August 28-30, 2008: South Pacific

Makogai Island, Fiji (S 17.26.556 E 178.57.095) http://maps.google.com/map

We left Savausavu Bay on August 28^th at 0830 and by 1700 we anchored off a small island called Makogai. At the turn of the century Makogai was the largest leper colony in the Pacific and the ruins and graves are still visible today

This was their outdoor cinema.

Now the government hatches giant clams. A picture is worth a thousand words. Keep in mind the clams are at least 3 feet wide, weigh several hundred pounds each and are located in 10-15 feet of water

Normally the clams were kept in giant concrete seawater tanks like these. Unfortunately, Makogai had not had any diesel for the last couple of months so they had been forced to put all the clams back into the ocean. The village chief whose home you see here was also responsible for managing the clam farm. His grandchildren were very creative in keeping themselves amused with what they had to work with.

We left Makongai August 30^th for Suva where hopefully all the spare parts we needed would be waiting for us. It wasn't easy leaving this island paradise.

In the Fijian waters there is an island on every horizon. If you transit between the islands as we have you can see at least one and usually several islands at all times. For instance, we left Makogai Island after sunrise heading for Levuka, Ovalau which was less than twenty miles away and was able to see it from the anchorage.

I have not written much about the sailing conditions. Since Rarotonga the sailing conditions have been pretty much all downhill, meaning, going with the wind and waves coming from our aft quarter. These have been ideal conditions until the wind stops and then the motor starts. We have not seen any seas worth mention or any high winds for that matter since leaving Tahiti. About the only thing of significance were the passages from Savusavu to Makogai and from Makogai to Levuka. We were quartering into the waves and these waves were a washing machine. They were coming from a couple different directions and there was lot of chop. The winds were strong and all this slowed the boat down and made for an uncomfortable ride.

A couple miles off Levuka we made a decision to keep going. Levuka is fairly exposed to the southeast wind and a weather system was forecast for the next few days. We decided that we did not want to he holed up in this small town when we’d rather be stuck in Suva. At least we could drive to get the mast parts that would be arriving in a couple days. There appeared to be more pros for Suva than cons. We calculated our speed and distance to go and determined that we would arrive at sunset if we kept the speed up. The best part about this passage is that our heading kept changing as we rounded the island and eventually were going with the wind and the waves in the mid 7 knots. We made it to the Royal Suva Yacht Club anchorage with time to spare having covered the 70 miles from Makogai Island.

After passing the standard shipwrecks upon crossing the fringing reef we dropped the hook in about 15 feet of muddy green no-see-thru commercial harbor water. Great holding in the mud but not swimming water. Foul weather was moving in so we where glad to have the hook in the mud..