As we were prepping to drop the mooring at Paradise and depart for Fulaga, we had VHF radio contact with our friends on the boat Lumbaz, and they had departed Savusavu earlier that day and were also heading to Fulaga. They also told us that Fluenta would likely be departing the next day from Savusavu, so we were happy to find out we would be a party of 3 kid boats.
The weather window we picked wasn’t ideal, but it would get us there. With the wind direction there’s no way we could point directly at Fulaga (we love Exodus, but she really sucks going to weather), so our strategy was to just point as high as we could while the wind lasted and then when the wind died, as it was forecast to do, we would engine up in order to get east. This strategy worked, and luckily the forecast was spot on. It was quite an uncomfortable passage for most of the way since we were hard into 15-20 kts of wind, but it was short, and we were really looking forward to Fulaga, so it didn’t seem too bad. We had some difficulty with the autopilot the first night using wind vane mode. It would intermittently stop tracking the wind and then Exodus’s tremendous weather helm would cause us to get in irons. It happened maybe three times that night, and it hasn’t happened since, so we aren’t sure what the problem really was. (Note: Writing this 6 months later and it has happened several times while beating upwind to The Marshall Islands. There’s no problem with the autopilot, it’s just if we are pointing right at the edge of our ability, then if there’s a quick windshift forward it happens. I think it just means we need to stop bashing to weather so much.)
It was a two-night passage, and as we were getting close, I called to Lumbaz on VHF but didn’t receive an answer. Then imagine my surprise when I got a call back from Nirvana. They were over 20 miles away at the island of Komo, but we were able to read each other quite well on the radio. They were going to come to Fulaga the next day, but they told us that Nautilus had already departed Komo that morning bound for Fulaga. What great news! Nautilus had left New Zealand a few weeks before us, and we were hoping to catch them at some point, but I never quite got my hopes up that it would happen. So, forget our party of 3 kid boats, soon we would be a party of 5!
Gresham Family Exodus 