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| Sawa-I-Lau Island |
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One of the things high on the Must-Do list for the Yasawa Islands
is to visit the caves at Sawa-I-Lau so we made our way north from the Blue
Lagoon. The bay was calm but the sky
overcast and threatening when we arrived and after a little 'discussion', we
had ourselves well-anchored. As with the
other villages we visited, we went ashore right away to present our yaqona
(kava) to the chief for the sevusevu ceremony.
The chief of Nabukeru village was very pleasant but seemed to be eager
to get the formalities out of the way and wasn't rude in any way. I think he was somewhat preoccupied with the
fact that his fishing boat had a hole in it and he was trying to figure out the
best way to patch it. "Let me see
it," I said. After a quick look, I
told him that I'd go back to my boat for supplies and I'd repair it when I
returned. Ruthie stayed on shore and was
surrounded by almost a dozen kids who acted as tour guides of the very small
village.
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| Ruthie's Nine New Best Friends |
I returned, armed with an arsenal of chemicals (epoxy resin,
hardener, fiberglass cloth, colloidal filler, acetone, etc) and proceeded to
repair the hole. The sun was hot and I
sweated profusely but in not too long a time the sticky goo was starting to
harden and I was receiving multiple vinakas (thank yous) from everyone
watching. Later that afternoon as we
were down below on the boat, we felt a disturbing jolt and heard a kind of
crunch that we knew meant trouble. I didn't
think we had dragged anchor but a squall was passing by and we had swung into a
coral pinnacle - even though we had more than 20' of water under the keel, this
pinnacle had suddenly appeared and our rudder was banging into it. We quickly sprang into our well-rehearsed
Anchoring Drill but at the same time the skies let loose with a cloudburst of
rain. Fortunately, it was quite warm but
it was so much water coming down so hard that even shouting Ruthie and I
couldn't hear each other. Anchored in
deeper water, we felt more assured that none of those pesky coral pinnacles
were going to creep up on us.
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| Inside the Cave |
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| Somosomo |
The following day we went to the famous
caves at Sawa-I-Lai, landing the dink on a small scrap of beach. It was
raining lightly but it's pretty easy to ignore when the air temperature is 85
and the water temperature is 83. The caves were less than spectacular
although it was kind of a rush to dive down and swim under rock to reach the
second pool. After no more than 30 minutes, we were out of there, on our
way back to Rutea and pointing her bow southward. We stopped
for the night at the village
of Somosomo, did the sevusevu
ceremony with the woman chief and in the morning were underway again to the
rolly anchorage of Navadra - although this time it wasn't nearly as
rolly. (There wasn’t much enthusiasm to visit the village of Soso
as it sounded mediocre to us.) We talked
with Corie on the phone who had just finished a 10-day trip to the Lau Group,
some of the most remote islands in the Fiji group, on The Shannon,
a 36-foot sloop.
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| Mother's Day Dinner with Kevin |
It was Mother's day when we reunited with
Corie and Kevin, the owner of The Shannon, and in celebration we went
out for dinner in Musket Cove. Kevin left the next day as he had to get
back to work in Hawaii
while the three of us tackled the peeling varnish on Rutea's cap
rail. The decision that we needed to make was whether to paint Rutea's
bottom before we left Fiji
for California
or waited until we returned. Our decision to do it now was primarily
based on anticipating our eagerness to get back to cruising when we returned
rather than sit in a boatyard so we headed to Port Denarau.
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| At Our Hotel |
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| Working on the Cap Rail |
Once we negotiated the narrow channel
that leads into Port Denarau, we could have been anywhere in Southern California. A modern marina, tony
restaurants and fashionable stores make the place look more like Newport Beach than Fiji but it was a nice change from
the remote places we had just been. We took things even a step further
and checked into a hotel while Rutea was on the hard (the boatyard
doesn't allow live-aboards) and our one-bedroom apartment was delightful - well
appointed, a nicely equipped kitchen, big flat screen TV, a swimming pool right
outside the double sliding glass doors and a washer and dryer! We
brought all our dirty laundry from the boat and kept those two machines working
overtime. Whereas I had planned to do all the work on Rutea
myself, the labor rate at the yard is FJ$15.00 (US$8.50) per hour so I let the
yard clean, sand and paint the bottom while the three of us persisted in
getting the cap rail stripped, sanded and varnished. Rutea's hull
looks great and I could only find two 50-cent-sized blisters to repair - not
bad for a 28-year old boat. Four coats of hard antifouling paint and
hopefully we won't have to do anything to the hull again 'til we reach Thailand.
We splashed her this afternoon, did still more sanding on the cap rail and
scrubbed her down well - it feels good to be back in the water.
Just one week until we climb aboard a jet
for San Diego
and Caity and Danny’s wedding! I had made the airline reservations last
November and, at the time, this date seemed very far away. All of us are
very excited. Our list of things to buy
now covers three pages of notebook paper - Ruthie may have to look for a job to
pay for all this stuff!
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