Return to Fiji – Navandra Island

Author:  Pete
Location:  Navandra Island, Fiji

The airline industry must have figured out how to speed up time.  Flights used to take forever to get anywhere!  We drove four hours to Chicago, courtesy of Miranda’s momma, flew four hours to L.A., then eleven to Fiji arriving TWO DAYS LATER!  Even with the time change, date change, pocket change for dinner in the airport, and a change of underwear for good practice, the trip was a breeze compared with the kind of travel to which we’ve become accustomed.  I’m not sure about that International Date Line business either.  I keep losing days off my life clock.  Not cool.  First August 6th, now September 15th!  What’d you do on those days?  I was in suspended animation!  I told you the airline industry figured out how to do it!

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A morning taxi ride after customs and we were ready to wake up the mighty Tayrona from her hibernation. You know those eye boogers you get when you sleep?  Tayrona was encrusted with the boat equivalent of them.  In humans that stuff is called gound, but on the boat it was a mixture of sugar-cane-factory soot and purple bird poop splatter.  Gross.  We washed her down, aired her out, and started installing all the new swag that we hoarded from Amazon while we were home!  New hatch latches, new lift supports, new head diverter valves, new American flag, an empty box of Oreos…

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It took us a couple days to get Tay-Tay back in fighting shape.  We made a provisioning run into Lautoka, which aside from an awesome market, offers little to gush about.  On the list of acquisitions was kava, the spindly root used by the island chiefs, among other things, in ceremonially welcoming visitors.  Apparently in Fiji it’s common practice to bring a half-kilo of the stuff to each island or most certainly be eaten by the locals.  The ladies in the market wrap the kava nicely in newspaper tied with string.  Fancy.

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The Vuda Point Marina itself is fairly isolated; on this side of the islands there are little more than cane fields busy turning sunshine into sugar.  Sometimes I wish I could photosynthesize too.  Around the marina grounds there are peculiar trenches, six feet deep, about shoulder width wide, and long enough for say five bodies to be nicely laid in there head to toe.  This was a bit troubling on first sight until it became clear that they are keel pits for boat storage on the hard.  Stored boats do better closer to the ground in hurricane winds, not up on rickety stands, so trenches are dug to accommodate the deep sailboat keels.  Makes a lot more sense than mass graves, doesn’t it?

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On the 19th we threw off our lines, eased Tayrona out of her snug berth, and motored out to sea.  We sailed fifteen miles southwest to the tall island of Mololo and anchored in Musket Cove where one hundred boats bobbed, fresh from a recently finished regatta.  That night the wind calmed and the anchorage was so flat that I woke thinking we had gone aground.  The glassy water reflected the constellation of anchor lights in a perfect mirror and not a whisper of sound drifted across the harbor.

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Ducking out early the next morning, we sailed north towards Navandra Island under steadily building wind and flat seas.  The comfortable sailing conditions are due to the abundance of reefs in Fijian waters, making for exciting navigation.  We are using a charting software new to us called OpenCPN which superimposes Google Earth images with navigational charts.  You can often see uncharted bommies or boundaries of known reefs more clearly by the satellite images.  It helped a lot in navigating with the diffuse light coming through the low, gray skies.  The conditions were perfect for fishing and within an hour my new lure had picked up someone big.  When the reel started buzzing we slowed the boat and started hauling.  Eventually we landed a good sized Wahoo, welcoming him aboard with a shot of gin to the gills and the grand tour of our refrigerator.

OpenCPN Route

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We rounded the northern point of Navandra Island, actually three tall islets that form a cove protected from the southeast trade winds.  The anchorage is deep, fringed with steeply-rising coral shelves all along the periphery.  Happily, the anchorage was completely empty as we motored in.  Fortune smiles!  We set anchor in clear sand in thirteen meters of water and celebrated the solitude with a skinny dip and then some fresh sushi and sashimi!  Wahoo!

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Since then, it’s been a few days of enjoying the place and not rushing about like we’re used to.  A few other boats have shown up, but there’s plenty of gorgeous snorkeling and island exploring to go around.

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Landfall in Fiji

Author: Pete
Location: Navula Pass, Fiji

As night fell we sailed south of the island of Beqa and through the straits between the low Vatulele and the main island, Viti Levu. The wind swung from north directly behind us as we made the slow turn around the island and for the first time in what feels like ages we were on a starboard tack. You could hear the port shrouds sigh with relief. In the dark we dodged a fishing boat lit up like Las Vegas and an odd blinking tracking buoy of some kind.

As Tayrona pulled near the Navula Pass we had slacking winds and calming seas. There was no moon and full cloud cover, but the channel marker lights and range lights were clear and unmistakable. The channel is marked by a red light on the left, a green light on the right, and two red lights right in the center that line up when you’re in the middle of the channel. You just have to keep between green and red, and keep the range markers lined up. The radar picks up the shore and the channel marker buoys. It’s easy, just don’t screw up.

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We were all hands on deck for the pass. The more eyes the better. Once we were through without event Miranda went off watch and I took us north along the coast towards Lautoka. The navigation lights were easy to follow even in the dark, but soon the black turned to purple then rose and orange. We were exhausted after four rowdy days at sea and some tense night maneuvers; the sunrise over the hills of Fiji were a welcomed sight. I sat on the deck with a mug of tea and watched it unfold. Yes, I was cold. Leave me alone.

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We anchored off Vuda Point in sixteen meters of water and waited a few hours for customs to come out to the boat. They confiscated four coconuts, telling me that Fijian coconuts were better anyway, but left all our other stores alone. Even the aloe plant got to stay. We tied up next to an inner concrete wall temporarily while they waited for a more permanent spot to open up.

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That night we went out to eat at the marina’s restaurant to celebrate. They must have heard because there were fireworks and music. Somehow Miranda suckered the musicians into letting me play a little too. “So glad we made it… Look how far we’ve come now baby…”

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Passage to Fiji: Day 4

Author: Pete
Location: 18°32.475S’ 178°34.237E’ EAST!

Day 4 at sea en route to Fiji.

Crossed the international dateline just after dusk last night. Tayrona is officially a time machine! I guess I’ve known that for a while. Time either flashes by in a blink, say when you’re sipping gin and tonics on the trampoline watching a sunset in a secluded anchorage, or it drags infinitely on, like when you’re sailing to Fiji. In nerd speak it’s called ‘time dilation’, but it’s definitely not because we’re moving at relativistic speeds. Now we’re as far east as you can get before you’re west!

Our Garmin Blue charts break at the international dateline and you have to scroll to the other side of the world to see what comes next. So just before we crossed 180 degrees of longitude it look like we were going to sail off the edge of the earth. Here be monsters!

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Last night was also nice enough to reinstate the starlight dance party on deck. It’s been on hiatus due to the ugly weather on passage pretty much all the way from Bora Bora. What’s up with that? This is supposed to be the Coconut Milk Run! It was an exciting night; as we were rounding Great Astrolabe Reef to the north a boat showed up on radar and pulled past us on a near parallel course just two miles off our port. As soon as it cleared us another boat rounded the light and came almost directly at us, passing a mile off our starboard. They were easy to see with no danger of collision, but after 2000 miles without sighting a single craft “it was all very exiting” to have the AIS squawking and the radar lighting up surface contacts in the dark.

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It’s just in the last twelve hours we’ve started feeling human again. The first days on passage one feels like something akin to steamed polenta. Our four-hour shifts aren’t terrible, but it takes some time to get used to parceling your sleeping time. I’m on the 10AM-2PM, 6PM-10PM, and 2AM-6AM shift. Taking two out of the three dark shifts suits me. The boat goes through cycles of skipping smoothly over the waves like a kid on a bump-jumper, bubbles gurgling under the keels, punctuated by the wave-besieged shuffle of an army crawl. Our inner ears are winning the battle against the boat’s motion. We’re naturally bracing against anything available as we lurch around the boat without thinking about it. Miranda can read even in heavy seas pretty much the second day on passage. I take more warming up, hence all my sp#ll0ng er^gors.

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