SAILING THE MAMANUCA'S & THE YASAWA'S

The past two months in Fiji have been spent sailing 245.7 nautical miles around the Western region of Fiji, including the Mamanuca’s (where both Castaway and Survivor were filmed) and the Yasawa Group, a remote chain of islands stretching up to the northwest of Fiji.

We have spent around a month in Musket Cove, Malolo Lailai. We have met some amazing Fijians in the Village of Cubi, paddle boarded a lot, snorkelled, had a party on a remote sandbar in the middle of the ocean and ‘harvested’ wild bananas, papaya and limes. I have powered through a bunch of schoolwork and built a couple of websites. Read more about the village of Cubi here!

Musket Cove was a great place to stop while waiting for our new propeller to arrive, which included a trip into Denarau, a few nights on the hard and re-provisioning. The food in Fiji is great, the fresh fruit and vegetables and meat are excellent. We had heard Fiji could be difficult to get some foods (and it is if you are after processed, branded food), however, if you can cook and bake, you can make pretty much anything, so we are more than fine! Once our propeller was put on in Denarau, we have been making our way up the Yasawa Group.

We started by travelling 25 NM to Yalobi Bay in South Waya while stopping by Navadra Island on the way for a swim.

After staying in Yalobi Bay for the night we continued to track up North. We stopped in at Manta Ray Bay, where we saw and swam in a pretty strong murky current with a couple of huge manta rays in the channel! Manta Ray Island is a designated marine reserve in Fiji, especially for the manta rays. They come to Manta Ray Passage (separating Drawaqa Island and the south-western Naviti island) from May through to October, where they come to the channel to feed and swim against the currents. A fun fact we learnt, manta rays don’t have barbs unlike stingrays, so they are harmless!

We continued up to Somosomo Bay, which we have renamed roly-poly bay! As we walked along the beach we met a man who called himself ‘Captain’ who was cutting down trees for his plants (papaya..) over the hill in his Village. There was also a group of Fijians who picked ‘Nami‘ (seaweed) that will be sent to the markets in the mainland. We also met a 9-year-old girl named Luciana and her dad named Wattie. Luciana has been harvesting in the water for 8 hours straight and offered us a live crab that she just caught!

We had a short sail of 11.9 NM to Nanuya-Sewa, also known as Blue Lagoon. We spent a week there waiting for a weather window and hiking, swimming and snorkelling the clear waters.

We sailed up to Sawa-i-Lau for the night before getting up early and crossing the Bligh Water passage the next day on our way over to explore the Northern region of Fiji. We sailed a full day of 68.7 NM to Bua Bay (going through the Yadua Passage).

We are hoping to make our way back to the Yasawa Group and down to the Mamanuca’s in September, where we will have time to do explore the Sawa-i-Lau caves, snorkel to the WWII plane, swim with the manta rays again (hopefully on a calm day)and potentially do the Musket Cove Regatta (this depends on the covid situation at the time). We also need to go back to our extended family in Cubi to check in on the schoolwork. We are going on a hike there too and Hadassah wants to make us a proper Fijian curry. A lot of people in that village are chefs in the fancy resorts, so it is bound to be amazing!

Although Fiji has been heavily hit by Covid-19, this has only affected our sailing plans slightly, as they have contained it on the main big island, Viti Levu. The outer islands have remained Covid-free so yachts in the ‘Blue Lane Intitive’ have a flag that lets people know we are Covid-free and safe. Some sailors have come across villages that don’t want yachts anchored outside of their village and people coming ashore. We haven’t come across this yet but we respect their decision. Normally, we would go to shore and participate in a Sevusevu ceremony, by which we present the chief with Yaqona root (to make Kava) and ask permission to anchor and come ashore in their bay. Sharing kava is banned at the moment due to Covid and gifting staples is considered the alternative. We prepackaged a lot of first aid kits prior to leaving NZ, so we hand out these as well as staples (flour, oil, tea etc.) instead, which is well received.

We are mindful of how hard this is for Fiji who relies on tourism, however, we are very grateful to be seeing Fiji, in a far more realistic light and apart from some other yachts, there really are no tourists. Some of the hotspots we have visited would have been packed and crowded and we are the only ones there. Tourism will bounce back, so this is a once in a lifetime chance to experience Fiji like this.

The majority of the Fijian’s we have talked to are quite scared about the virus, many of the people in the outer islands in the Yasawa Group haven’t yet been vaccinated. One positive is Fiji now has enough vaccines for their whole population to have two doses. In Savusavu, there was a massive crowd of people who were getting their jabs. The Fijian Government is doing their best to get the percentage of Fijians vaccinated so ‘herd immunity’ occurs.

In total, this brings my logged nautical miles sailed up to 2244.8 NM! More to come in the Northern region…

More photos are in the Fiji Photo Log Book!