DAY #19 Wednesday May 20th, 2015
LTY Stats update:
LTY (local) time: 18:05 Wednesday May 20th, 2015th (LTY time = UTC +12)
LOCATION: Beautiful Cukuvou Harbor on west side of Yadua Island IN FIJI!!! Still about 70nm to go to Savu Savu
POSITION: 16 48,941 S 178 17.092 E (can cut & paste into Google Earth)
SOG: ZERO!! We’re firmly anchored! (SOG = Speed over Ground)
COG: Zero (COG = Course over Ground, our GPS based compass heading)
WIND: 6-18 kts ESE
SEAS/Swell: none tucked inside beautiful little Cukuvou Harbour
WEATHER: Another beautiful day riding this high pressure zone. Sunny, blue sky, almost no clouds but high winds continued the entire way, high 20’s and touching into the 30’s
SAILS: Sailed through the night and through Round Island pass into Bligh waters as first light came on. Spent the day motor sailing east into the 25-30 knot winds and seas to make it over to Yadua Island to be able to anchor before we lost the sun.
AIR TEMP: 75.7F 24.3C cccccccccccccccccold!!!
SEA TEMP: 84.4F 29.1C
HUMIDITY 62%
BAROMETER: 1012
DISTANCE TRAVELED last 24 hrs: 120nm
TOTAL DISTANCE TO GO: (to Fiji): We’re here!! Well, almost, still about 70 nm to go to Savu Savu to check in.
Day #19 ANCHOR DOWN IN FIJI!!I
We made it!!! While we may not touch Fiji soil for a few more days, our big 75kg Rocna anchor hit bottom and dug herself into Fiji sand at about 16:45 this afternoon in the beautiful little hideaway Cukuvou Harbour on the west side of Yadua Island. We still have about 70+ nm to go along the south coast of Vanua Levu island over to Savu Savu which is the Port of Entry (POE) where we will officially clear into Fiji. But Learnativity is now in official Fiji waters and all her crew will sleep VERY soundly at anchor here tonight.
I’ll keep it short because I’m a pooped little pirate tonight and we have a stunning sunset off the aft end of Learnativity and we’ve got a lot of kissing and celebrating to do tonight. Seems rather apropos that it was also exactly 18 months ago that Christie and I met for the first time in person when she flew into Fiji on this day back in December 2013 and we set sail a few days later for our “first date” which lasted three weeks on the passage up to the Marshall Islands. Still hard for both of us to fathom that so much could have happened in our lives and we could have done so much living in just the past 18 months but we could not be happier about every one of those densely packed days nor more excited about the many more to come.
So that will have to be the “adventure” for you today as there wasn’t any other big event to report to you. We did need to stop for about two hours about noon today so I could replace all the fuel filters as I could hear that the engine was surging a bit with the revs going up and down a bit in the big seas and wind as we pushed our way east across Bligh Waters and over to this tiny little harbor we found on the charts as a place to spend the night before continuing on to Savu Savu. With the combination of the first week having no wind and then the past 2 weeks having too much that was all on the nose we have ended up doing more motoring on this one passage than I’ve done in the past few years and so a lot of diesel fuel has run through those filters. Exacerbating the situation Learnativity’s fuel tanks have not been used much at all for almost a year and a half now and they have received a VERY strong dose of James Bond (Shaken not stirred!) with the rough seas we’ve been pounding through and so every bit of sediment in those tanks will have come loose and been lodging in the big fuel filtration setup I’ve installed for just that purpose. I had hoped that they would make it to Savu Savu before needing changing and they came close but came up short by about 70 nautical miles.
We were in a bit of a hurry today, which is very unusual for us but there are no other anchorages over where we are and are now in coral invested waters with lots of reefs and “bommies” or coral heads which we need to be able to see to avoid as there are too many that are not on the charts. So when the engine started to surge a bit late this morning I knew it was only prudent to stop and change all four of the various filters rather than take the chance that the engine might falter just as we were squeezing our way through the very narrow little opening in the coral reef outside this harbor. Took about 2 hours to change all the filters and then it was pedal to the metal time to make the dash eastward over to Yadua Island. Of course the wind and waves never let up for a moment and we pushed directly into 25-30 knot winds and 2+ meter seas the whole way. But Mr. Cummins did his thing and propelled us along at 6-7kts in spite of all that resistance and we turned north to get up the west coast of Yadua Island and were outside the tiny little break in the coral at the entrance to Cukuvou Harbour just after 4pm this afternoon which was just in time to have the sun be high enough overhead and behind us to provide the necessary visual navigation to let us come in slowly and safely to this stunning first anchorage for us. So with Christine standing up on the bow pulpit holding onto the furled up genoa to have a good visual vantage point we motored slowing though the opening in the reef and SE across the small harbor to put us close to the cliffs that would protect us from the SE winds overnight. We crept slowly towards the beautiful sandy beach till the depth meter said 40 feet, dropped that beautiful Rocna anchor down and let the wind push LTY back and slowly pull out about 200 feet of chain when I snubbed it off tight and felt the chain pull rod tight and announced to Christine; “Honey, we’re home!”
We are of course the only boat or people here and have not yet seen another person or boat since we entered Fiji waters. Which is just the way we like it best and in part why where here. And then to add the finishing touch as we stood on deck hugging and marveling at our surroundings, Mother Nature gifted us with the most beautiful spectrum of colors in tonight’s sunset which lay out across the waters leading out of the harbor. But wait! There’s more!! As I’ve been sitting here in the cockpit typing this up the sun has set and now I look out into that inky black sky and see the most perfect silver sliver of a new moon rising off to the west. A perfect ending (almost) t our passage and life simply does not get much better than this!
Tomorrow we’ll continue to make our way through all the coral surrounding the SW corner of the big island of Vanua Levu and along the southern shore over to Savu Savu. That’s a bit more than 70 more nautical miles so more than we can do in daylight so we will find some other perfect little lonely harbor to anchor in tomorrow night as well and then head into Savu Savu to do our official check in the next day which will be Friday the 22nd here.
And with that all the crew aboard the good ship Learnativity bid you a sweet good night and we’ll be back to report on the finale to this passage.
Wayne, Christine, Barnacle Barney and Ruby the WonderDog
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