Gresham Family Exodus

Way back when we first started telling people about our plan to go cruising, many had a very remote and isolated lifestyle in mind. And sure, at times, cruising can be that way, but most of the time it’s been a very social lifestyle within the close-knit cruising community. It was pretty awesome to arrive at a foreign port for the first time and know so many people who were there. In fact, our entire time in Savusavu was one of reunions as we caught up with old friends and met back up with the ones we traveled from New Zealand with.

It started immediately as we were just entering the harbor. Reminiscent of our arrivals in Atuona (after our Pacific crossing), we were met by Craig and Leann from True Blue V in their dinghy, and they came bearing fresh bread from the bakery on shore. What a treat! After our clearance process, Craig and Leann joined us for our safe arrival cocktails. Yes, it was 10:00am, but c’mon, we had just arrived in Fiji! And nothing says safe arrival like morning bloody mary’s. And it was this little get together where Craig and Leann first put the bug in our ear to consider going to Marshall Islands instead of Australia for cyclone season. We extended the party to lunch on shore for burgers and beer at Surf ‘n’ Turf, and then the Exodus crew was ready to catch up on some much needed sleep. But when we got to the dinghy dock, Field Trip was in a berth at the dock and Lumbaz was at the quarantine dock clearing in. So, of course that meant a couple more safe arrival beers on Field Trip.

The next day was a girls shopping excursion ashore. Since True Blue V had spent the cyclone season in Fiji, they knew what was what in Savusavu. So, Leann took us around to the fabric stores and seamstresses to look into having chumbas and sulus made. What a fun day we had: Exodus, True Blue V, Field Trip, Lumbaz, and Et Voila. The labor cost of having clothing made is embarassingly cheap, so the main cost is the fabric, and it was fun to browse around and pick the exact color and fabric you wanted. Because I needed a pretty fast turnaround with my order, I ended up having my stuff made at one of the fabric stores, since they were the only ones who could have it done on time. Not to go on too much of a tangent, but it was kind of funny when I went to pick up my stuff and tried them on for the first time. I absolutely could not get the chumba on down over my shoulders or up over my hips. It seemed to me that the zipper was too short. When I told the seamstress about it and suggested the zipper was too short, she blatantly disagreed with me. That’s the length zipper she always uses. She said she just needed to take it out at the waist. I was skeptical and told her that I think the dimensions are correct, I just can’t get it on. She said she didn’t have a longer zipper anyway, so I went to another fabric store and bought a longer zipper. The seamstress reluctantly replaced the zipper, and as I suspected, I was then able to get it on over my shoulders and then zip it up for a perfect fit through the waist and hips. Later, it ocurred to me that she is used to making the chumbas for the Fijian women, and it’s a rare Fijian woman whose waist is narrower than her shoulders, so of course the shorter zippers are not a problem!

OK, Back to fun with friends. A few more of our dear friends arrived to Savusavu over the next couple days. The first was Chara, and I was in town when they arrived, so I had no idea they were there until I heard someone hail them on VHF. I perked up, “What!? Chara’s here?” That’s when Alex and Brenden told me that, oh yeah, they forgotten to tell me that Chara was here. Apparently, the boys were on shore playing so they were there to catch the lines when Chara arrived at the quarantine dock. So, there was some catching up to do with Chara, and I had a lovely impromptu glass of wine with Joyce (Chara) and Wanda (Et Voila) at one of the outdoor tables at The Copra Shed.

Our friends, Helen and Stefano, on the boat called Novae, also turned up in Savusavu while we were there. We had said good-bye to them in New Zealand as they departed a week or two before we did. It was good to have a chance to see them again and we enjoyed a wonderful happy hour on their boat along with Theo and Wanda from Et Voila. The boys didn’t join us for this “non-kid boat” fun, instead they opted to run around shore at dusk with no shoes with all the other kids. Can you blame them?

Speaking of kid boats, we were quite ecstatic as Fluenta arrived. Backing up a bit, Fluenta was planning to go to Tonga this season, so had pretty much resolved ourselves to the possibility that we might not see them again. Luckily, while underway from New Zealand to Tonga, Liz had an epiphany during one of her night watches and they decided to alter course. Her logic was flawless to me… why not cruise Fiji this year with all their friends and save Tonga for next year? After all, they’d be cruising Tonga with new people this year, why not do it with next year’s new people? So, Fluenta joined us in Fiji, and spoiler alert… we are SO glad they did.

With True Blue V, Chara, and Fluenta all there, we just had to have a Mexico reunion party on Exodus. Of course we were missing one cream colored mono-hull whose captain fancies bright yellow skimpy clothing, so the party just wasn’t quite complete.

Overall, being in Savusavu was like reunion week as we caught up with old friends and met back up with the ones we traveled from NZ with. However, it was somewhat of a whirlwind since we had all the usual chores to take care of before leaving civilization for more remote areas.

In Savusavu we purchased sim cards for Tim’s iPad and iPhone and one for the dongle for my computer, so we were all set up for 3G internet. It was fast, just as fast as New Zealand. And it was cheap, cheaper than New Zealand at $25 Fijian for 8G for one month. And surprisingly, many of the islands across Fiji have 3G available. Of course, many didn’t, like Fulaga and Yadua, and sometimes even if the island had it, we couldn’t always get it in the anchorages. But overall, we were internet spoiled during our stay in Fiji.

Savusavu reminded me a little of both Neiafu, Tonga and La Cruz, Mexico, but without the expat buffer that both of those places had. I think it’s a little bigger than both those places, and it has better grocery stores and fresh food market. The people in Savusavu were friendly, but I think I had been hearing so many other cruisers raving about the Fijian people, that I wasn’t all that impressed. Many people said an unsolicited “Bula” as you walked down the street but just as many people didn’t. And just like everywhere we’ve been, if you reach out first with a smile and a hello, it always brings out the best in people.

There were four main grocery stores that I visited. There are MH grocery stores that have most of the standard Fijian supplies, one at either end of town. The one near the marinas has a slightly better selection of vegetables and dairy. There’s an Indian Store that has most of the same stuff as the MH stores plus a lot of expensive imported stuff. I even found a couple cannisters of Tim’s coffee creamer there. Lastly, there as a place called Sally’s Deli that had all imported items plus a decent wine selection. And it was air conditioned inside. I didn’t need much wine or specialty items, so I only browsed around long enough to cool off and bought a courtesy jar of guava jelly. In the same building as the Waitui Marina is Fiji Meats, and a lot of cruisers get meat and chicken there. Our freezer was still pretty stocked from New Zealand, so I didn’t pay a visit to Fiji Meats.

Even though we had heard such rave reviews of the Indian food, the only restaurant we went to while we were there was Surf and Turf at the far end of town. When we’ve been offshore for awhile, all four of us really crave a good burger. It’s a nice walk from the marinas, but you can also dinghy up the creek and tie off at a dock right behind the restaurant. They had excellent burgers, except that Alex really didn’t like that they put fresh mint on them. Spoiler alert: Four months later during our second visit to Savusavu, we found the burgers at Surf and Turf to have severely degraded in quality.

I aluded earlier to the good Indian food available in Savusavu, so I might as well explain that there’s a huge Indian population here and across Fiji. Almost 50% of the population. When both India and Fiji were part of the British Empire, they brough Indians here, basically as endentured servents, to do manual labor, and in the end many of the Indians decided to stay. There doesn’t seem to be much integration among the groups and a lot, if not all, of the political strife here in Fiji in our lifetime has been due to conflict, mostly peaceful, between these ethnic groups. I haven’t done sufficient research to say much more on the topic, but I’m just glad for the infusion of flavor into the food here, because to tell the truth, Pacific Island food is not really our thing after all.

I also aluded to the lack of an expat buffer here in Savusavu, but that’s not entirely accurate. While there isn’t a whole lot of expats living here clamoring over each other every morning on the VHF net to let all the cruisers know what services they can provide, there is this one guy, named Curly, and certainly, he is enough. As we were making our final approach to Savusavu that first morning, we were jolted to attention by the following call on VHF channel 16, “Goooooooood morning Saaaavusavu.” That was Curly announcing that his morning VHF net would soon be starting on channel 68. That first morning, I found the net informative regarding what services were available around Savusavu. However, after only two or three more days I couldn’t take it any more. It was just a repetitive stream of commercials and warnings about the weather. I stopped listening.

But before I make Curly sound like a huge bore, I need to point out that he makes things so much easier on cruisers when they arrive. He knows Fiji and can answer all of your questions. He gives a “chart marking” seminar every week or so for cruisers new to Fiji, for a cost of about $5-10 Fijian per person (I don’t exactly remember how much), so Tim and I went to one. It was held at The Surf and Turf Restaurant, and we attended with some of our buddy boats: Field Trip, Lumbaz, and Et Voila. It was extremely informative, and he handed out several hard copy chartlets of popular cruising areas with safe GPS waypoints included. The only problem was it lasted about 3 hours, and my brain filled up after about 1.5. I took notes and tried my best to stay focused. I said it was informative, and it absolutely was, but there was some misinformation sprinkled in there as well that we found out about along the way. Two examples were 1) He said to not even try to get all the way down to Fulaga in one jump. It’s best to start in Northern Lau and work your way down. Boats that try to jump all the way to Fulaga never make it. Of course, Lumbaz and Exodus both successfully and without drama made it all the way in one hop. 2) He said that the island of Yadua is off limits. It turns out this is not true. According to the 2015 Fiji Shores and Marinas Guide and the inhabitants of the island themselves, including the official park ranger, visiting Yadua is perfectly OK. It’s the small island next to it, Yandua Taba, that is off limits, because there is a rare, protected, crested iguana that lives there.

For about $20 extra (I think) Curly also offered an additional service of sending you more waypoints as you travel around Fiji. We paid for this, and we got waypoints from him for Fulaga, Koro, and Rabi. We emailed a request for waypoints to Matuku, but never got anything back, so it wasn’t a 100% guaranteed service. But all of the waypoints we got from Curly were 100% spot-on and we were glad to have them when we did. Especially for Fulaga since the waypoints made it obvious where you had to veer left in the pass to avoid what would later come to be known as “Nirvana Reef.” Most of us had Curly’s waypoints and knew to veer left. Nirvana did not. Story follows later.

If you are curious about Curly, you can search “Curly in Savusavu” in google to find his web page.

We intentionally arrived on a Monday morning, because we’d been told that you can rack up quite a bill with the officials because of overtime fees if you arrive on a weekend. In some countries, you can’t even clear in on the weekend. You’re just supposed to stay on your boat with your Q flag flying until Monday morning (with varying degrees of the level of enforcement of this rule). On the other hand, New Zealand allowed clearance 7 days/week without any fees at all never mind fees for overtime. Tonga will clear you in on the weekend if you want, but you have to pay overtime fees, or you can just stay on your boat until Monday, you choose. Apparently in Fiji, there is no choice. If you arrive on the weekend, you still must clear in, and you must pay overtime fees. So, we avoided that headache by simply arriving on a Monday. Luckily, there was no surprise public holiday.

Arriving to Fiji from New Zealand, clearing in at Savusavu is not the automatic choice. A lot of boats go first to Suva since it is fewer miles and there are more services there. However, we chose Savusavu, because it is the furthest east. This is important if you want to go to The Lau group, which is east of all ports of clearance, so the further east you can be the better your chance for getting a break in the trade winds for a weather window to Lau. Additionally, we had heard from other cruisers that Savusavu is just nicer and less industrial than Suva, so since we didn’t need anything from Suva, we decided to clear in to Savusavu. It didn’t hurt that all of our friends were going there too.

There is no Port Captain in Savusavu, so in order to clear in you are supposed to radio one of the Marinas to announce your arrival and get instructions. Our friends had told us to call The Copra Shed Marina, because they have a clearance dock, but we later learned that Waitui Marina can also organize your clearance for you, and they will shuttle the officials out to your boat. Also, as we learned much later, Waitui has a much friendlier staff. But anyway, we called Copra Shed and since there was already a boat at the clearance dock, they instructed us to pick up a mooring and wait. When it was our turn we moved Exodus to the dock, but it was sort of a comical situation, and luckily our friends on Et Voila had given us a heads up. It turns out the clearance dock is a very short dock, probably only 2/3 of the length of Exodus, and it was a bit rickety as well. We put our stern in line with one end of the dock and let the bow stick out, that way boarding would still be possible. In hindsight, maybe having officials shuttled out to our boat wouldn’t be so bad. Especially since when we were back in Savusavu at the end of the season they weren’t making boats wait on a mooring for their turn (since the moorings were full) they were just having them raft up at the clearance dock. One day, they were four boats deep.

Before I go on to tell you about what happened when the officials arrived, I need to provide a little background. Fiji is only the second country we’ve visited where you have to provide advanced notice of your arrival, the first being New Zealand. And it’s obvious that Fiji has copied their processes from New Zealand, because the forms they use are all identical. So, like New Zealand, Fiji requires you to email an advance notice form at least 48 hours prior to arrival. Since we wouldn’t have any sort of internet access along the way, I emailed the form the morning we left New Zealand. I emailed it first thing in the morning, but by the time we were tossing off the dock lines at mid day, we still hadn’t received any sort of confirmation email back. They don’t typically send back a confirmation, but I had been told by other cruisers that if you specifically ask for them to respond back then sometimes they will. So, all the way from New Zealand to Fiji I fretted about whether or not our paperwork had been received. I even tried to have my Dad and my friend Colin access my yahoo email while we were offshore to see if a confirmation email ever arrived, but I had set up an inpenetrable security defense on my yahoo account so they weren’t able to access from a new computer. I asked about it on the SSB net, and some people had gotten an email back but most didn’t, and everyone said not to worry about. So, I tried to stop worrying about it, but there was always a little nagging thought there.

So, now we are on the dock in Savusavu, and the first officials to visit us were from Health and Biosecurity. They were two very jovial and friendly men, and for a few minutes I didn’t think about the paperwork. Unlike New Zealand, they didn’t take any of our meat, vegetables (if we had them), or anything else even though their process said they would. They just made us promise we wouldn’t take any food we brought with us off the boat. Easy enough.

Then the customs and immigration officials arrived. The lead customs official was a small, slender woman with a stern face, and the first thing she said to us was, “We have not received any paperwork from you. Do you not understand the regulations here in Fiji?” Unbelievable! Seriously, at first I didn’t believe it. My first thought was that somehow, some way, Tim had gotten to them and they were playing a practical joke on me. But no, that wasn’t the case after all. They really didn’t recieve our paperwork. So, she said that since we didn’t send advanced notice they would have to search our boat. This made me a little nervous since we had so much alcohol on board, way more than the official import rules allow, but I calmly just said, “OK, no problem, go ahead.” The “search” turned out to be a complete joke. Clearly they were just checking the box in response to this situation that neither one of us wanted to be in. All they did was look around the salon, open the silverware drawer, and poke their heads down into each hull. Needless to say, we checked out OK. Also, I was able to show them the emails I had sent while we were offshore updating them on our ETA as we progressed from New Zealand to Minerva Reef to Fiji. This proof that we had in fact been following the rules and somehow technology was to blame went a long way, I think, to cause the laid back attitude regarding the search.

Once we were all cleared in, Tim went to ask the marina, The Copra Shed Marina, about a mooring ball for a few days. He came back and said that they have a space on the dock, and he seemed eager to take it. For some reason, I couldn’t stand the idea of being at the dock, it just seemed more appropriate to be out on a mooring or even at anchor for our much deserved safe arrival drinks. So, I had to go talk to the marina again and after they originally told us they only had the dock space they finally relented and gave us a mooring. I think they were just trying to sell the dock space to us because it’s more expensive.

The administrative process of arriving in Fiji wasn’t quite complete, even though at that point we were allowed to take the Q flag down. We still had to do the following:

1) Get our island cruising permit. You get this from the Itaukei Affairs Board, and I’ve read that you can go to the office yourself in Savusavu to get this, but most people just pay the marina 10 Fijian dollars to take care of it. So, that’s what we did too. This document is written in Fijian, and it is the official letter to the chiefs and village headmen of the islands so that they know you have permission to cruise there. We were told that you should always bring this document ashore with you the first time in case they ask for it, but no one ever asked us for it.

2) Get our coastal clearance. This is a document you get from Customs that is basically your permission to leave your port of entry, in our case Savusavu. On our third day there I went to customs to take care of this, and they didn’t make me wait at the window line but rather brought me to the back office for this. The man who helped me was young, and he gave me a chair to sit in while he finished the process of typing up the email that he was in the middle of. No problem, at least the office was air conditioned. He got the permit all typed up, printed it out, and then realized he made a mistake and didn’t update one of the fields. So, he fixed it and printed it out again. Then, when I thought we were just about done, he asked to see my receipts for paying my health and biosecurity fees. Of course, I hadn’t done that yet, as those were going to be my next to errands of the day. You could tell he wasn’t quite sure what to do, so he just made me promise that I would pay the fees since he wasn’t supposed to give me the coastal clearance until those fees are paid. Of course, I crossed my heart and hoped to die.

3) Pay the Health and Biosecurity fees. If you arrive with Fijian dollars, you can pay these fees on the spot when the officials are on your boat, but if you don’t, they write you an invoice and it’s your responsibility to go to the offices at your convenience to get them paid. As mentioned above, the check on this is supposed to be showing your receipts to get your coastal clearance, but I managed to unintentionally circumvent that process. But of course, I paid the fees anyway. Both offices are on the other side of town from where the customs office is, and Alex joined me for the walk around town. Everyone was friendly and getting the fees paid was easy. It was $87.70 Fijian for Biosecurity and $172 for Ministry of Health.

We arrived in Savusavu, Fiji on a Monday morning, May 25. We spent a whirlwhind 4 days there clearing in and taking care of all the necessary chores after being offshore for so long. On Friday, we headed East over to the island of Taveuni and took a mooring ball at Paradise resort in order to spend time with family who were vacationing there. After kickin it resort style for a couple days we took advantage of a marginal weather window to get all the way down to Fulaga in Southern Lau Group, so we took it. We departed Paradise on Monday night, June 1, and our adventures in The Lau Group will be the topic of the chapter.

Savusavu –> Paradise Taveuni –> Southern Lau