Cave diving, a small medical drama and a super-friendly superyacht

We arrived at the anchorage at Sawa-i-Lau island ( a towering piece of rock with strata very similar to that in Fulaga) and went ashore with Bruce and Laura from Pacific Hwy to explore the famous caves. The local village control access but, for $10 per person, provide two guides to take you through into the second chamber; at all but low tide this requires a duck underwater for a 10 second breath-hold and a scramble through under the rock until you pop up into an almost pitch-black, echoing cavern. Scary, even with a waterproof torch in hand and certainly not recommended for the claustrophobic!! Graham was very proud of Dianne for doing it as it's certainly not her thing normally. The two guides pushed and pulled you through so we all made it safely and coming back was easier as the water glowed brightly from the sunshine finding its way into the first chamber.

Photos by Bruce from Pacific Hwy

The legend goes that these caves are the start of an underwater passage that ends in the Lau islands, hundreds of miles to the east. Certainly divers have explored for more than an hour eastwards with no sign of the passage ending.

Returning, blinking in bright sunlight, to the surface we thanked our guides and asked about doing a sevusevu ceremony in the nearby village. 'No problem' they said, 'we'll come to your boats.' Sure enough, a 'fibre' fishing boat arrived alongside, we handed over a parcel of yagona, one of the chaps said three sentences in Fijian, we all clapped three times and they were off, all done in about 30 seconds. A sign of the times and the tourist popularity of this place: a drive-by sevuseva.

Our anchorage, of about 8 boats, is dominated by the 240ft superyacht Dragonfly which is owned by one of the Google founders. He's the third owner so got the 6,600hp, 27 knot, 18 crew boat for a bargain US$45 million, allegedly. It also had a twin-engined seaplane bringing in new guests (and you can charter it for 490,000Euro per week according to this site ) so little did we expect to be climbing aboard it the following morning.

The seaplane arrives with new guests

We were contemplating moving anchorages this morning, to the northern most tip of the Yasawas, when we heard a radio call from La Fiesta, a boat we'd met in New Zealand. Dave, the skipper, had somehow managed to get a big fishing hook well and truly buried into his hand as he reeled in a fish. As they came into the bay, Graham ferried Bruce out to La Fiesta so he could help them anchor safely then went to see the locals at the caves to ask if there was a village nurse - the answer was no. Meanwhile, Dianne was reading up her medical notes and preparing to act as medic to try to remove the offending hook; whilst she was ready to put her training into action, we suspected that Dragonfly would have greater skills and facilities so Graham called them on the VHF.

Mike, the Captain (who, we later learned, completed his training in Fleetwood, Lancashire, just down the road from Dianne's home village), was immediately friendly and helpful on the radio and said that they had a doctor on board and that we could certainly bring Dave over for treatment. So Graham, as mere dinghy driver, was allowed to sit on the aft deck of Dragonfly, chatting to the crew, whilst Dianne accompanied the patient, and his young daughter Natalie, up to the bridge where the doctor and the captain snipped the end of the hook off and, with plenty of local anesthetic and a pair of pliers, worked it through to come out of a new, second hole in Dave's hand (the end of the hook had a barb on it so pulling backwards would have caused all sorts of damage). It was about this point he fainted! 

All the crew we met were super-friendly and interested in our boats. Alex, the chief engineer, was from Kingsbridge (15 minutes' drive from our home port of Dartmouth) and James, one of the deckhands, grew up near Itchenor where Maunie was built. As Graham chatted to them, he couldn't help noticing all the 'toys' in the aft locker - 20 kiteboards, scuba gear for 15, paddleboards, two jet skies and two 8.5m RIB tenders. The crew are all allowed to play with all this stuff 'after work' and seem to have a good rota of 3 months on, one month off.

Mike and his crew's immediate willingness to help seems to be typical of their positive and friendly attitude. Mike happily answered little Natalie's endless questions (including the classic "Why are you all wearing the same clothes?" - the skipper and crew all wore understated grey, or pink for the girls,  t-shirts and board shorts) and we learnt that they'd managed to thread this enormous yacht into the narrow entrance at Fulaga and then had donated ten tonnes of fresh water from their huge desalination plant to the villagers who were almost out of drinking water after this very dry season.

Anyway, the good news is that Dave emerged from surgery without complications and Dianne was extremely relieved not to have had to attempt the procedure. The best ongoing advice regarding fish- hooks is not to get one stuck in you in the first place.

Great sailing and fire dancing

We've had some absolutely brilliant sailing in the last couple of days - beating against the north-easterly wind in bright sunshine. The sun made life much less stressful on the navigational front as it makes shallow water show up as bright turquoise patches in an otherwise dark blue sea and, as we've already mentioned, there are a lot of reefs here that simply don't appear on our electronic charts (or if they do they are several hundred metres adrift of their charted positions). 

So, each time we spotted a reef and alter course to avoid it, we added it to our chart plotter as a reef waypoint for when we sail back this way. Makes us feel a bit like chart-makers and explorers in a very minor way.

The anchorage at Blue Lagoon turned out to be very well sheltered, with not a trace of swell to make us rock and roll, and there are a number of tourist resorts around it, ranging from the hideously expensive to ones catering for back-packers. One of the lower-priced outfits, Coralview, is owned and run by local Fijians and we learned that they organised a Lovo (food cooked in an earth pit) and dancing evening each Saturday; a number of boat crews were going so, with a bit of trepidation about joining the 'tourist trail', we also signed up.

It was a very entertaining evening (apart from the conga!). The food cooked in the Lovo - chicken, pork, cassava, sweet potatoes and spinach cooked in coconut milk - was properly Fijian and delicious whilst the dancing display was great. The finale was outside with two of the male dancers demonstrating some wonderful fire dancing. 

Opening up the Lovo - the boys must have asbestos fingers

The pig, cooked in a palm-frond basket

Making this look easy

Getting more complex

Sitting on your mate's shoulders, twirling firesticks - you did risk-assess this didn't you?

The finale

After all that we were very glad to be ferried back to our boats in the pitch black over some very shallow reefs - the boatman could obviously do the trip with his eyes shut and just nonchalantly shone his torch out a couple of times to light up the reef-marker poles which obediently appeared just where he expected them to be. When we motored out of the anchorage in Maunie this morning, we did it a lot slower and with some nervous glances as the clear water made the coral look only a couple of feet below the surface!

Today we have moved up to an island called Sawa-i-Lau where there are some impressive caves to visit in the morning. The weather front that's been forecast for the past week or so is due to pass over us tomorrow, bringing cloud and maybe even rain (the first for several weeks here) so it'll be a good day to be anchored; a chance to catch up on some boat maintenance and so on. We'll be heading back to New Zealand in 3 or 4 weeks' time so we're starting the preparations for what could be a challenging passage.

A different perspective

Photographers and landscape artists love perspectives - the way distant hillside fade into light tones and how differing sizes of objects can fool the eye.

Take this simple photo, for example:

It was taken in the early evening light from our anchorage in Blue Lagoon (where the Brooke Shields film was made, apparently) and you can see the hillsides to the right fading off into the distance. A couple of catamarans in the foreground are of similar size, you might think. But no, Margarita to the right is about 13m long whilst Hemisphere is the world's largest sailing catamaran at a whopping 44m long. 

A cozy saloon

under way

Read more at http://www.boatinternational.com/yacht-features/hemisphere-the-worlds-top-cat/ 

A very different perspective on sailing! We've come across Hemisphere a few times now (including the time they had to anchor outside Port Denarau as they are too big to fit into the marina) and we've got used to the admiring stares as Maunie sails past.

More wind - but some great kite-boarding

Our hopes for quieter conditions today were dashed so we've remained at anchor with the wind whistling around our ears. The upside of this enforced was the chance to do some boat maintenance, cleaning and tidying before heading out to a sandbank emerging at low tide to watch some amazing kite-boarding.

Our friends Lionel and Irene on the catamaran Kiapa are keen boarders and have more or less made Musket Cove their Fiji home. When the wind is light they go out to the reefs for surfing and when it's blowing they get the kites out. Today it was blowing about 25 knots so we motored out in the dinghy (getting soaked in the process) then anchored to take photos and video of Lionel in action.

Pumping up the wing

Preparing the lines

Launch

Take-off

We were hugely impressed with Lionel's skill - there's a short video here which we think you'll enjoy.

Hopefully the conditions will calm down a little in the morning though the forecast isn't optimistic. More servicing of the winches might be on the cards!

May your bows always face the swell (Irish proverb, probably)

Well, Amy is safely back in mid-Wales after a great 10 days with us. We dropped her at the airport in Nadi (after a brilliant teppanyaki meal at the Fiji version of the Daikoku Japanese restaurant where we celebrated Graham's 50th in Auckland) on Saturday evening and she arrived in Heathrow at about 3.00pm on Sunday, having lost 11 hours in the time zone changes en route.

We stayed in Port Denarau for an extra night so rushed around to get two loads of washing done in the launderette, restock beer and wine, travel to the Nadi market for veg and meat and we even fitted in a rum tasting as well. All very successful but we were pleased to escape to fresher air by late morning today.

As it turned out, we found plenty of fresher air on the 2 hour passage across to Musket Cove. In spite of a benign forecast, the wind piped up to 28 knots (about 33mph) and we had to reef down to keep Maunie from cantering about like a wayward pony. After very gentle sailing over the past couple of weeks, it came as a bit of a shock and the water was streaked with white foam and breaking waves as we approached the entrance to the reef - thankfully we could follow our 'breadcrumb trail' of our previous entrance on the chart plotter but, even so, it was slightly unnerving to be sailing at 7.5 knots towards unseen reefs.

The anchorage here is exposed to the wind but the encircling reef means that the waves are relatively small - any underlying ocean swell is flattened out as it hits the reef at a couple of internationally-famous surfing spots about a couple of miles away. So we're lying in 20m of water, with our anchor firmly dug into the sandy sea floor at the end of about 70m of heavy chain. The wind's whistling in the rigging but otherwise we're in a good spot - we chose to be to windward of other anchored boats, having previously seen yachts suddenly dragging their anchors in windy conditions.

Wind-driven waves 

The anchorage is pretty busy here at the moment and conditions would make a dinghy-ride ashore a very wet experience so we cooked supper on board and hope it'll be a bit calmer in the morning.

Neighbouring boats (plus plane to the right)

Actually, we've discovered that getting a decent night's sleep at anchor in the islands around here needs some careful planning. In several spots we realised that the wind and the sea swell came from different directions so we found ourselves rolling uncomfortably until we deployed a second anchor, from the stern, to pull the boat around to point at the waves rather than the wind. This all added time and effort but was definitely worth it for a quite night!

We now plan to explore more of the Yasawa Islands which we didn't have time to visit with Amy aboard but we're watching the forecast with care as there is a period of squally weather heading our way towards the end of the week. More careful anchoring will be required we think.

The red blobs are heavy rains squalls in what's known as a Convection Zone (right over us!) - expect sudden changes in wind direction an torrential downpours so the choice of anchorage will be important!

Another video - dancers in Fulaga

In the remote Lau island of Fulaga, the traditional dances are kept alive through practice and Mekes (dance and song parties put on to entertain locals and visitors alike). We were present at a party organised by the women of the main village to raise funds for community projects. The dance in this film was taught by a housebound 80 year old women to her younger neighbours and it represents the women's job of fishing in the island's lagoon. Of course, it ended up with the visiting yachties being roped in (so you'll see Dianne in action)!

Watch it here 

Video of the Manta Rays

There's a short video of us swimming with the Manta Rays in Naviti Island here

Hope that you like it!