M/Y Iron Lady

Next stop up the road after Soma Soma was the Blue Lagoon of Brooke Shields and the movie fame. The booze barges from Denerau/Nadi run tourists in here by the boatload everyday. Not exactly my gig, but what the hay – you gotta say you were there if you were going by.

There are some very nice resorts and we had dinner at the Nanuya Island Resort which is our pick along with a Lonely Planet best. Extremely nice and the manager spent a lot of time with us.

One of the highlights was attending church (Methodist) at the local village of Matacawlevu.

They had a most unusual call to to worship – beating on hollow logs played responsively from different parts of the village.

We were warmly welcomed and enjoyed the service and singing immensely.

Blue Lagoon was my gig after all.

After departing Waya, we headed north along the Yasawa group and anchored of a beautiful beach owned by the folks in the village of Soma Soma. They had told us that this beach had some of the best coral in the Yasawa’s just off the beach. The infamous “they” were in this case correct – the reef was gorgeous.

Unfortunately, my underwater camera is dead, so you will not get to see it, but we want to go back for a variety of reasons – maybe then.

The following are pictures of our approach to the beach.

In the last picture, the dark areas are all reef just barely submerged.

Not long after we dropped the hook. villagers happened by (they don’t miss much and we were one of the first boats here this season) and presented us with 5 nice mangoes. After a bit more conversation, they got around to the Keri Keri part (asking for a favor). Seems the village was out of premix for their outboards and none was expected for a few days – did we have any? He showed us his gas tank and all it contained was fumes. He couldn’t have possibly made it back to the village. How could we say no.

Not much later, boat 2 came by asking for premix. Salu and his grandfather still had gas in his tank and we politely declined saying we didn’t have enough extra. After some conversation, he fired up his outboard, got 20 feet away and it died. He asked if we could drag him in to the beach. That obviously wasn’t the end. He had no tools, spare plugs or anything else for that matter. We obliged by helping him try to fix the ailing outboard with our tools but to no avail.

He said he had to collect firewood – if he couldn’t get the outboard going, could we drag him back to the village in about an hour? How could we say no.

An hour passed and he was still collecting firewood – we were on Fiji time. Approaching hour 2, he was ready and the tide was about to leave us stranded on the beach. Off Deb and Steve went in Little Lady with Salu and his boat, firewood and grandfather in tow.

Salu was immensely grateful and his friends had a grand old time teasing him about being drug home by Palanges. In the village, Salu took us to his home and entertained us and served light refreshments. He urged us to come back and he would prepare a Fijian feast for us. Think we have to figure a way to do that.

After a hard day at sea saving stranded Fijians, Deb and Steve enjoy a glass of wine on the back deck.

After a short trip, we anchored up in the north bay off the village of Nalauwaki.

As we proceeded ashore, we were greeted by Tom who encouraged us to visit the village which sounded like fun.

As is customary, we were asked to make Sevu Sevu (an offering of Kava) to the village Chief. On the way to the village, Tom pointed out this large canoe which had been destroyed by a cyclone 2 years before.

Climbing over a rock stairway, we saw this welcome sign – and indeed we were welcomed warmly with hearty Bula Bula’s by children and adults alike.

At the center of town was the Methodist church surrounded by homes and near the end was the Chief’s bure. After a brief ceremony sitting on woven mats on the floor, we were off to a nice waterfall on the edge of town.

The day was stifling so sitting in the cool volcanic spring water was delightful.

On the way back to town, we stopped by the local Kindergarten where children aged 4, 5 and 6 attend school each day from 8 until 12. It was 12:30 and the children were already at play for the day so Deb said she would be back to visit the next day during school hours.

Tom then invited us back to his home for lunch. The eating area is a raised platform with a roof overhead and the family sits cross legged on the platform with the food placed in the center. The Mother remains standing adjacent to the platform and the open wood burning fireplace where all of the food is prepared.

Lunch was a soup with noodles and pork, breadfruit, papaya and strong hot tea.

After lunch, we were invited in to the house where the women had local crafts on display for sale. Steve remained outside and with a number of local men and they all enjoyed smoking Steve’s cigarettes and chatting.

Inside, the house had a woven mat floor and several uncovered foam mattresses for sleeping. Mom settled the youngest children down for an afternoon nap while older brother talked to us.

There was a resort on the other side of the island over a small saddle that we wanted to see so Tom led us to the path and wished us well while making us promise that we would visit again.

Octopus resort caters to young people with numerous activities, a fresh water pool, restaurant and bures. The atmosphere was wonderful. Folks from the village are employed by the resort and the resort has made numerous contributions to improve the lives of the villagers.

On the hike back over the saddle, we took this picture of Iron lady sitting peacefully in the bay off the village.

Nest morning, Deb went back to see the children in school and they were so excited, we could here them out on the boat singing and doing nursery rhymes. When it came time to leave, they all trooped thru the village behind Debby singing – it was like a scene from the Pied Piper.

Finally, a few additional shots taken around Waya.

With years of cruising the Bahamas and the US, I have become accustomed to believing what the electronic charts say ( with a grain of salt). When we started cruising with Steve, he was quite insistent that we not only look at the electronic chart but plot our position routinely on the paper chart as well. Admirable, but it struck me as overkill. Not any more.

We have consistently had issues “out here”. We have found large differences between the Navionics electronic charts and the Jeppesen electronic charts. Both suffer from large unexplained gaps in coverage which we have laughingly referred to as falling off the earth. The British Admiralty paper charts aren’t much better – they date back to the late 1800’s or so and often don’t agree with any of our electronic charts.

We are currently in the northern Yasawa islands. When we do a radar overlay on the electronic charts, they frequently aren’t even close. When we do an actual plot on the BA charts, they aren’t any better – and none of our charts for this area have soundings.

So this is completely new to me – no soundings and inaccurate charts. Now I understand why Steve wants plots. So what does work when in rocky reefy areas (along with some nail biting, narrow, skinny areas) without soundings?

First, look out the window but hazy skies or bad light can make this really tough.

Second, look at the relationship between conspicuous objects on the electronic/paper charts and radar – while both the charts may be wrong, they do indicate the relationships between prominent features.

Third, watch the sounder, but this is where you have been versus what is yet to come. For the yet to come part, we have found the Furuno scanning sonar invaluable.

Forth, use the track function on your chart plotter, When it is time to leave (or come back) simply pull up your old track and follow it.

Fifth, have a good strong drink after a particularly nail biting transit once the big 240 pound Rocna anchor is hooked up and the scanning sonar has said that there is nothing hazardous within 100 meters.

Right now, it is blowing 20 to 30 knots, we are off a nice resort, the hook is down, Deb is at the pool and after a shower, we are headed ashore for dinner.

In New Zealand, we loaded our freezers with meat and chicken and our basement storage area with all manner of dry stores – we could have done without most of it. We in fact have turned in to a subsistence boat.

We catch fish almost everyday. Today it was a nice fat wahoo. We do Keri Keri in the villages we visit (the process of exchanging gifts). Today, a fellow came out and gave us 6 beautiful papayas. In return, we gave him a small bag of rice.

Our bowls are full of fresh green bananas (they are ripe when they are green), papayas, taro root, fresh pineapple, oranges, lemons and limes. In a cool location we also have fresh kumera (the best sweet potato I have ever had), local carrots and onions.

Green coconuts on the back deck each have over a liter of wonderful, refreshing milk in them.

In the markets, Deb has bought wonderful local spices to flavor our meals.

Tonight’s dinner menu is fresh wahoo steaks, boiled taro root, and local green beans. It will be served with a light curry sauce on the side along with a nice bottle of red wine.

The stuff in the freezers and the dry stores in the basement will just have to wait for another day. Art this rate, it may be a very, very long time.

Cheers!

The Yasawa group lies to the west of Lautoka and the main island running in a north/south line. In Lautoka, we had another round of customs hassles so we were only too glad to leave. It seems that before visiting each onward island group, you are required to get an additional clearance despite the fact that we had already obtained all the cruising permits in Suva. In Nadi, we were advised that for the Yasawa group, we had to go to Lautoka – a place we really did not intend to visit.

While Steve went ashore in Lautoka, I stayed behind to do an oil change on the John Deere and check and replace all of the engine zincs. About an hour later, Steve returned and told me that we were lacking a document that was to be issued in Suva. He took everything we had back to the Custom’s officer and was gone another 1.5 hours. As I was finishing up, Steve returned with the Customs Officer in the dink – seems he wanted to tour our boat and go for a “fast ride” in our dinghy. He told me that he had issued the necessary papers for onward travel without requiring us to go back to Suva – something he often did – or fining us – which he often did to other less cooperative yachties, because Steve was cooperative and was suitably “remorseful” that we didn’t have the required document.. We got off with a warning even though it wasn’t our fault that customs in Suva hadn’t given us the document in the first place.

Once we got rid of Mr. Customs, we quickly fired up the engine and got out of Dodge bound for Waya. It was a stormy looking afternoon as we approached the formidable Waya. We chose the south anchorage as we wee losing daylight and the winds were to be from the north. THat left us with the lingering southeast swell. The flopper stoppers were deployed and we settled in for a very stormy night – the kind where you really love that big 240 pound Rocna.

The next morning we left for the north bay as the winds were to go southeast – and the north bay is where we had wanted to go before the unscheduled stop in Lautoka in the first place. Glad Steve had dealt with Mr. Customs – I probably would not have been suitably “remorseful”.