The new battens I had made in New Zealand at great expense are starting to break. So I book into Vudu (prounounced Vundoo) Marina to make repairs and to tackle the batten makers for compensation.

Since leaving Savusavu I have sailed to remote places and did not share any of my last six anchorages with any other boats until I arrived in the marina on Friday. I passed a few boats along the way but that was it. A nice big superyacht, approaching 150 feet, sailed by me under mainsail alone. He was doing 10.4 knots! I politely pulled over to let him by. Sailing inside the coral was easy enough. It was in the passes when changing islands that I really had to have my wits about me. At times the current reached 3 knots, but thankfully never more. The weather was changeable but as I go west the clouds go away and it is wall to wall sunshine. Even 15 miles makes a difference as the rain gets dumped in the mountainous rainforests inland.

Vundu has been a meeting place for cruisers for years. Lots of friends here. And many people leave their boats here for the cyclone season to go home for a while. The boats are literally "holed up" in a pit so they cannot blow over. But they do get full of insects... Five miles south is Port Denerau, and has been a meeting place for superyachts for years. At 210 feet Dragon Fly is there. Owned by Google, you can charter her for just US$650,000 a week. But the website points out, rather helpfully I think, that you will have to add another US100,000 to this charter fee to cover food and fuel...