Onwards to Fiji – halfway around the world   Thursday, 26/10/2023

We left Vava’u on Friday morning without incident. Wonderful, except that I had woken just before 5am with what was clearly food poisoning. While doing practical things – disengaging from the mooring ball, coming into the customs dock and tying up, dealing with the officials, and then travelling several miles to get out to sea and the sails up – I didn’t feel too bad. But as soon as this was over and I relaxed, I really felt awful, the world spinning around, shivering with cold despite the temperature being 25 degrees. Interestingly, however, whenever I needed to do anything practical, I would force myself up and then it was not too difficult to do whatever needed to be done, before then lapsing back into the awful reverie of sickness. I still felt weak and strange on Saturday, although definitely on the mend. By evening, I forced myself to eat an exciting meal of boiled rice and a can of mixed vegetables (!), and also to drink a can of beer – although I threw the last part of the beer away (something I never, ever, do. I must have been very unwell).

Fortunately, after sleeping wonderfully despite getting up every hour and a half or so during the night to check on things, by Sunday morning I felt back to normal, if a little weak. If you are going to be sick, I had been fortunate in that the wind was light – we’d been making only 3 to 4 knots – but it was easy, comfortable sailing, just when I needed it. It didn’t matter that this meant it would definitely be a five day, rather than four day, sail. However, it was clear from a slowing wind, as well as the forecast, that we’d be close to becalmed from late Sunday morning until Monday morning, so I turned Manuka into the wind, dropped the mainsail, and started to motor at 5 knots (a reasonable speed, and pretty fuel efficient, with the engine running at just 1,500 rpm). 

One compensation of light winds is that the weather is usually lovely – an undulating sea, hardly what you could call waves, sunny and warm. Sunset came well after 6pm, a light ridge of clouds across the western horizon surrounded by layers of deep pink. And then, half an hour later, a striking half-moon, just past the cusp of growing to more than half of itself. Peaceful and calm, a lovely evening at sea in the South Pacific. I now felt very well indeed. 

Oh, and my repairs to the electrical system had clearly worked. Everything was absolutely fine – and five days at sea represents a 120-hour test, passed without incident. Wonders will never cease.

Rather than heading along a rhumb line directly west from Vava’u, our course took us reasonably south, not just to get the best wind possible, but also to avoid the complications of the Southern Lau Group of islands and their many reefs, which are scattered east of Fiji. At just after midnight on Sunday night we passed the two islands of Ogea Levui and Ogea Drikii, which are surrounded by a reef and a large outlying rock. From there it was directly west, just south of Matuku Island and on just south of Kadavu, a long island which lies directly under Fiji’s eastern half. 

Fiji comprises 332 islands scattered over a vast 500,000 square miles (almost 1.3 million square kilometres). Less than a third are inhabited. The main island, Viti Levu, is large, about 100 miles across and 60 miles north to south. This makes it a lot further to its west coast, our destination, than if one was heading for the capital, Suva, which is in the east. From Kadavu Island, we took a north-northwesterly course up to Navula Passage, which provides entry through a long reef that extends outwards from Fiji’s southwestern point. This all sounds complicated, but in reality it’s really just about identifying the easiest course to avoid obstacles, while trying to minimise distance travelled. Avoiding obstacles is pretty important, especially when you are going to be sailing at night – the last thing you need is having to make frequent changes of course in the early hours – quite apart from the danger posed by some of these reefs not being well charted. Yachts can, and do, sometimes run aground. 

From Monday the wind blew well, 15 or 16 knots or so, although by Tuesday evening it was blowing a bit too much, well over 20 knots. Happily, this only lasted until about 2am on Wednesday. Just before 8am I was navigating through the passage, with only about 15 miles to go.

And so we approached Port Denarau Marina. A fine setting, mangrove swamps on one side and on the other low rise buildings amongst plenty of palm trees and other greenery. The marina is lovely, and there is plenty of life here. Denarau is basically a created island, with only a narrow waterway separating it from the “mainland”. The whole area is run by a resorts company and there are several upmarket hotel resorts: Hilton, Sheraton, Sofitel etc. There’s also a golf course and small estates of houses and low rise apartments. So it’s completely different to anywhere I’ve been for a long time (in fact the last time I was anywhere like this was on the east coast of the Dominican Republic in the northern Caribbean – which seems a lifetime away). These sorts of places can be criticised for being a bit sterile, but they have their upsides too – shops and restaurants, as well as everything being superbly maintained. It always feels refreshing to have a change, and having been on successive small islands with very limited supplies, it’s interesting to be somewhere like this. And in essence the marina is quite sheltered from its surrounds. As is normal, there are locked gates restricting access, so that you don’t get sightseers coming down onto the docks – on checkin you get a key card that lets you in and out. The atmosphere in the marina is great – I’ve talked to several people already, helped a neighbour with his lines as he was leaving this morning, that sort of thing.

The landscape around here is very attractive – no wonder that this area is Fiji’s premier tourist destination. After a flat several miles wide coastal strip, there are mountains beyond. Amongst them is a National Park with two peaks that are well over 1,000 metres high – a place that I’ll probably take a closer look at. Hire a car for a day and get up there. 

So, all is good – another successful voyage, this time taking me across the 180 degree meridian: the International Date Line. That’s another significant waypoint on my trip: it represents halfway around the world, given that I departed the UK from 2 degrees west of the Greenwich Meridian, and am now at 177 degrees 22 minutes east, so I’ve travelled 180 degrees and 38 minutes. And – as I hope this comment attests – I’m still alive…