" resets and we will have all the time we need to conclude our visit here in October. We considered making New Zealand our next destination upon leaving Fiji, but it has some drawbacks. First, the water is cold. We don't do cold water. Then, the sailing conditions are really rough. Winds of 40-50 knots are considered sailable by Kiwis we've met, and they have all kinds of dangerous races, regattas, etc. We also don't want to spend months sitting in a marina. And lastly, beware of countries that have no recognized national cuisine........."Honey, want to go to that new New Zealand-ish restaurant?" All kidding aside, the totality just didn't make sense for us. Australia here we come (in October, at least). We have a reservation in Brisbane, which the locals just all Briz. Australia is "Oz" to them as well. We will learn the lingo as it approaches.
Australia makes sense for a number of boat improvement reasons as well. We are planning on creating L'ORIENT 2.0........a hardtop over the cockpit (vs. canvas), "galley of the future".........a place where Kirstin will luxuriate in a world of induction cook tops, electric convection oven cooking, and scads of power to waste in our oversized lithium battery bank. It's all so exciting and so expensive. We can't wait. But as usual (and even in a place with a huge maritime business sector), vendors will be hard to come by. Since lithium batteries involve a lot of special fusing, monitors, and black boxes- we are interviewing some master marine electricians for help and guidance. One well regarded tradesman has already fired us (the client) based on the amount of work we were outlining for him. But we're resourceful so I'm sure we'll find someone who wants our money.
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| New friends at Manta Ray Island Resort |
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| Resorts are welcoming due to the lack of business in cyclone season |
The scuba diving has been great, although our Go-Pro underwater camera is behaving more like a minor league device (sports pun there, in case you missed it). It managed these last few pictures but, sadly, did not work during our recent diving off Barefoot Manta Island Resort. You will have to take our word for it - the most spectacular coral field directly off an island that we have seen in fourteen years of sailing.
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| Fiji wins hands down for the best coral we have seen so far |
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| The covergirl for Scuba Weekly |
We are still out in the Yasawas counting down the weeks until the official end of cyclone season.
Happy April and enjoy the pictures. More to come soon.
