The first 12 hours were fast - good wind from the SE, seeing 8-9 knots for large periods. Over night the wind has shifted a bit further aft and dropped into the 12 knot true range (9 apparent), which doesn’t make for good sailing for us. At the moment, we’re not flying the spinnaker as Amanda isn’t confident with her arm - so we’re hanging on with gennaker and main for now.No fish yet...

Our dive fest had to end sometime - and with the wind switching back on, it was time for us to move on. I thoroughly enjoyed Fiji again, and don’t regret the hard-yards sail back upwind to the islands from Australia...We had yet another visitor - I had been chatting to Monica as potential crew to Australia, but with her limited connectivity and our schedule, we didn’t manage to get things sorted. I’d discounted her. She had a couple of bad boat situations, and though we had intended just t

Dinghies from Duplicat and Pirlouit as seen from 15m...Current anchorageStunning sunrise on an almost totally flat sea, still anchored out on the reef

Quick note - I’m aware the position reports aren’t making it onto the map at the moment. I hope to get that sorted before we leave for Vanuatu. Our departure is delayed somewhat as the weather here is stunning (zero wind, blue skies), so we are cramming in as much diving as we can! Tentatively targeting Friday as we want to avoid a weekend arrival and we’re in no hurry....

Ania left the boat today after nearly 4 months onboard. Quite how she managed to put up with me for that long, neither of us are sure! And vica versa of course ;). It has been good fun for the most part, with a few ups and downs - inevitable when you share such a small space for so long. Certainly there aren’t many people you don’t know well who you would chose to spend that long with!In keeping with the view that this boat has everything, she asked for an iron for her jeans. I think we’ve

I believe it was Benjamin Franklin who said that guests are like fish - begin to smell after 3 days. However, I think we can take exception with the aforementioned gentleman as we’ve always seemed to be blessed with lovely guests. However, mostly that’s because we have people staying who we know very well. This changed this season.Yvonne was a friend of Ania’s who we met briefly for a meal in Jersey. I extended the invite as I figured it would be fun for Ania to have her friend onboard, an

The waters around the island of Vatulele are stunningly clear and very inviting. Having failed on our dive mission, we decided to explore around the lagoon a little bit.Suprisingly, the lighthouse on the island actually worked! It was a bit shocking to see it flashing at night - but it was the only light we could see. There were no lights at all within sight which was a little unnerving for the crew.There were a number of cuts into the limestone rocks. We explored a couple - lots of crabs around

Our anchorage was in a slim part of the lagoon with only about 4m of water at high tide. The downside was an incessant scend that rolled in from over the reef, particularly at high tide. Along with this was a rather strong current inside the lagoon which meant we were often sat perpendicular to the swell particularly at high tide. Of course, the chart has us on the reef or land, depending on your view...Err... not quite....The seabed is mostly grass over sand, so the holding was pretty good. How

Vatulele is well off the beaten track and not many yachts head that way (according to the chief). We do know that Jadean and Nautilus were there last year - so its not totally unheard of for yachts to visit.One of the issues is the lack of reasonable charting. The charts are missing all detail and even the Google Earth image has clouds over the promising windward passage. We opted for the lee passage (just to the right of the small island in the image below). Judging by the water colour, we figu

We had one night at the Beqa Lagoon Resort - it was very nice ashore. We watched the fire walking which is a gift only bestowed upon those from Beqa itself. It was interesting to watch, and they do walk on the stones that have been in the fire, but they were carefully turning them before walking on them. As I would! And I still wouldn’t do it - so hats off to them.We also had a meal at the resort. In typical Fijian style, everyone was very friendly and came over to introduce themselves. Cockta

Morning brought total and utter calm, so we decided we’d try and get two dives in. Because of the conditions, we opted to head to the outside of the reef for the first dive. Usually this is quite difficult because the prevailing wind and swell hit it, but apart from a very slight rolling swell, there was nothing happening outside the reef. We loaded up the dinghy and headed out - hunting for something that looked interesting. Where we stopped, we later identified as Frog’s Leap from a map of

After a somewhat delay start (the crew was on the phone), we made it ashore and headed into the market. It was packed with great stuff - a real treat. We managed to get all that we were looking for plus some extras on top. The big news was managed to find popcorn! We also restocked our kava supplies as we would be visiting a few more villages before we get back to more provisioning.Bags full and very heavy, we headed back to the boat where I got on with getting ready to depart and Ania stowed al

Vuro island belongs to the dominion of Buliya island, which is where we have to do sevusevu, but being a Sunday - that isn’t the done thing. So we anchored off the island with the intention of heading over to Buliya by dinghy the next day.We found a rather tight anchorage close to the island which gave us good protection from the wind and swell with just enough swing room.We also had a bit of rain whilst there..That afternoon we jumped in the dinghy and headed around the NE tip to the aptly na

Given the conditions, we moved around the corner to the next bay which was perfectly sheltered. We anchored quite deep, but the bottom comes up quick and at low tide it looks ferocious! We went ashore for the Sevusevu and the villagers were very nice. The chief and his wife offered us papaya and some jam that was about to be made (if we took them a jar).We asked about eggs, and we could get some from the ‘shop’ which was over the bridge in the other half of the village - so off we went. Shop

First order of the day was to complete Sevusevu at the village on Dravuni. Easily done, though somewhat perfunctory. We were told the 7 islands we could visit, and welcomed to the village. We headed straight for the small hill and climbed it to get the views. It was pretty nice, but would have been better for photographs if the clouds had shifted. We were thankful of the shade when climbing though!The villagers were nice - but definitely used to tourists as they had signs up everywhere offering

The weather, for once, followed the predictions - and we had rain and wind as we headed south. We had looked at the two following days and opted to try and get down to Toberua Island the next day as the Sunday was due to be very wet. 140mm of rain in 3 hrs!The Saturday wasn’t too bad in fact. Yes, some rain but not as much as forecast and we were certainly not cold as we motored steadily south. Just as we anchored off the Toberua resort, the rain started and didn’t stop for some time.Sunday

The crew’s friend, Yvonne, arrived fresh from Jersey via the UK - and has managed to swap the weather! Europe is now going to get a heatwave, and we’re getting some rather Scottish-type weather. We have a trough passing over the area this weekend bringing some windy and squally weather, followed by no wind. We, of course, choose this time to be heading around the eastern bulge of Viti Levu.However, first up was a trip to Rakiraki to provision with a very nice fresh market and a reasonable su

Plan B - we went with the dinghy anyway. It actually wasn’t too bad though we were flying along underwater and had to swim occasionally to avoid the dinghy getting swept onto reefs. We had a nice dive, albeit quite short as the wall wasn’t really a wall - it bottomed off around 15m and got a little boring as we drifted along. We’ll try and find another boat and get a bit further along the outer wall....The crew getting pulled by the dinghy...

We went ashore the next day to make a few arrangements with the ever helpful Warren at Safari Lodge. He was organising to pick Ania’s friend up from the airport on Thursday and could also have another crack at filling my LPG tank on their way back. He could also give us some diving pointers.We also met some guests staying by the beach, who told us about a BBQ that evening being organised for a large group of new arrivals. We found out the details and agreed that we’d join them that evening (

I spoke too soon. I thought we were plenty far enough off the land to avoid mozzies. We were, but not every other kind of flying bug! We were inundated with flying ants, cockroaches and crickets!The next morning, the deck was littered with bodies, and every rope we shook elicited more bugs falling onto the deck. Ugh! So that was enough for us, we lifted anchor and got moving. Nananu-i-Ra was the destination.Its very green around here - reminds me of the south west of the UK. We made pretty good