Relaxing times

Savusavu Bay

The courier pack with the hydraulic parts arrived on Wednesday 4th June and we cleared customs on Friday afternoon so we could get off the mooring and have a change of scene while getting the autopilot pumps back in working order.

Once you have officially entered Fiji, you have to clear out with customs when you leave and then enter at the next port of entry relevant to the area of Fiji that you go to. Since we were here last time, the definition of Savusavu harbour appears to have become more restricted as yachts now have to advise customs when they leave Nakama creek, even if just going to Lesiaceva Point which is still within Savusavu bay. We cleared with customs on Friday afternoon and they gave us permission to leave early Sunday morning as we still had some work to do on the steering. We were getting tidied up down below in preparation for leaving when we saw the Police boat patrolling the river and as they came past, Mary heard them say “this is the boat that is leaving early this morning” so we hurriedly started making visible preparations for departure. About twenty minutes later, we saw them coming back in our direction so we quickly started the motor and slipped the mooring!

Savusavu District School. Note colour of Uniform

We anchored just off the Cousteau Dive resort which is located just before the reef at Reef Point, an area which has really good snorkelling. Once we had the steering all operational, we spent some time enjoying the warm water and snorkelling but then had a lot of rainy weather which was good for getting water into our tanks but not much good for snorkelling. We had initially intended going to Fawn Harbour but the wind forecast was for strong E to SE winds which would have made it an uncomfortable slog. Instead we enjoyed a few quiet days by the Point instead, got befriended by Bait, the dive master at Cousteau’s, who popped over most days to chat.

A small Village near Savusavu

The heavy rain was forecast to continue for some days so we later decided to return to Savusavu. We expected problems with anchor retrieval as snorkeling had revealed that the chain had crossed over an old coral bommie a couple of times which we thought may have happened as we could hear the chain growling on coral whenever we swung around. Our tropical anchor retrieval skills soon came back and we got the anchor up with no real problems.

Windspirit is now on a mooring close to the Copra Shed – Savusavu Yacht Club, where we will leave her while we fly back to New Zealand for a week or so. One of the guys from the Copra Shed will run our motor each day to charge the batteries, needed to run the fridge and freezer. We are flying on a small plane from here to Nadi on Monday 16th and arrive in Auckland later that day. Tony has a number of business meetings and we will also catch up with family in Auckland and Wellington. We fly back to Nadi on evening of 23rd, staying the night there and fly back to Savusavu the next morning.

The Lush Forest in the Highlands of Vanua Levu

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