An 08.15 start today, fabulous morning and Bua Bay looking a different and very attractive place in the sunshine. Using Curley's way points, we left the bay with Buva reef to starboard and Cakau Levu reef to port, all good. Then we made our own route through the Yadua pass, as the area has been swept to 9 or 11 metres but we never saw less than 22m, all good. Then we approached Yadua with Navicugu reef to starboard and some random rock of unknown position or depth to port, never seen and on round Yadua Taba to join Curley's way points again for getting into Cakau Harbour. This is a lovely sheltered bay with no navigational detail on our Garmin or ISailor carts except a danger line on both sides. With good visibility and the reefs showing clearly, we motored in slowly in accordance with all Curley's way points except one that put us more over the danger line on the Starboard side than we felt was necessary. There is an islolated reef on the port side that needed to be avoided as we got further into the bay and we actually anchored to port of Curley's last way point in 14.5m, further off shore than the Skipper wanted, but the Wife had the helm and her end was stationary at that point! Water visibility was probably about 7m and there is a reef off the beach and coming off the rocky points on both ends of the beach, so we had no idea of what we were anchoring in.
Cakau Harbour is a gorgeous bay, with lovely reefs for snorkelling although the water was murky, but the fish are excellent and there is a great variety of coral. There was also some very active bird life, with very small honey eaters flitting round the blossom on the trees lining the beach, looking like Fiji's version of a humming bird. We did not visit the village 6km away for sevusevu as we could not find a path that went anywhere and it was getting late. After a beautiful sunset and fish supper, our only complaint is that the wind, which had got up in the afternoon, was still blowing when we went to bed, but at least there were no mosquito visits in the night!
Tomorrow we are planning to go to Sawa-i-Lau.
Alcedo
Sent from my iPad
