Bula visitors! The passage over the top of Viti Levu was much as expected. The easterly winds continued to blow pretty strongly, but this made for an easy passage westwards on flat calm water within the reef. We stopped overnight in a sheltered anchorage, surrounded by shallow reef & mangroves near Vatia, then continued around …
After a wonderful 10 days in the Lau islands, it was time to head back to Vanua Levu, the smaller of Fiji’s two main islands. We had a brief stop overnight in a wonderful anchorage in Malagi, then headed to Viani, a cruiser friendly bay on the eastern side of Vanua Levu where we we’re …
After returning from Europe we had a few more days at Nawi marina, whilst we got ourselves fully organised for the next leg of our trip. This included quite a large reprovision, as I had let our supplies dwindle quite significantly over the last couple of months, anticipating that Fiji would be a good place …
Our trip to Europe was one of necessity as much as pleasure. We needed to get over to Jersey where my elderly father had recently been admitted to a care home to sort out a few things. Nevertheless, we took the opportunity to stop in Sydney on the way over & it was a very …
This trip has been much anticipated as the final leg of our journey from French Polynesia before we leave the boat for a month or so to head to Aus and then the UK to sort out some family business. After the long trip to Tonga this one at a mere 3 days seemed liked …
The Kingdom of Tonga! It was a 10day passage from Maupiti to Vava’u in Northern Tonga – the longest passage so far. All the wind models indicated that we should take a broad northerly sweep to avoid high seas & strong winds further south. So with this in mind we set sail early morning, bouncing …
After spending such a fabulous time with Alice & Wil, it was time to look ahead to leaving French Polynesia and heading westward. There were a couple of reasons why we wanted to move reasonably quickly to Fiji (via Tonga) and leave the boat in a marina for a few weeks whilst we return to …
We had read about Hervé and Valerie in our cruising compendium and as I mentioned before, they are well known to the cruising community. They live with their son on the eastern side of Taravai, in a lovely cottage on the edge of the beach, which has been in Hervé’s family for generations. (Interestingly, this …
We were happy to finally arrive at the Gambier Islands. Not exactly by Christmas as originally intended, but nevertheless we achieved our goal of sailing to this remote archipelago! Better late than never! The Gambier islands lie about 1700km SE of Tahiti and consist of a single lagoon of 30km2 within which there are 5 …
I don’t think there are enough superlatives to describe the small atoll of Amanu, which so aptly fits the description of a South Pacific paradise. This is an absolute gem and we feel lucky to have been ‘stranded’ here whilst awaiting favourable winds to get us to the Gambier Islands. We have been here for …