18 00s 179 14e

Wildfox
Anthony Swanston
Sat 21 Jun 2014 03:25
I left Suva bright (well, still dark actually) and early and outside the reef the wind was on the nose (not forecast) and blowing hard. Too hard. After an hour I gave up as I would not reach Gau before dark. You cannot do a badly charted reef entry in the dark!

Plan B was to head off a few days later when the forecast looked good to an island in the lagoon 10 miles closer to Gau and leave from there early next day. The forecast was for a southerly wind, 12 knots and clear skies. A lovely beam reach in the sunshine. Next morning the wind was 25 knots, steady rain and when I got out of my shelter spot the true wind was south east and so I had a wet and uncomfortable close hauled sail across for 10 hours. The seas were big and very confused. Horrible. When I arrived at the reef pass a nice rain squall came in reducing visibility and bringing the wind up to 30 knots. Lovely. NOT! The first anchorage looked bad, the second worse. The third, near the main village was difficult but do-able. 21 metres deep, too much for 60 metres of chain and grindy stuff on the bottom. I seemed to get anchored and could not go the the next anchorage as the light was failing. And it might be no better.

I was just thinking about having a quadruple whisky when I saw an open boat come down the lagoon - a typical well used open fibre glass thing with a 50hp beaten up outboard. When they spotted me at anchor in the corner of the bay over they came informing me that Sevusevu would be tomorrow. Two adults and 15 children under the age of 10. All the children shouted "BULA" (hello) at the tops of their voices and asked a million question about me and the boat. Not a life jacket in sight. They had just made the same passage as me, actually further as they had come from Suva. The children are at boarding school there and were coming home for the weekend. My horrible passage in a well found 38 foot offshore yacht was just another day in an open boat to these island people.

Next morning I moved to anchorage number 4. Better, but not much. Too far from the village to go by dinghy for Sevusevu. I may incur the wrath of the chief...

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