We’re about 35 miles West, Nor’west of Fulanga and already missing all our friends there. There’s not a place like it in the world that we’ve ever visited before. I hope we get to return sometime.

So for now, we’re looking forward at new adventures and new friends. It’s 1900 and we’ve had a very basic dinner-some bread, cheese and for me a beer since I’m going off watch once this note is sent. Of course we had a Charisma as the sun set around 1700 and now a bright, round, almost-full moon is lighting the way. We have 15-20 knot winds out of the SW and 2 meter swell. All in all a nice night although it’s a bit rolly, or maybe after sitting in a nice quiet lagoon for three weeks we’re just out of practice. Let’s call it a bit of both and look forward to a lovely night of sailing shall we?

Savusavu is about 150 miles to the NNW from our position. We’ll be hard pressed to make it tomorrow while it’s still light. If the weather’s benign, we’ll try and slip in a grab a mooring in the river, but otherwise we’ll have to heave to for some hours in the night and wait for daylight. We also have a possible option to anchor about four miles short of town near the Coustea resort. Depends how many other boats are there. It’s a very small anchorage and I don’t want to try and find the sandy shelf whilst disturbing a bunch of other folks, but if there are only a couple boats there that may be an option.

I almost forgot to mention the excitement of the day. Coming out the pass at Fulanga. We’ve been dreading this for several days now as it’s full moon tides. The high is very high, the low very low and the upshort is roaring tides. All that water in the four mile wide lagoon has to come out this pass (and over the adjacent reef), so it can be a bit hairy. You typically want to go out on “low slack water”. Ideally the water sits still for 20 minutes or so between roaring out on the low and roaring back in on the high. It was realllly high last night too. The beach we were anchored off of disappeared, swallowed by the tide which went all the way up into the vegetation. Gulp!

So, we estimated that sometime around 1230 would do the trick. You never know for sure as there’s no tide station on the island. You’re getting your tide info from somewhere a couple hundred miles away like Suva, then estimating how many hours difference the tides may be at distant Fulanga.

By the way. Why all the drama you ask? If you miss the tide, there can be six foot standing waves and a 7 knot current. Sounds dramatic, but we’ve spoken with folks who have experienced them and never, ever want to do that again.

Anyway, we tentatively nosed out toward the pass. We could see some standing waves but they didn’t look too bad and the current a couple hundred yards inside was doing about 2.5 knots outbound, so we sucked it up and went. Turned out to be not too bad. We were able to go to the side of the pass right next to the reef to miss the standing waves. The current was running about 5 knots out. I had Charisma on idle forward and we were doing about 7.5 knots outbound. Yippeee! A sled ride short of Mr. Toad’s wild ride. The “river” spit us out into the ocean and I breathed a sigh of relief as we roared past the outside of the reef into deep water.

 

 

 

 

 

 

A final note. About two hours ago just at sunset we got a big hit on the handline. Fish on! I went to check it and alas, fish off. I pulled it in expecting that maybe the lure had broken off. Nope, turns out that some dummy (that would be me) forgot to take the protector off the pointy end of the hook. Fish on, then off. Well, we have a can of pumpkin raviolis for tomorrow night’s dinner. Let’s hope we catch a fish.