We left Herald Bay hoping to anchor down near the southern end of the island in order to have easier access to dive/snorkel/spearfish the southern pass, called Ningali pass on Open CPN. We couldn’t find a suitable spot to anchor, because it was deep right up to the coral shelf, so we would have had to anchor in 60 ft of water without the swing room to avoid the reef should the wind shift to an unfavorable direction. So, we ended up just plopping down on a shoal right at the southern pass. The weather was pretty benign, so we figured it would make an OK day anchorage. We spent the day playing and snorkeling in the pass, but then concerned over the conditions if we stayed anchored in such an exposed spot, we moved over near the village of Waikama for the night with Lumbaz. We thought it would be better protected, but it was pretty rolly itself, so the next day we went back out to the pass and just ended up staying out there the next night.
The general consensus was the the pass diving and snorkeling was pretty amazing. I only snorkeled once, and I have to say that I didn’t think it was anything special, except for the huge school of circling barracudas and the giant grouper. We’ve certainly seen much, much better coral.
Our next stop was just a short overnight downwind passage away, so we decided to depart after dark, through the Ningali pass. Yikes! Tim had dove it several times, and he also took the iPad out in the dinghy to record a GPS track to use but exiting a narrow pass like that at night: Yikes. Nautilus was coming with us, but they were having none of this nighttime pass exiting stuff, in fact they didn’t even want to go through Ningali pass in the daytime, and they left early and went back up to the pass we had come in through. Everyone said we were “brave” which really meant “crazy” or even “stupid.” Needless to say, Tim was at the helm, and I think this is one of the very few times I’d ever seen him get rattled. He didn’t actually show it at the time, but he talked about it after. Right about the time he thought we were just clear of the pass he got disoriented by some lights and somehow thought we had gotten turned around and were heading back towards the other boats still at anchor. Luckily, he kept his cool and trusted his instruments and didn’t hastily turn around or anything. That nighttime departure through that pass is one of the few things we’ve done that Tim says he probably wouldn’t do again.
If my memory serves me correctly, we started having watermaker issues back in Fulaga, however it was here in Gau where it first pops up in the log. “High salinity.” The issue was that when running the watermaker it was taking longer and longer for the salinity level to come down to safe drinking levels, and sometimes we would have to run the generator to get the voltage up in order to increase the pump pressure in order for the salinity to come down. It definitely got worse in Gau, which was pretty poor timing considering we had 5 extra people on board. But we ended up living with it for a couple of months until we got back to Savusavu. (Spoiler alert: it was the membrane.)
If the sandspit in Fulanga was kid village 1.0 then Gau was 2.0. The kids all slept on shore, and the Bellini kids fit right in with all of them. They gave strict instructions that no grown-ups were allowed, and seriously, Tim and Marcus were pretty much chased from the beach with pitchforks when they went to the beach in the morning.
Sadly, there is no photo evidence of Kid Village 2.0, because the Lord of the Flies rules did not allow photography.
On the island of Gau on our first day we walked through the mud and rain to the village of Sawaieke for sevusevu. I guess that muddy walk just wasn’t enough, so we decided to top it with an ultra-muddy hike. Nautilus arrived the day after us, and when they went in to do their sevusevu, Tim asked them to try to arrange a guided hike for us, which, of course they succeeded in doing. It was all set up for the following morning, but after it rained all night and wasn’t showing much sign permanently letting up, Tim wanted to abort the hike and tried to raise a faction of hike dissenters. For some reason, I was pretty intent on getting off the boat and going for a hike, rain and mud or no rain and mud, so I tried to raise a counter faction of hike supporters. Tim radioed Nautilus, and the hike supporters were backed by Hans, who has tremendous influence over his spearfishing bro-friend, and Tim relented, and the hike was on. And once again at the end of the day I wondered if the Bellinis were regretting spending their vacation with us!
The path was steep and *ridiculously* muddy. I mean, I’m pretty sure our guide thought we were the craziest bunch of Palagis she’d ever met wanting to go on this hike. Most of the kids kept smiles on their faces, and a few took advantage of the conditions to get really good and dirty. We stopped twice before finally aborting and coming back down before even getting high enough for any good views.
After the hike, Tim and Marcus went spearfishing, all the kids went over to Fluenta to play, and all the moms came over to Exodus to drink wine.
Fortunately, the next day the sun came out and snorkeling fun was had by all, and the day of the muddy hike lives in our memories as one of those camaraderie building experiences, something you didn’t really enjoy too much but you’re glad you did.
Muddy hike but most of the kids are still smiling!
We had been told that there is a trail from the beach at our anchorage up to a road that would lead to the village, so figured we could find it. We did find it, but we later realized we took the long path up to the road. It was a damp and muddy walk, about 30 min, to the village, but once we got there, we found the people of the village to be very nice. After we presented sevusevu they invited us to stay right then for some Kava. It seems we tried to beg out of it by saying we wouldn’t be able to stay long because we wanted to walk back before dark, but they didn’t take that to mean no kava, they naturally took it to man not *much* kava. This is actually a rare treat; you don’t often get to drink kava with the chief right then and there after the sevusevu. So, I was glad for Marcus and Robin and kids getting to experience this aspect of traditional village life. The kids were all bored, though, and we were all grateful when one of the women brought in bananas for them to eat. The village kids were all very curious about us but very, very shy. Carine, the youngest daughter on Caminante broke the ice and had a great time running around and playing with them. And as usual, 1 year old Benjamin from Fluenta stole everyone’s hearts.
Kids in the doorway during our sevusevu
Group photo in Gau
For some reason after the bumpy passage and then walking an hour in the rain to and from the village to do sevusevu, and then after having to carry dingies over the coral and rocks because the tide had receded so much, the Bellini’s still looked like they were having fun. They really were getting the real deal with their cruising vacation, that’s for sure.
We raised anchor in Suva at about 9pm and navigated by sight around all the boats in the harbor. Then, we followed our track all the way out of the harbor, and once outside, it was a difficult upwind bash until we could clear the corner of the Viti Levu (the big island where Suva is) and head more NE towards Gau. There were Bellini family members piled all around the cockpit trying to get some sleep, but as far as I know, no one got too sick. Tim, the boys, and I stood our normal watches, and it was a tired crew that entered the lagoon at Gau the next morning.
There are three passes throught the reef on the NW side of Gau, and we went through the middle one, which is unlabled on our Navionics charts. The pass was easy and we dropped anchor in Herald Bay, south of the village of Sawaieke.
Fluenta and Caminante made the passage with us, while Nautilus came the next night, and Lumbaz a couple nights after. Caminante caught 3 Dorado just outside the pass, and they generously gave one to us, which fed our entire crew of 9 for two nights.
Bellinis arrive. Our friends, the Bellini family arrived in Suva on Thurs, 9 July. They flew into Nadi the previous night, rented a car, stayed in a hotel, and the drove from Nadi to Suva to meet up with us. Tim and Marcus are childhood friends, and Tim’s known Robin since college also, so they all go way back. We used to charter Lagoon 380’s from Long Beach to Catalina Island every summer with them, and those were always really fun long weekends. They’ve also talked on and off with Tim over the years of wanting to go cruising themselves, so we thought giving them an authentic cruising vacation would be what they would want. However, I think they discovered quickly that cruising isn’t exactly the same as chartering for a long weekend, and I can only hope they didn’t totally regret their choice of how to spend their limited vacation time. We had Exodus mostly prepped to go, so once they arrived we had a quick dinner at the yacht club and then made a night departure to the Island of Gau.
The daysail up to Suva was fast, but not too uncomfortable. As we pulled into the harbor we were happy to hear that almost the whole gang was there… everyone except Lumbaz. Caminante, Fluenta, and Nirvana, were all anchored in the back row, but in typical catamaran fashion we edged up to the front row and tried our best to anchor equidistant from other boats including a few derelicts and a wreck or two.
Derelict fishing boats and a sunken ship. Just a few of our neighbors anchored in the Suva Harbor
After a few days in Suva, here is an email I wrote that pretty well summed up my impressions:
Suva is a full fledged city, which has been quite a shock after being in The Lau Group for over a month.Here are the highlights so far: 1) Our first evening here we walked across the street to have a cheap dinner out.It was cheap, but it really wasn’t that good, BUT the highlight was that our kids almost immediately joined in playing with the local kids.They played some sort of tag and also did some relay races.2) We are here with friends, four other kid boats, and while I write this we are waiting for another to arrive (they are within VHF range already).3) Cost-u-less.It’s like costco with items in bulk but they also have a lot of US and NZ products.They even had Tim’s beloved vanilla coffee creamer!4) The Suva market… holy fresh fruits and vegetables!And the second floor has kava and all sorts of Indian spices.5) Everything is cheap!I can’t tell you how many times I’ve said, “that’s cheaper than Mexico!”Except for rum.😦
Here are the downsides, not that I really feel the need to complain… 1) The weather has been crappy.In the 5 days I think we’ve seen the sun for a total of 4 hours.Luckily, we have access to gasoline so our generator has been humming, and Tim is working on version 10.0 of the rain catcher.2) The Royal Suva Yacht Club showers are neither high pressure nor hot.3) There is a prison very near the Yacht club, but on the upside when we pass the guys in orange jumpsuits they are every bit as happy as your average Fijian.4) Yeah, I can’t think of any other downsides.
It didn’t take the kids long to make friends in Suva
Here’s a little more information about Suva:
Royal Suva Yacht Club. Inside the breakwater at the head of the harbor there is a small marina, and on shore there you can find “The Royal Suva Yacht Club.” We joined for 1 month, it wasn’t too expensive, but turned out to be more than what it was worth, given that I only used the showers once. They have happy hours every night with cheap Fiji bitter on tap, which was a bonus. There was a big grassy area for the kids to run and play, and apparently the popular game while we were in Suva was cops and robbers.
Laundry. They have a very cheap drop-off service at the yacht club. It was almost half the price as the drop-off services in Savusavu, and they even returned it the same day. Almost. When I went to pick up my bag in the afternoon the guys face drained of all its color when he saw me, because he knew he had already given out all the bags of laundry he had. Without telling me what was going on he went to the VHF radio and started hailing the vessel “Another Adventure,” a boat we had actually met when we were in Fulaga. After calling twice with no response I finally asked him if he had given my laundry to Another Adventure, and he told me that yes he did, but it was my fault because our boat name wasn’t written clearly on it. That isn’t true, but I let it slide, I knew he was just at a loss for what to do because he didn’t even have any idea if Another Adventure was still in the harbor, and if they weren’t, then what? I asked him if I could use his VHF, and I called one of our friends and asked if they knew if Another Adventure was still there, and yes, in fact they were anchored close by. So, I told the guy at the yacht club I would go out in our dinghy to get our laundry. But I half smiled as I told him I wasn’t going to pay him yet. He smiled back. We got our laundry back, no problem, which was a huge relief.
Fuel dock. There is a shallow fuel dock at the Yacht Club, so we took some depth soundings from the dinghy to see if it was deep enough for us, and with our 4 ft draf there was plenty of water for us. We went in the morning, just before high tide, and we had 6 ft under our keels. While at the dock we were able to obviously fill our diesel tanks, but we also got to take advantage of a fresh water spigot and we gave Exodus a much needed rinse off and scrub down.
Exodus at the fuel dock in Suva
Suva Market. I know I’ve already mentioned the Suva Market, but oh my god! I can’t overstate how much I loved the Suva Market. I went pretty much every day and would buy the freshest things I could find. Forget shopping malls and clothing stores, after living this cruising life there’s nothing I enjoy more than browsing table after table of baby bok choy, tomatoes, and eggplant. All locally grown and all dirt cheap. They had imported items like apples, carrots, and bell peppers (now known to us as capsicum), and I splurged occassionally, but mostly I stuck to the huge plate of locally grown with the $1 Fijian price tag. For the most part, the Suva Market is just like the Savusavu or Nadi markets only about 10 times the size. The one special thing about the Suva market is the upstairs area with all of the dried goods (including bulk popcorn!) and Indian spices. I could browse up there for quite awhile too! I loaded up on curry powder, because we have found that the curry powder here is much better than what I used to buy in the supermarket back home. I will need to find an Indian market when we go back. I also found ground cumin here too (now known to us as Jeera powder).
Suva Market!
Bulk foods and Indian spices on the 2nd floor of the Suva Market
Other Provisioning. The Cost u Less that I mentioned earlier was quite a taxi ride away, so Tim and I went together and spent half a day and probably $1000 to fill a taxi to its maximum capacity. Closer to the harbor there are several supermarkets, including two MHCC’s. The one where I did our final provisioning is in a totally western style shopping mall. The boys and I walked down there and then took a taxi back.
Taxis. Taxis are everywhere in Suva! And in Fiji taxi drivers earn an hourly wage rather than some sort of commission based on their fares, so the drivers are always more than happy to wait for you while you do your shopping or any other errands. You pretty much can’t walk down the street without several taxis slowing down and honking at you to see if you want a lift. Taxis are cheap too, so we never hestitated to grab one if we didn’t feel like walking or were too loaded down. Usually I would walk down to the market (about a 20-30 minute walk) and then take a taxi back.
Overall, our visit to Suva reminded me a lot of when we went to Pago Pago, American Samoa: Probably would have been enjoyable under other circumstances but visiting among stops at actual island paradises AND being mostly consumed by provisioning and other work made it certainly no highlight. Except for the market.
We will be raising anchor in just over an hour for a long day sail up to Suva.It’s still dark now, a full moon is setting, and the boat is quiet with the exception of the small swell hitting the beach.There is no road noise and there are no sounds of dogs or chickens.We are with just one other boat and there isn’t even a village on this island.It’s time to provision and I will be happy to have something, anything in the way of fresh vegetables (although we did thoroughly enjoy a cabbage salad last night.Who knew you could enjoy a cabbage salad.)However, we’ve had such a nice time in these more remote areas, especially Fulaga and Matuku, that I’m a little overwhelmed at the thought of heading to a city.Oh well, it is what it is, and we’ll adjust, just like we always do.
Before leaving home I did a lot of reading about provisioning. There were so many “tricks of the trade” that I needed to learn about storing fresh foods, which foods last the longest, and how to minimize what you have to keep in the fridge. And one of the recurring tips I encountered was that cabbage is a great thing to buy, because it lasts, like forever. So, of course when we were in Mexico, I kept buying cabbage. Cabbage is a cruiser’s staple, and we were cruisers now, so I bought cabbage, what else could I do? But the thing is, we never ate cabbage at home, and we don’t actually really like cabbage. So, yes, I kept buying it, but then I kept throwing out rotten cabbage. No matter how long it lasted, we never ate it. I did eventually learn my lesson that cruising WILL cause you to change some of your eating habits, but it’s NOT going to magically make you like cabbage.
Fast forward a couple of years, and now I’ve learned another lesson. One that took going 5 weeks between provisioning (our longest so far) for us to learn. We provisioned in Savusavu, Fiji to spend some weeks in The Lau group, and after being gone 3 weeks we were pretty well depleted of all things fresh on board, the exceptions being potatoes and garlic. In Matuku, we were given some mandarins and papayas, which were absolutely heavenly, but after 5 weeks, we were seriously craving vegetables that didn’t come from a can. In a village on the island of Kadavu they had these huge bunches of leafy greens that they were selling, and I didn’t even know what they were when I practically started throwing money at them. It turns out they were taro leaves, and a friend told me that at a Tongan feast she had had a bad reaction in her throat to taro leaves and that Big Mama (of Big Mama’s yacht club in Tongatapu) had told her that if you don’t cook it long enough that’s what can happen. I still bought it and I cooked the crap out of it, but I was worried, so I ate it myself without giving any to anyone else. I swear I was looking out for their well being and NOT just hogging all the greens for myself!
Anyway, while we were anchored at Namara Island, Tim and a friend dinghied over to the next island of Dravuni in order to do our sevusevu presentation, and when they came back it was like Christmas, because they were able to buy just a few provisions there. Eggs, a loaf of bread, and last but not least, a head of green cabbage. We didn’t care that it was cabbage, we were having salad at dinner that night! We didn’t have any other veggies, but not to worry. Just add some chopped cashews, canned mandarin oranges, uncooked ramen noodles, and homemade sesame oil/ginger vinaigrette dressing and you’ve got yourself a real cruiser’s salad.
So, it turns out cruising CAN magically make you like cabbage. You just have to be desperate enough.
Gresham Family Exodus 