On the afternoon of Friday, September 23 we arrived at Fawn Harbour. We had good winds from the Costeau Resort that allowed us to sail most of the 30 nautical miles along the coast of Vena Levu. Unfortunately it rained just as we were arriving at the entrance to the harbour and I had to go out on the bow to make sure we didn’t hit a reef. Luckily Ian’s mum had left a really good rain jacket on board Faraway so I popped that on and braved the downpour. The reef was clearly marked with beacons even though the visibility was bad. We anchored in the first finger of the harbour alongside a row of mangroves. Ian wasn’t very impressed with the anchorage but I thought it was wonderful. I told him that it would grow on him when the sun came out! Well it didn’t stop raining all afternoon and I had already defrosted rib eye steaks for the BBQ. Ian didn’t feel like venturing out in the rain so he had a snooze. I read a book up on deck and listened to the rain belting down. All of a sudden the sun came out briefly and it stopped raining. I woke Ian at 6pm and he got the BBQ ready. The rain had virtually disappeared with the sunset. We retired fairly early but at around 11pm our anchor alarm went off meaning that we had moved or drifted. Ian jumped out of bed and within minutes I could hear him yelling and screaming ‘the bugs’, ‘the bugs’ they are all over my face. I wondered whether we were under attack and yelled out to see if everything was okay. He came running back to the bedroom and jumped in the shower saying that there are so many bugs and they are all in my eyes I can’t see. It must have been terrifying for the bugs! Luckily we hadn’t drifted and the bugs were contained. In the morning I took a photo of all the dead bugs on our navigation pod so Ian wasn’t exaggerating after all. The sun eventually came out and yes we confirmed that we had anchored in a mangrove swamp but it sure was beautiful and peaceful. We got the kayaks down and paddled to the reef shore. I walked the reef and looked at all the creatures that were revealed at low tide. There were plenty of bristle stars, sea stars, sea cucumbers, octopus, crabs and eels. All of a sudden some local guys appeared in a fishing boat with nets. They came over to say hello and were really nice. They were from the local village. They asked what we were doing and we said just reef walking and picking up the odd shell. I showed them the handful of scungy dead shells I had collected. Within minutes one of the guys disappeared and returned with a beautiful big tiger Cowrie shell. ‘Now that’s a shell’ he said. Unfortunately I couldn’t keep it as it still had a living creature inside it but I have to admire him for know exactly where to find such a shell on the reef. Ian paddled back to Faraway and got them all some soft drinks while I continued to reef walk. Later Ian modelled his other board shorts on the trunk of a coconut palm on the beach and in amongst the mangroves. At 11am the tide was back in so we returned to Faraway and motored out through the channel. We sailed for 2 hours down to Viani Bay and got good winds and excellent sailing speeds for a change. We were so close to Taveuni now that we could see the houses on shore. We navigated our way through the reef in the Somosomo passage and anchored in Viani Bay late afternoon. Around 5pm we had a visitor from shore rowing over in his dinghy. We asked him who he was and he replied ‘Jack Fisher’. Well this guy is famous in all the cruising books and we had heard about him in Savu Savu. We invited him on board for sundowners and a chat. We learned lot’s of interesting stuff from him about his village and diving in the area. We found out he was ‘the chief’ of the village so we had to present Kava much to his delight. He was a very nice guy and a character with a lot of useful local knowledge. We promised him that we would come back in the next few days and maybe do some diving with him. It was a long but enjoyable day Fiji style. My only complaint is that the sun hasn’t really come out yet but I’m sure it will soon.
No comments:
Post a Comment