November 23, 2023
Thanksgiving, at least in the States but we celebrated just the same. So much to be thankful for but more on that later. I enjoyed a morning beach walk again, paddle boarding to shore and this time walking north. This direction was much slower as there were a lot, I mean a lot, of volcanic outcroppings that had to be…
November 22, 2023
A recovery day? Maybe. After back to back 4:00am departures and long days at sea, it was nice to not have that pressure today. We took our time, had coffee and read the news while the boat gently rocked. Magnificent. Of course all good things must end and I got to work, the freezer in the fridge needed to be…
November 21, 2023
Ground hog day, up at 4:00am and another 60ish nautical miles to cover. With the sunrise, again, out came the main (reef 2, 23 knots of wind) and jib. Soon we were cruising along in the upper 6 to low 7 knot range. Perfect! We managed to sail about 3/5th of the way before, as forecast, the wind dropped and…
November 19, 2023
The point of today was to dive The Chimneys, we woke to 15 knots of wind and rolly seas, that would have been fine but it was the cloud cover that had us worried. We bided our time and around 10am patches of blue sky were visible, we ended up waiting until 12:30 to get the best sun angle and…
November 18, 2023
No doubt about it, today was a day in the water. We started early going out to the reef, a few miles from the anchorage, and scouted out a smaller pass that we hoped to use when we depart in a few days. With the dinghy we could easily make out the route and with a phone a track was…
November 17, 2023
We weren’t in a rush but around 6:30am we slipped off the mooring ball and started our motor over to Namena. A premier diving spot with 21 marked driving locations around the reef. Fingers were crossed for some amazing free diving, but first we had to get there. The sea state and winds were very calm and it was a…
November 15, 2023
Cyclone Mal passed Fiji overnight bringing damaging winds (90 knots) to Somosomo (where we visited at the beginning of this sailing adventure). We came into the Nawi marina just in case the cyclone shifted more east but thankfully all we had was some rain at 2:22am, some wind around 3:30am (maximum 20 knots, maybe gust to 25 knots) Throughout the…
November 14, 2023
Not my best night’s sleep and so waking at 3:00am I knew my chances of falling back asleep were not good. Soon enough 4:00am rolled around and it was time to get moving. Off the mooring ball and heading towards Savusavu in no time, with barely any wind this would be a motor day. With a rather large swell, at…
November 12, 2023
Last night was not a good sleeping night, Blerg. The anchor chain got wrapped around the float (we had on it to prevent dragging on coral below us), which meant lot of noise and banging. I actually woke up thinking our bridle had broken, so I surprised that it was only the float issue. We decided to make a change…
November 11, 2023
Where we are anchored on in a cove of a private island with a coconut farm on one side and a fancy five-star resort on the other side. The cove is on the backside and has a little bure (cabana) that resort guests rent as a private beach experience. They drop them off with a long boat and guests get…
November 10, 2023
Big winds were forecast so we wanted to get moving to prevent getting pinned down for a few days. The plan was up at 4:00am for the 50-ish mile passage to Matagi Island (a small horseshoe shaped island with a fancy resort (opposite side of the anchorage)). Like clockwork, both Carl and I popped out of bed and jumped right…
November 8, 2023
It was a beautiful morning and soon the paddleboards were in the water, as we headed to a farm and lookout spot 300 feet above us. Reaching a dock, we started the climb up 270 odd stairs. Other than a few loose and rotten boards, that we managed to avoid, we were soon on the top of the hill and…