Vananui Bay is about 30 miles around the sw from Suva. We left this morning around 0730 and arrived about 7 hours later. The 2nd half of the trip was the best part. The sun, blue sky and blue water came out, we squared away about 150 degrees to the wind and were doing a solid 7 plus knots touching 8 from time to time. Inspiring sailing. The waves were good size too, so I choose to sail through the pass into the small bay instead of wrestling with the sails in 5-7 foot waves offshore. It’s often a toss up which is more terrifying. ;-). Sailing into a fairly small pass sure gets your attention. There ended up being plenty of room but the wind gusts, round ups and big waves breaking on the coral reefs on both sides of us what seems like only a few yards away is invigorating to say the least!

The reward: we’re sitting here, the only boat in the bay, watching the sun set and the stars come out and listening to the roar of the surf on the coral of the outer reef. Wow.

Ann is kindly making dinner tonight, so while sitting here writing this and sipping some wine (we already had our Charismas with homemade ginger beer!) I can smell the fragrant aromas of dinner wafting up out of the hatch (and I hear fish jumping out of the water all around us).

Tomorrow, another 30 something mile leg and we’ll be at Likuri Harbor and Robinson Crusoe resort. We’re looking forward to the island hospitality and Fijian dance show. We’ve heard nothing but rave reviews from friends who stopped over.

As always, stay tuned to see where we actually end up. 😉

Yup, we’re still sitting here.  It rained last night and was still rainy this morning and I was kind of tired and the combination with a grey, windy day made it seem like the best choice is just to stay here one more day.  Not good to take a fairly long ocean leg past reefs and such when you’re not sharp.

It should be nicer tomorrow.  Forecast is for clearing, so now we just need to decide WHERE to go.  We know we’re heading west around the south end of Viti Levu (the southern most of the larger Fiji islands) but we have choices to make.  Visit the island of Bega just south of here and stay for a couple days, or make more haste around to Likuri Harbor and Robinson Crusoe resort for the Saturday show?  Hmmm.

Stay tuned to find out.

But only for another day or so.

We’re just waiting for the winds to become more favorable, which should happen maybe Thursday, at which point we’ll head west around the south end of the island.

We're anchored in a nice little spot about five miles away from the industrial port of Suva.

Ann and I are now official cruising members of Royal Suva Yacht Club

Our next destination is Robinson Crusoe Resort. We’ve heard fom others who have gone there that there is a great show including fire walking. I’m not doing that (I don’t think) but I’ll watch. The only issue is its about seventy miles away, so we’re trying to plan a halfway point to stop and spend the night. Two legs of 35 miles (7 hour days at 5 knots) are part of the plan.

So, tomorrow back to Suva for final vegetable supplies and ready to leave Thursday. OK, I admit it, we’re stocking up on rum too as we’re precariously low. OK! OK, beer and wine too! We’re fine on spaghetti sauce though. 😉

P.S. we had a delightful evening catching up with Bob and Linda fom Bright Angel who are anchored about 50 yards away. Had them over for dinner. How fun to catch up and compare stories with folks who we first met in Mexico almost two years ago! Really great to see them and catch up. Two of our favorite people.

(From Ann)
In the capable care of Captain Ron!

Captain Ron.

Okay, maybe that doesn’t make much sense…Captain Ron, capable hands…but in Suva it does! Yesterday we ventured ashore with Linda and Bob from Bright Angel. We headed toward the hotel that supposedly has a dinghy dock and found nothing that looked much like one. When there he was…Captain Ron! “You can tie your dinghy up behind my boat and use the swim step to get ashore!” Okay, why not! Especially because Captain Ron is docked just in front of the police boat.

Captain Ron is actually from Seattle but has happily settled here in Suva on his boat. Scratch another item off the bucket list ….meet Captain Ron!  We also found out that his daughter lives in Oakland.  We’ll try and get in touch when we’re back for the holidays.

Suva was a culture shock! We had not seen a paved road in at least two months and that one turned into a dirt road as it rounded Taveuni. This road was not only paved but full of screaming fast cars! Maybe we were still adjusting but they sure seemed fast. We hailed a taxi and got dropped off at the main bus terminal. Very dangerous place to walk as 20-30 buses were all in a hurry to keep their schedules.

But we maneuvered through the buses and crowds of people waiting for them and crowds of vendors selling snacks for your bus trip…you get the picture..sensory overload! And this is before we got to the market.

This is the outside part of the market.

$2 Fijian for the whole bowl of tomatoes is about $1 US

These folks are selling clams (as well as coconuts and other assorted stuff).

The Suva Market is the self-proclaimed largest market in the South Pacific and I believe it! Your senses are assaulted with smells, colors and sounds! This place is full of the best looking fruits and vegetables we have seen. They even sell rolled pandanas rolls ready for weaving. Bob and I stopped in a hand made craft booth and were delighted to find out that it was associated with Fulunga. They were equally thrilled to hear how much we loved it. Unfortunately we we out of sight just long enough to lose Bob and Linda. No worries, 45 minutes of cruising the market and back to the bus station and we were finally united. We kaivalangi (white people) kind of stand out!

Meanwhile...upstairs in the Kava market...

The kava from each island area is different due to soils and water. There's a dizzying array to choose from.

You can taste the difference, but they all taste somewhat like dirty water with a kick and you end up with a numb tongue and throat and a bit of a happy smile.

Sensory overload got the best of us and after a delicious pizza for lunch we headed back to our very small, very quiet boats having only been nearly run over once. We will attempt to see more of Suva on Monday, when hopefully the rain will have lightened up!

Meanwhile I have just processed our first batch of ginger beer. Tasting trials take place on Tuesday!

From Ann
Yes, we made it to Suva and are happy to be on a mooring ball in a bay just off of the main harbor. With the weather that is headed this way, we are set! We hope.

Not much here, but they had a nice restaurant where we enjoyed our evenings having dinner with Rand.

But we never quite shared our story of Leleuvia and that’s what I am ready to do!

As Bob said, we stopped here because our friend, Rand Axelrod who we met in Aitutaki and spent time with in New Zealand is here. Rand is helping farm coral in the lagoon. It is a very interesting process. Here is how Rand describes the process:

“Coral trimmings are taken from a healthy distant patch of coral then transplanted into small cement pots and place into a submerged rack. After 60-90 days the coral will have calcified onto the cement pot. Once this occurs, the pot can be wedged into a hole in the reef that is to be regenerated.”

Who would have thought you could grow coral in cement! Rand took me on a snorkel tour of the garden and it was fascinating. This area has many varieties of coral in a ton of different colors. I also got to see the clams that Rand helped move to a protected location. They were about 6-8 inches across with beautiful lips! Rand took pictures so when he sends them to us we will share them!

The other joy of Leleuvia was the paddle boarding! At low tide a lovely sand spit forms along the south side of the island. Perfect place to paddle to, right! So we jumped onto the boards and away we went. Oops, we found a lot of coral and shallow water as we got closer. No problem! We stepped off our boards and carried them about 100 meters to the high spot of sand. We parked the boards and went exploring!

The tide pools were full of shells and eels! We were able to explore for well over an hour as the tide turned and started to rise. As a result we only had to carry the boards about 10 meters before we could float again. And just as I was putting my board in the water an eel made a bee-line for me! Yes, I screamed like a girl and jumped up on my board. Bob was concerned I would squish it because it stayed hidden under my board! So what! Fortunately it finally decided that my board was not the best hiding spot so headed first for Bob’s and then back into the tide pool! Phew!

We were able to paddle down wind back to Charisma just as the wind and waves were beginning to pick up. Perfect timing. Love these paddle boards!

Finally made it into The capital of Fiji! In good style too! We came through the reef and into the harbor under full sail.

Suva is the first large town we've been to all season.

We had a very good, if long day. We left Leleuvia at 0600 on the dot for our 55 mile passage. It was a great ocean sailing day. Sun, wind, blue water, we had it all. We averaged 5.5 knots and made the trip in 11 hours, tying up to a mooring off the town of Lami on the sw side of Suva Bay at exactly 1700. Good timing, since that’s just about “Charisma Time”. That gave us extra incentive to fold the sails and tidy up and we were comfortably sitting in the cockpit gazing across the bay, Charisma in hand, by 1730.

It feels a bit strange to be back in civilization. We can hear cars on the road and a generator on one of the little islets off in the distance. But we’re looking forward to visiting this largest of Fiji’s towns for a few days and thanks to our friends on Ladybug, we’re tucked into this really nice snug cove instead of the industrial area off downtown Suva where most folks anchor in mud. We definitely want to visit the area, especially see the Royal Suva Yacht Club, but we’ll do it by bus and enjoy our relative peace and quiet At our anchorage on this, the opposite side of the bay away from the industrial areas.

More tomorrow as we grab a bus into town and explore Fiji’s only really large, industrialized city.

OK, time to catch up.

Nairai was an amazing adventure. So much so, we didn’t have a moment to write about our time there, so now that we’re in Leiluvia (about 40 miles west), here goes.

The day we got into Nairai (Friday) was a whirlwind. We were immediately whisked away to the windward side of the island for a celebratory feast, to meet Boto’s family and see where the bottle washed ashore.  We barely had the anchor set when we left Charisma to go around the windward side and we didn’t get back until nightfall.

Village of Lawaki as seen from our anchorage.

The next day (Saturday) was almost as hectic.  Ann started the day by diving on the anchor to make sure it was fast and to check some of the rocks we could see under water around Charisma.  We wanted to make sure that the anchor was solid in case the wind shifted and we were on a lee shore as well as make sure we wouldn’t swing into a rock/reef near the surface.  Check and check-we’re good to go.

The longboat anchored by the reef with the island of Gau in the background.

Later in the morning the longboat came out to pick us up and bring us in to Lawaki, which is the village we were anchored next to.  Once ashore we headed to Esther and Abel’s house.  Esther is Boto and Vani’s sister.  She and Abel live in a house that goes back several generations in Abel’s family.  In Fiji, you inherit your family’s house.  It is a lovely house and next to it is their dining house.  It is about 30 yards away and consists of the kitchen area and a dining area-all of course with beautifully woven pandanus mats covering the floor.

And the food.  Another feast.  We ate so much in Nairai, Ann and I stopped eating dinner in the evening when back on Charisma.  We would usually have a huge meal in the mid-afternoon and that was it for the day.  No more room.  Today was no exception and an extra special dish was included.  Octopus.  One of my favorites.  Esther had picked up that I liked it and went out that morning and caught one!  It was fantastic, cooked in coconut milk and onions.  Yum!

Our meal at Esther and Abel's house.

After the feast we spent much of the afternoon waiting for the chief to be available for us to do the sevusevu.  Turned out much of the wait was because they have have so few boats call here, it took them a while to get organized.  They had to gather the elders of the village and then apparently there was much discussion about the fact that they weren’t comfortable doing it in English.  We assured them we were understood and had no problem that it was done in Fijian.  It was as we have usually found, heartfelt and sincere.  They accepted us.  In fact, the chief turned to us at the end of the ceremony and said: “You are now part of Nairai, and Nairai is part of you.  Nairai is your village now”.  I later also found out that there was much talk (in Fijian of course) during the ceremony about the bottle having a spirit that brought us all together from many thousands of miles away.  Very cool!

At sevusevu. The chief is on the right.

No excursion into a Fijian village is complete without all the children wanting to come and be around us.  Nairai didn’t disappoint.  Again, since there are very few boats that call here, Ann and I were quite the entertainment.  We ended up with a group of kids sitting with us and singing us songs.

As always, the kids were enthralled by Ann. Here they are singing her a Fijian song. (Note the mat-this is similar to the one Boto and Vika gave us)

Once again, impending darkness was our signal to get back to the boat.  It’s just too hard to negotiate the reef at night, so we always had to be back by sunset.  As we were dropped off for the night, to our astonishment, Boto and Vika presented us with a spectacular woven pandanas mat.  To just call it a mat doesn’t do it justice.  It’s something like 15×20 feet (we’re not sure as it takes up more than the entire cabin top of Charisma when we tried to roll it out) with an extra fine border weave and contrasting stripes throughout. Something like this takes weeks to weave and that’s after all the work it takes just to prepare the leaf for weaving.  We were stunned and as we told them, we will treasure it always.

Here's Abel stretching and flattening pandanas leaves in preparation for weaving.

The rolled leaves once the initial preparation is complete.

Boto and me in Esther's house on a mat much like the one they gave us.

Getting the longboat ready to take us back out to Charisma.

Sunday

Sunday was Fijian Father’s Day and we were invited.  The only catch was-since it was Sunday the longboat was not allowed to go out-we had to brave the windward side and come through the reef in our inflatable dinghy.  We thought long and hard about that one, but in the end decided we would give it a shot and if we weren’t comfortable we would turn around and call it a day.  So off we went.  Fortunately the wind held at about 15 knots and there was enough sunshine to see the coral and keep from tearing the bottom out of our fragile craft.  We negotiated our way through the surf around the coral and breathed a sigh of relief as we came in over the sand.  Whew.

We got to Boto’s house just in time for…a feast.  This one was cooked in the lovo, which is the in ground oven.  We had roast pig, kavika (like a pear), casava, several root vegetables and a soup.  As always it was delicious and the company was great.

Fijian Father's Day meal cooked in the lovo.

The location was the South Pacific version of an impressionist painting.  We were outside under a huge tree on a grassy knoll where about 40 yards away, just through the coconut palms, the surf was lapping against the beach.  Spectacular!

After a delightful afternoon with our adopted family we headed back in the sunset to Charisma.  I think we could get used to this.

Monday

Our last day in Nairai, we wanted to hike up to the waterfall.  There are lots of waterfalls on Nairai, but this one was a fairly short hike out of the village.  We’ll let the photos tell this story. The hike should be titled “Three Musketeers Lead the Way!”. These young guys giggled, laughed and sang the whole way! And of course graciously offered Ann a helping hand when the terrain got slippery!

Our hike through the jungle with our guides-three 20 something boys including Ben, Esther and Abel's son.

For sure, the boys had as much fun on the hike as we did!

Tuesday

Up at 0600 and on our way to Leiluvia.  As we took one last look at the beach at Lawaki, we saw that Esther and Abel had come out to wave goodbye.  What a wonderful place, what wonderful people.  We have already decided that we will come back here again next year.

Its a tiny island off the southern end of Ovelau.

We were up at 0545 for the trip over. Got here around 1300, so we had good mid-day visibility and getting in wasn’t an issue. You could easily see the shallow/reef areas.

Leiluvia is a tiny island with a boutique resort. We've been having fun paddleboarding and meeting up with our friend Rand Axelrod who is here on vacation.

A friend who we met last year in Aitutaki, in the Cook Island Group and who is an expat American now living in NZ is actually staying at the little resort on this island. Rand Axelrod. He’s the main reason we stopped in here.

More on all that and the last few days on Nairai tomorrow. For now, we’re exhausted. Our Fijian family who has adopted us (we now have two more sisters and a brother) wore us out with their kindness!

So, some moon-watching on a stunning almost windless night. Tucked in behind a little island that is blocking the waves. For the first time in a week, we’re not rocking and rolling thinking that at any moment if the wind shifts a bit, we’ll have to make an emergency exit. We will sleep well tonight.

We are having such a great time today we’re exhausted.  So, I’ll leave today with just a few photos and say go to Facebook here https://www.facebook.com/2Johnson for a full set.  We will post some to this blog when we have some more time, but for now…sleep.

View from our anchorage at Nairai, just off the village of Lawaki.

Here's where the bottle was found.

Boto with the bottle, note and Charisma boat card.

After only 15 months and 5,000 miles, we found it!

Enjoying being part of the family on Nairai!

It's no secret-all kids love beach balls!

We presented our sevusevu. The Chief (on the right with his great grandchild) told us we are now part of Nairai forever. Nice.