NORDLYS - Lau, Suva and other adventures

Lau, Suva and other adventures

NORDLYS

David and Annette Ridout

Tue 5 Jul 2005 05:23

Lau, on to Suva and some problems with Pacific sailing.

Vuda Point Marina

5th July 2005

The Lau proved to be a great education to us. I will not bore my readers with a blow by blow account of our time there but rather try to get over the interesting points that occurred.

We did achieve a 4WD trip over the only few roads (or tracks) of the island with Dennis. He actually turned up as he promised at our landing site, some three miles from his house. Next day he did not turn up to take us diving! For four hours I and an American couple waited in vain. Some time later we discovered from our host Ratu Joe that of course Dennis had not come as this was his, that is Ratu Joe's side of the island and although Joe had encouraged us to go diving with Dennis he preferred us to use the services of a friend of his who had a launch! He had never told us this and any normal person would be beside themselves with irritation by now but I am learning, albeit at some mental cost, that 'Island Time' is a far reaching term and also encompasses a lot of, to us, irrational behaviour. I am not the first and will not be the last westerner to learn the hard way that things just do not happen in places like the Lau in a way that we can either understand the logic of or find easy to live with.

Eventually I did manage three excellent dives on the outer side of the reef drop off. We did not make it to the sea mount some four miles offshore but at least a lot was achieved. Magnificent underwater landscapes, a few large sharks and many other fish were mine to wonder over. Sonni, the local who took us diving offered to get our scuba tanks refilled overnight. This offer we gladly accepted as neither the American yacht nor we had a compressor. It was only in the morning that we discovered he had walked three miles carrying two tanks to get Dennis to fill them. Dennis had at least given him a lift back. The walk was necessary because yet again the phones were down. Sonni was not at all put out by having to do this. Island mentality is needed to cope here both by the locals and ourselves albeit in different ways. I could not manage a mile with two tanks on my back!

We also had our pig roast in Joe's house with some twenty of us present including a daughter of Joe's and her partner from Australia. During our visit Mel Gibson and family plus a few hangers on flew in to visit the island that they have reputedly spent some $20 million buying. It is about eight miles from Vanua Balavu and has no airfield nor as far as we can see any good anchorage. The arrival of his party at the dinghy landing site coincided with our arrival on shore for our 4WD trip. A lady, whom I rightly guessed was Mrs Gibson, told me in no uncertain terms not to photograph her family. My camera was slung round my neck in readiness for our trip. I replied that I had no interest in photographing strangers. This threw her completely. However I then on principle took a lot of photos of the group wading through the mud. Maybe I should become a paparazzi! You may charter an aircraft to get you to your hideaway but low tide is low tide and even the famous must walk through the ooze. The young Gibson children loved it. The main hanger on who lived with a satellite phone clamped to his ear all the time did not.

We left Vanua Balavu one lunch time with perfect conditions. Blue sky, fifteen knots of trade wind behind us and our destination Gau 120nm away, we even caught another nice mahi mahi. Dawn arrival planned for a pass entrance to an apparently lovely little out of the way set up. Usual story. By five o'clock in the afternoon it was blowing nearly thirty knots, much rain and even heavily reefed we passed Gau at 0400hrs with not a star insight. We went on to Suva. Once has to be flexible when sailing these 'Pacific Waters'!

The anchorage off the yacht club in Suva was rolly and very dirty. Most of the area being taken up by rusting, oil seeping ex Korean Fishing boats that have passed their sell by date even for the Koreans. The other option is a sheltered bay off a rather run down resort some five miles from town. There are no facilities here and even finding a place for the dinghy was not easy but we spent several days bussing into town and doing a variety of things that ranged from visiting the excellent Fiji Museum, getting myself a hair cut, not so excellent, and wandering the streets and markets of this metropolis. Annette suffered a tummy/flue bug and spent a couple of days doing little but was soon back to her usual self. The journey round to the northern side of Viti Levu, Suva is on the south side, needed a 90nm leg done in daylight unless we stopped somewhere. Time was running out with Patrick's imminent arrival from his last term at Cambridge so 0600hrs found us feeling our way out through the rust buckets and the Suva pass as dawn brought a few rays of light to the scene. We found as expected 20 knots of SE trades. Our course was initially just south of west. Fast sailing. In twenty miles we entered the Beqa passage. This is a mile wide gap between the reefs of Viti Levu to the north and the island of Beqa to the south. This island is quite high and I should have been prepared for the funnel affect of the hills on the wind. Mrs R was not impressed with doing some 10 to 12 knot surfs under a double reefed main and many rolls in the boomed out genoa with coral and breakers under half a mile on either side. All good character building stuff say I with the adrenalin flowing and the sure feel of Nordlys's wheel under my fingers. 'My character does not need any more building' says she.!

Little were either of us to realise that this was the easy bit. Another hour and the sky went slowly black everywhere behind us. In reality the first three squalls missed us but the fourth did not. Water, water every where. The rough sea being rather beaten down by the rain but the effect was of a smoking surface in the forty to fifty knots of wind that blew. This lasted an age. I was actually seriously frightened that we were not going to find nor manage to enter the only possible pass on the western side of Fiji. We would thus have had to either try heaving to for the night or run off to Vanuatu to the west of us. I kept these thoughts to myself and the gods, or whoever controls the weather, were kind to us for about half an hour before we got to the pass the skies cleared and the wind went slightly further south thus enabling us to close haul our way into the pass on 065 degrees against a two knot ebb. Nordlys as ever had behaved magnificently. We had logged 88nm in just over eleven hours but as the anchor went down in a sheltered bay just two miles inside the pass it was a physically, we had helmed most of the day due to the gusty changeable conditions and nearby reefs, and perhaps more so emotionally tired crew who yet again downed the 'anchor dram' with a lot of pleasure.

I realise that I probably spend too much time writing about the weather and having re-read my last effort not enough time on correcting my spelling! The truth is that we never cease to be amazed by the unpredictability of the weather and much as we love these island groups we are looking forward in many ways to getting back to the depression belts. It may blow, rain and be generally unpleasant at times in these parts of the world but it is so much more predictable which we both find better on the nerves. Whether I will be writing to this affect after we have had a dose of Tasmania remains to be seen.

Happy times from us both.