Pitufa.at

The first times we visited Vanua Balavu’s Qilaqila Bay (Bay of Islands), we thought it was really pretty above water (mushroom islands) as well as below water (healthy reefs). Now we are back and after the slightly disappointing experiences with overfished reefs and rolly anchorages further north we REALLY appreciate the protected bay with and its biodiversity. Finally we are well rested again and can hang out with a large variety of big, relaxed fishy friends! Additionally we have internet on the boat, small shops in the main village and some locally grown veg and fruit
The calm anchorage was also a bonus when we had to change the brushes of the watermaker today. Working in the confined space of the bilge and fiddling with tiny parts is tricky enough without Pitufa pitching and rolling…

Tour operators take tourists to the waterfalls in Bouma and Lavena, but sailing down the southeastern coast of Taveuni we discovered that about a dozen more gush down from the mountains. Some we could see up the slope partly hidden in the forest, others gush from cliffs right down to the shore!

The Ringgold Islands were a big disappointment: rolly anchorages, overfished empty reefs and the unfriendliest locals we’ve met so far in Fiji. .. Then we stopped for a few days at the private island Matangi (good hiking and snorkeling and wonderfully friendly folks–thanks a lot for all the hospitality!) and now we’re in Taveuni.

The third-largest island of Fiji gets lots of rainfall, so it wasn’t ideal for sugar-cane plantations and luckily escaped deforestation. It’s called the garden island and it’s beautiful indeed.
We got lucky with the weather: in trade wind conditions it would be impossible to anchor on the east coast, but thanks to a prolongued phase of northwesterly winds we have the chance to hang out here in the pretty bay of Vurevure: the Bouma national park covers 80 percent of Taveuni and there are many hiking trails into the beautiful forest that lead to stunning waterfalls! Yesterday we did trail up to the three waterfalls of Bouma (32,- FJD per person) which is popular with tourists, but also with locals–in the morning we had the deep pond at the highest of the three falls all to ourselves, by the time we walked back the park had started filling up with families who had come for a picnic–a great way to celebrate the end of the old year and the beginning of the new one!

We wanted to explore more tiny islands north of Wailangilala, but northeasterly swell made that seem impossible, so we changed plans and headed westwards to the Ringgold Islands instead to have protected anchorages–or so we thought.
6 emerald islands inside a barrier reef, only one tiny village–on the sat images the place looks perfect. In reality the swell makes it unhindered into the lagoon–in fact it seems that the little effect the reef has is to break it up and make it more confused and annoying. Depending on which side of an island we are we see waves from the NE (wind direction, logical), SW (long swell), but also from the NW and the S–it’s crazy.

Yesterday we first went to the village for the official sevu-sevu welcome ritual (present included) and then went out to see the pretty anchorages around the archipelago and do some snorkeling. The distances between the islands are tiny, but each hop means preparing like for an ocean passage with the boat pitching and rolling. We tried several spots, but most were way too rough to anchor. In the end we had a snorkel-stop on the neighbouring island, slept at the S side of Yanuca (the main island) and now we’re opposite the village again.

At each anchorage we bring out a sling to a rock to align the boat with the swell–a variation of the stern anchor ritual we used to do in the rolly Marquesas of French Poly. Now we have a stainless steel wire living on the stern, attached to our roll of 50 m floating line. We park the boat close to shore, Christian hops into the water, chooses a rock in the shallows, gets the sling in place while I manoeuvre Pitufa’s stern towards that rock. Sling set, we attach the line to the stern cleat–voilá. What’s quickly explained is quite a tiring procedure and it sometimes takes a few attempts until we got the angle right. Today we found a nice corner, Pitufa’s bow points to the nearest cape and it looks like we’ll be able to sleep in bed in the aft cabin for the first time in a week or so

Wailangilala is a strange atoll: not a single coral head inside the lagoon and hardly any on the oval-shaped barrier reef. We went snorkeling in the pass, but even there we found only rocks with isolated, sparse coral growth and only a few fishies (at least a couple of grey reef sharks came by to check us out). We are puzzled by the lack of life: if the reef got damaged by a cyclone, wouldn’t there be young growth everywhere? And shouldn’t the deeper coral be in a good shape? But if it’s man-made damage (from dynamite fishing or fishing with poison), how can it be so wide-spread? We have no explanation.

The reef doesn’t give much protection, so it’s bouncy at low tide and rock and roll at high tide. We arrived with a light SE wind that was supposed to die down, but has shifted to the SW instead. There’s only one little island on the NE side of the lagoon and the anchorage in front of it doesn’t give any protection from the SW. We anchored there and it was unbearable, so we took the dinghy with the portable depth sounder around the cape to see whether there was a possibility to anchor Pitufa there. We found a deep, but incredibly narrow channel between rocks, but no open space big enough to anchor with swinging room. We ended up taking Pitufa through this precarious channel (breaking surf on the beach on one side, shallow rocks on the other) and anchored with a stern line to a bommie. It’s a bit better here, but we still spent the night in passage-mode (one of us sleeping in on the salon couch, the other one on the passage mattress on the floor).