We explored all around the islands of Yagasa, anchored in a few extremely scenic spots that looked perfectly protected on sat images, even brought out landlines to be as snug as possible, but it was always the same: calm at low tide, seriously bouncy at high tide. The outer reef is just too low to keep out the swell.
With stronger NE winds predicted we gave up and sailed down to the next island, Fulanga. 10 nm as the sooty tern flies, but about 20 miles around barrier reefs from pass to pass–a quick sail with Pitufa doing around 6 knots in NE wind between 16 and 20 knots.
The strong breeze guaranteed a fast ride, but made the arrival a bit scary: the 55 m wide pass of Fulanga faces NE and we had to surf down the waves into the entrance. Pitufa was swerving down the steep crests alarmingly, but I kept her under control and once we were in the pass, the water turned completely calm. We had our timing right at slack water. An ingoing tide (together with the wind), would have been okay as well, but I certainly wouldn’t recommend trying this pass (or any tricky pass) with wind against current.
We finally got to spend a quiet night in the perfect shelter of the almost closed lagoon.
