The Yasawas are the northwest most island group in Fiji. They are a long skinny chain of volcanic islands running from southwest to northeast. Like the mamanucas, they are mostly dry and sunny being somewhat in the lee of Viti Levu, but the resorts are lower key and more remote given their slightly further distance from the international airport. There is a shortage of really good anchorages, so most of the time we were either rolling around, wrapping our anchor chain around coral heads, or setting an anchor alarm due to poor holding. The map below shows the islands, but what it doesn’t show is the fringing reef that goes mostly up and down both sides, so moving around requires daylight and good visibility. We’ve heard that The Moorings ran a charter operation here for a while, but the cruising isn’t super easy and apparently, they had issues and shut down.
Our original thought was to go all the way up to the top of the chain before turning the corner back to the east, but as often happens when you’re cruising, we altered our plan due to changing priorities. And the number one priority at this point was to hang out with our other kid boat friends for as long as we could.
The Yasawa Island Chain
Gresham Family Exodus 