M/Y Iron Lady

While I had the point of the story correct, it seems some of the details weren’t. So in the interest of accuracy, here is what I now understand to be true.

It was not a young couple but an older English gentleman who is retired and took up the cruising lifestyle a few years back. He was accompanied by a companion or significant other, but is not married. He was approaching the reef entrance to Suva and, from what I am told had no charts, but did have the reef clearly in sight. He dozed off and you know the rest.

He was taken in by folks at the yacht club – principally Vincent and his wife who own the Sails Restaurant at the Royal Suva Yacht Club – so the hospitality part of the story stands as written.

In these parts, a fellow nicknamed Peter the German is the local salvage expert, but he is off on a delivery in the Solomons. In his absence, Vincent helped the poor owner to organize a salvage effort and the boat was successfully pulled from the reef on Monday by floating it free with air bags.

The airbags were leaking, however, and they were barely able to get the boat back to the yacht club (water was up to the gunnels). There it was allowed to sink a second time and now they are working on getting it out of the water and to a yard for repairs.

When we steamed in to Suva Harbor around daybreak a few mornings ago, it was plain the the entrance reef had claimed yet another victim. A pretty 40 something sailboat was hard up on the reef, lying on her side looking very forlorn.

I really needed one of Steve Dashew’s or Ron Lane’s BIG lenses for this shot, but this will have to do.

When you see something like this, your heart goes out to the folks it happened to, you hope they are all OK and you pray that it never happens to you.

Last night, we were having dinner at the Sails Restaurant at the Royal Suva Yacht Club and happened to ask our waitress about what had happened. She told us that it was a young couple who had sold just about everything they owned to pursue their dream of a cruising lifestyle. They were relatively new at it. He had apparently fallen asleep on the approach to Suva and the reef was waiting for his mistake. The waitress told us that just about everything they owned was now lying out on that reef.

She went on to say that they had not been injured and were brought to shore, and she had taken them in at her home. They have been staying with her for about 3 weeks now. She has also helped them organize a salvage attempt this coming Monday and they are optimistic that the boat can be retrieved and repaired.

As an American, I tend to be skeptical and suspicious when people seem to be going out of their way to help for no particular reason. We have been ingrained with the thought that there has to be a motive with a payback at the other end of it – altruism isn’t and to the extent it is, it certainly isn’t free (wry humor intended).

Well in parts of Fiji at least, we have found this is not strictly true as evidenced by this story.

Oh, while at Sails, Alice, the manager was talking to Deb about spices and cooking. Alice invited us to go to the open air market with her today to show us what she uses as well as give us a few recipes.

Reviewing our trip (at least what I have done posts for), we initially cleared out of Suva and headed for Beqa Island slightly south of Viti Levu. From there it was on to Denerau/Nadi to pick up some parts that had been sent to us. Our next destination was the Yasawa group which runs north/south to the west of Viti Levu. Unfortunately, to get there, under the mysterious rules of Fiji Officialdom, we first had to clear in and out of Lautoka on the west coast of Viti Levu. The rule seems to be that you must stop at each port of entry along the way, clear in and report your ongoing voyage plan. No matter that you are cleared into the country and have obtained cruising permits for all the island groups you intend to visit. I say the “rule seems to be” because Denerau/Nadi is an international port of entry and home to the international airport – but you can’t clear out from there – you have to go to Lautoka.

Oh well. Lautoka, as you may recall, was the scene of the “go fast” dinghy ride for the Customs Officer – the Official Warning instead of fine because we were “remorseful” that Suva Customs had not given us a necessary piece of paper.

Then it was on to the Yasawa’s – Waya and Somo Somo being our favorite spots. We continued north along the group on the west side for protection from the trades and stopped at various spots. There were some spots (caves and grottos) that we wanted to go to but couldn’t as the weather was against us.

Our next stop had to be Levuka on Ovalau – an island well down the east coast of Viti Levu – for – you guessed it – Customs. Once around the northern tip of the Yasawas, it was a heavy two day slog directly into the waves and 25 knots of wind. At the end of the first day, we put in to Yadua island for the night. We had a pleasant evening with Chris, a UN worker who was traveling the world on his boat and had spent a lot of time in Haiti, Afghanistan, and Iraq. Good stories over rum and cokes.

The next day was more slogging. The entrance to Levuka is a very narrow reef passage marked by two markers on either tip – one was missing. As an aside, you can’t rely on lights and markers here – they are frequently gone or are not operational. The other guiding feature was an unusual range – align the church steeple with an inverted triangle on the hillside behind. Good enough, except that the hillside marker was very difficult to see. The harbor itself is was completely exposed to the prevailing winds and there was a lot of surge over the reef. The only anchorage put you on a lee shore.

We deployed the dink and Steve wnet to deal with Officialdom, Deb went to get a quick look at the town which has a distinctly British feel to it while I watched the boat. Then it was back on board, hoist the dink and make ready for sea in the event we had to make a hasty departure.

The flopper stoppers got a severe workout. You can see from this shot just how much water they displace when counteracting roll.

The next morning at first light we were showing Levuka our stern headed back north with the wind aft of the beam headed for Namena and better things.

I mentioned in my last post that I was way behind. I am still completing posts for the Yasawas and we are way the heck gone from there near Taveuni. The other day was just so special that I decided to jump ahead and share it.

Last night we we were anchored near the Paradise Lodge at Vuna Point. There is pretty good reef just off the lodge and the Owner’s were very helpful as to places to go and things to see when we come back with the family later this summer (winter down here).

Our destination today was Viana Bay – a destination just a few hours away. On the way, it was just one of those mirror, dead flat days. Iron Lady was loafing along at 9.3 knots and 1600 RPM. It was so flat that you could even se the trails being left by the flying fish.

We were glad to have the Ipad with Navionics charts because Mr. Jeppesen was no help and the BA chart only covered part of the water we were transiting. Further, the entrance to Viana Bay and the anchorage was thru reef and around submerged rocks. The scanning sonar got its usual workout.

I was up top with my Nikon parked in the best spot on the boat – on top of the scuttle in a fold down padded chair. Everyone fights for that spot and the chair. At any rate, on the horizon appeared a pod of Pilot whales with their young. We got very close and got the following shots.

This is a shot of a mom and her calf – she postioned herself between the boat and her calf and nudged the calf away.

The best of all were these shots of the whale beside the boat. One even turned to back to look at us. While two of them appear to have been taken from underwater, they were actually shot from the flybridge.

Finally, a few shots of our destination.

To all those who have responded with comments and wonder why they haven’t been moderated and responded to, my apologies. Internet service (other then 11 dollars/megabyte satellite) is real tough to come by out here. We should have internet service back in 3 to 4 days – until then –

Cheers from Yanuca Island north of Taveuni – just a great little place and village.

I thought it would be interesting to show you our route thru Fiji to date. The stick pins are hourly log points stored automatically by MaxSea, our charting program. You can see our route in from Tonga to the lower right and our first stop in Fiji at Suva. Then to the Yasawas and north followed by a trip to Lavuka to clear customs (again). Then onward to Savu Savu and Taveuni. the circle will be completed next week with our return to Suva.

Then it is to California for our son George’s graduation from Stanford with his masters in electrical computer engineering and then home to Pittsbugh.

The plan is to rejoin Iron Lady in late July with some of our kids and cover the Lao group and Tavenuii more thoroughly.

As you can also see, we are currently in Taveuni – a long way from the Yasawas and Suva. Internet service has been a challenge to put it mildly – and besides – I want to do stuff besides blog posts.

There are many areas that we have been that I just don’t have time to cover. There are many areas we wanted to go but time or weather did not permit. By talking to folks we have gone places we didn’t intend to go and for the most part they have been great. And bizarre Customs requirements have sent us to places we wouldn’t have gone at all (Lavuka and Lautoka), but even those stops occasioned visits to some wonderful places.

About to go snorkeling and then relocate to the world famous Rainbow Reef. Enuf with the blog already.

Cheers