Honor Fiji Journey
June-July 2012
As it turned out we were a month anchored at the Royal Suva Yacht Club.
Almost everyone bemoans Suva, but I kinda like it there. It is the best place to provision between Auckland and Brisbane. The yacht club is a friendly and relaxed meeting place, with fresh water showers, a fuel dock, a dingy dock and a well stocked bar. The yacht club manager, a charming and spirited Indian woman named Romina, has become a helpful friend.
The main market place in the centre of town is a hive of activity; but beware of the pickpockets around the market and on the sidewalks across the main street. Taxi fare is reasonable and most of the drivers are the salt of the earth. If you want to know what is happening around Fiji, just ask your driver. If you tip him an extra dollar, you get to see a smile that is worth a lot more than a dollar.
Carrie arrived 3 days before the beginning of our education project Honour Fiji Journey, (HFJ). Her arrival generated a series of meetings with the Econesian Society people at University of the South Pacific and a variety of local chiefs and district supervisors. Putting HFJ back together took a bit more time than we thought.
Nina returned after marrying her fiancŽ and sending him back to Denmark. Kanuk stayed to be the ships doctor. Charlotte stayed on to be our first mate. I gave Lou a free passage in exchange for being full time cook. PNG Pete was back for his 5th year in a row sailing with us. A young American photographer named Cambria joined us to photo-document the project.
From the academic side, this was a project about educating Fijian youth; however we had no Fijian youth on board to educate. So, I offered to sponsor four of them. Alex and Mere from the Econesian Society, Esava from Agriculture and Arthur from Sports and Youth joined the crew, together with Charlotte, Pete, Lou, Cami, Kanuk, Nina, Carrie and myself we were 12 on the crew.
We had a 27-hour passage to Makogai Is. Some 70 miles NNW of Suva. We anchored off the quarantine station there then went ashore to arrange for delivery of about 100 baby Giant Clams. That afternoon we went back with 5 of our 20-litre buckets to pick up the clams. Early the next morning we started to weigh anchor before breakfast. It was 35 miles to the anchorage at Moon Reef. Not having been there before I wanted to be able to anchor before dark. With a 12-fathom anchorage it took a half hour to get the anchor to the surface.
As we were hauling the 250-kilo anchor to the cathead, the cating tackle parted, sending pile of line and a large steel block crashing down on the deck. I said, 'Okay guys, let's get a coil of 16-mil line off the tank tops and reeve off a new tackle.' Looking around at my crew I saw a lot of blank stares. The crew seemed to have gone Zombie on me. With the new people it is understandable, they don't know the language yet; but the crew who sailed north seemed to have forgotten what they learned.
I gave specific jobs to Nina, Kanuk, Lou and Charlotte. It took 45 minutes to get a new tackle rove off and cat the anchor. All the while I had to run back and forth between the fore deck and the helm to keep Alvei from being blown on to the reef to leeward of us. With a fresh sou-easter, it was a beam reach across he top of the Ovalau Reef. Mid afternoon I got a call from Isoa saying we should anchor off Natalei Village. They sent a banana boat out to pilot us in. We anchored in 4 fathoms, sand and mud, a couple hundred metres off the beach.
Everyone but me went ashore for a welcoming sevusevu (kava ceremony). [When you leave a ship without crew it is called a 'Dead Ship'. This is not a good thing to do.] I appointed PNG Pete our social Captain; it was his duty to go ashore for these events. He had been down with a cold, or maybe the flu, for about a week. The Kava ceremony was not good for him. After coming back aboard he got chills and the shakes. The girls covered him up and put him to bed. Kanuk checked on him and said, 'He's just tired and dehydrated.' Be that as it may, he left for Australia early the next morning. He later wrote to tell us he had been 5 days in hospital, but was coming right. He said he would be back with us again next year.
On our first full day in port half the clams were taken to a nearby reef off shore from Natalei village. The next day the rest of the clams were taken to Moon Reef some five miles out in the lagoon. Moon Reef, by the way, forms a perfect circle a nautical mile in diameter. It was the site of an ancient village and is now the home of a resident pod of spinner dolphins.
Local legend tells us that when you see a light on the reef at night it is to guide the spirit of someone who is about to die. Saturday evening we hosted 30 Fijians, including 6 local chiefs, for a traditional Kava ceremony and dinner. They brought along a string band to liven the event. These guys had a lead singer and two back up vocalists. They were pretty good.
Some of the crew volunteered their time in the local schools and our ship nurse, Kanuk, joined the region's nurse for a day of home visitations. For the rest of the week HFJ learned to plant mangrove trees. They also planted Vesi trees on the school grounds. Before leaving Suva we had purchased 50 Vessi tree saplings.
The Vesi wood is an economically important and culturaly significant wood in Fiji. It is a strong and stable boat building wood, it was used to build their traditional sailing vessels, the Drua. The wood is mainly found in the Lau Island group. It is also used to make the all-important kava bowls. We planted Vesi trees at every island stop as an extension of friendship. We were 'blessed' with gifts of fruit and veggies from village gardens. They also built billy-billys, bamboo rafts, as a special treat for the volunteers. They took us on a river tour down to the sea. We gave our Lavo feast on shore as thank you for their hospitality.
It was a 110-mile passage from Moon Reef to the anchorage at the north end of Taveuni. As we neared Somo Somo Straits with the tidal current against us it became evident we would not be able to anchor before dark. So we sailed a few miles to the west to heave to and wait for a fair tide in the morning. The wind died away after sunset, we drifted, becalmed under a clear starry sky and full moon with whales and dolphins all around. On deck we could hear them blow before taking a breath. Below deck you could hear them talking with squeaking chirps and clicks. It was an enchanting night.
Starting the engine before dawn, we motored through the straits on the northbound tide and found an anchorage that morning at the north tip of Taveuni. Our community partner in Taveuni is Island Spirit Eco-tours, headed by a very affable young red-headed woman named, Kirsty Barnby from the UK.
The first full day in the water the group learned coral reef gardening and used their new-found skill in an area of reef that had been damaged by cyclone Thomas two years ago. Coral gardening utilizes live but broken coral, replanting it to re-secure the foundation. It can be a bit challenging holding ones breath long enough, it may take 10 tries, to find a fitting notch where the coral can reattach itself.
The next day, the volunteer crew, did a snorkel dive and inspected a Marine Protected Area (MPA) comparing it to the nearby fishing zone. It is 14 years old, the oldest MPA in Fiji. Thus there was quite a dramatic difference between the MPA and the fish zone.
The following two days were used learning to build fish houses to restore the fish population to the fishing zone. The fish are smart and stay within the MPA. However, in order for the MPA to be sustainable to the community, they need to be able to harvest some of the abundance of fish. Making fish houses is like making glorified sand castles. Each person's was unique, decorated with colorful shells. We all got a bit competitive, trying to out-dazzle each other.
The 5th day in the water our people removed over 100 Crown of Thorns starfish from the reef. A couple of the them had coral cuts on their feet, and a few more were stung by the starfish; but all in all, casualties were light. At the request of the chief, our Econesian students became instructors teaching 10 people from the village how to plant mangrove trees where they had been removed to build a road. (The road washed away because the mangrove trees were not there to protect it.) Sunday many of the crew visited Arthur's family and went to see the waterfall there. The guys had fun leaping off the ledge into cool water. The waterfall was used in one of the Blue Lagoon films.
Alex, Lou and Nina left us here. Ben, an Israeli Navy patrol boat captain, joined us here. With reinforced Trade Winds of 20 to 25 knots forecast for the coming week it was a quick passage over the top of Vanua Levu to Kia Island. We anchored just before sunset the following day.
Fiji's Great Sea Reef, (Bai Ni Vualiku), lies to the north of both Viti Levu and Vanua Levu the two largest islands; it is the third longest reef in the world and the only one with blue coral. Kia Island is inside this reef about 20 miles north west of Lambasa, Vanua Levu. Kia rises out of the sea like a mountain top. Breaking upward through the green jungle bush are several vertical columns of gray lava rock, the necks of an ancient volcano.
We anchored near the school off a quarter mile long white sand beach. A half dozen teachers and chiefs came out to welcome us ashore along with Male our main contact. Our people helped clean the beach of the plastic debris blown across the lagoon from Lambasa. We gifted them 8 Vessi Wood trees and helped plant the trees.
Our director Carrie and Esava from agriculture gave a talk at the school. Nearly all the crew did a home stay. With a family in their Bure they helped prepare the evening meal as part of the family and slept the night in their beds. It was the most cultural immersion the group had experienced and for many it was the highlight of the journey. Frances, from the Community Conservation Centre, joined us here.
Departing Kia Island it was a day sail inside the reef to the shallow bight at Navidamu. We had to anchor nearly a mile off shore with only 2 fathoms under the keel. (The cool thing about a two-fathom anchorage is that weighing anchor by hand as we do it, is quick and easy.)
The Altrusa Society in Nelson had asked us to deliver 20 cases of books to the school at Navidamu. We delivered the books to a very thankful school principal. The books more than doubled the size of their library. Most of the crew went ashore to visit the school and afterward the village where they gave a sevusevu. Our next stop was Matacawalevu Island in the Yasawa group on the western side of Viti Levu. Seen from at sea the island group looks like a sunken mountain range with submerged valleys forming narrow channels and peaks rising out of the sea. It was my first time visiting these islands. The entry to the group was difficult.
We arrived before sunset. According to the chart the reefs extended a mile off shore. The charts were admittedly inaccurate to over a quarter mile and as we later learned the reef area was exaggerated . With the sun in our face and having no local knowledge of the area; it was unsafe to enter the channel into the lagoon. It was a dark, moonless night, we had to motor into a fresh headwind and tidal current all night to keep from being swept onto the reefs to leeward behind us. The windward side of the Yasawas was scattered with shoal patches and coral heads dropping off into deep water. It was either too deep to anchor or you run aground. Then the GPS lost the satellites just to make the situation more interesting. If the engine had failed, Alvei would have been lost on the reef that night. It was a long night.
The next morning, with the sun behind us it was an easy passage through the lagoon at Sawa-I-Lau to the western side of the island chain. It was a beautiful 14-mile passage down the leeward side of the islands to the anchorage on the southern shore of Matacawalevu. We anchored close south of Devolaui Island between Matacawalevu and Yaqeta Island. There was a shallow, hard-sand and coral reef between the 3 islands. From there it was a 10-minute dingy ride to Long Beach.
We delivered another load of books to the school at Vuaki and planted two gardens, one near the school in Vuaki and the other at the Flying Fish, an extended family community on the south-end of the island. The Flying Fish had hosted Carrie for a month and a half, when she first arrived in Fiji last year and was the place where the Honour Fiji Journey was first conceived.
Together with Dan Lund and some people from Global Vision International (GVI) we inspected sites for water tank installations. Our last day there GVI supplied us with a 5200-litre water tank. We rolled it up the hill through the bush to its concrete pad in the small community. It will provide fresh water to the families there.
It was another day sail to the south end of Naviti Island and into Soso Bay. There we met with Villi a builder of eco-lodges. There was also an excursion to see the Manta Rays at nearby Drawaqa Island.
After 6-weeks in the bush we have arrived in Lautoka and the end of our first season working with Honour Fiji Journey. It was a lot of fun, but a financial disaster. Out of the 9 to 12 crew/volunteers, only 2 were paying. I sponsored the rest. All of the crew have departed here and I am nearly broke.
I am scrounging for crew for the passage to Vanuatu. If you know anyone, send them by.
Almost everyone bemoans Suva, but I kinda like it there. It is the best place to provision between Auckland and Brisbane. The yacht club is a friendly and relaxed meeting place, with fresh water showers, a fuel dock, a dingy dock and a well stocked bar. The yacht club manager, a charming and spirited Indian woman named Romina, has become a helpful friend.
The main market place in the centre of town is a hive of activity; but beware of the pickpockets around the market and on the sidewalks across the main street. Taxi fare is reasonable and most of the drivers are the salt of the earth. If you want to know what is happening around Fiji, just ask your driver. If you tip him an extra dollar, you get to see a smile that is worth a lot more than a dollar.
Carrie arrived 3 days before the beginning of our education project Honour Fiji Journey, (HFJ). Her arrival generated a series of meetings with the Econesian Society people at University of the South Pacific and a variety of local chiefs and district supervisors. Putting HFJ back together took a bit more time than we thought.
Nina returned after marrying her fiancŽ and sending him back to Denmark. Kanuk stayed to be the ships doctor. Charlotte stayed on to be our first mate. I gave Lou a free passage in exchange for being full time cook. PNG Pete was back for his 5th year in a row sailing with us. A young American photographer named Cambria joined us to photo-document the project.
From the academic side, this was a project about educating Fijian youth; however we had no Fijian youth on board to educate. So, I offered to sponsor four of them. Alex and Mere from the Econesian Society, Esava from Agriculture and Arthur from Sports and Youth joined the crew, together with Charlotte, Pete, Lou, Cami, Kanuk, Nina, Carrie and myself we were 12 on the crew.
We had a 27-hour passage to Makogai Is. Some 70 miles NNW of Suva. We anchored off the quarantine station there then went ashore to arrange for delivery of about 100 baby Giant Clams. That afternoon we went back with 5 of our 20-litre buckets to pick up the clams. Early the next morning we started to weigh anchor before breakfast. It was 35 miles to the anchorage at Moon Reef. Not having been there before I wanted to be able to anchor before dark. With a 12-fathom anchorage it took a half hour to get the anchor to the surface.
As we were hauling the 250-kilo anchor to the cathead, the cating tackle parted, sending pile of line and a large steel block crashing down on the deck. I said, 'Okay guys, let's get a coil of 16-mil line off the tank tops and reeve off a new tackle.' Looking around at my crew I saw a lot of blank stares. The crew seemed to have gone Zombie on me. With the new people it is understandable, they don't know the language yet; but the crew who sailed north seemed to have forgotten what they learned.
I gave specific jobs to Nina, Kanuk, Lou and Charlotte. It took 45 minutes to get a new tackle rove off and cat the anchor. All the while I had to run back and forth between the fore deck and the helm to keep Alvei from being blown on to the reef to leeward of us. With a fresh sou-easter, it was a beam reach across he top of the Ovalau Reef. Mid afternoon I got a call from Isoa saying we should anchor off Natalei Village. They sent a banana boat out to pilot us in. We anchored in 4 fathoms, sand and mud, a couple hundred metres off the beach.
Everyone but me went ashore for a welcoming sevusevu (kava ceremony). [When you leave a ship without crew it is called a 'Dead Ship'. This is not a good thing to do.] I appointed PNG Pete our social Captain; it was his duty to go ashore for these events. He had been down with a cold, or maybe the flu, for about a week. The Kava ceremony was not good for him. After coming back aboard he got chills and the shakes. The girls covered him up and put him to bed. Kanuk checked on him and said, 'He's just tired and dehydrated.' Be that as it may, he left for Australia early the next morning. He later wrote to tell us he had been 5 days in hospital, but was coming right. He said he would be back with us again next year.
On our first full day in port half the clams were taken to a nearby reef off shore from Natalei village. The next day the rest of the clams were taken to Moon Reef some five miles out in the lagoon. Moon Reef, by the way, forms a perfect circle a nautical mile in diameter. It was the site of an ancient village and is now the home of a resident pod of spinner dolphins.
Local legend tells us that when you see a light on the reef at night it is to guide the spirit of someone who is about to die. Saturday evening we hosted 30 Fijians, including 6 local chiefs, for a traditional Kava ceremony and dinner. They brought along a string band to liven the event. These guys had a lead singer and two back up vocalists. They were pretty good.
Some of the crew volunteered their time in the local schools and our ship nurse, Kanuk, joined the region's nurse for a day of home visitations. For the rest of the week HFJ learned to plant mangrove trees. They also planted Vesi trees on the school grounds. Before leaving Suva we had purchased 50 Vessi tree saplings.
The Vesi wood is an economically important and culturaly significant wood in Fiji. It is a strong and stable boat building wood, it was used to build their traditional sailing vessels, the Drua. The wood is mainly found in the Lau Island group. It is also used to make the all-important kava bowls. We planted Vesi trees at every island stop as an extension of friendship. We were 'blessed' with gifts of fruit and veggies from village gardens. They also built billy-billys, bamboo rafts, as a special treat for the volunteers. They took us on a river tour down to the sea. We gave our Lavo feast on shore as thank you for their hospitality.
It was a 110-mile passage from Moon Reef to the anchorage at the north end of Taveuni. As we neared Somo Somo Straits with the tidal current against us it became evident we would not be able to anchor before dark. So we sailed a few miles to the west to heave to and wait for a fair tide in the morning. The wind died away after sunset, we drifted, becalmed under a clear starry sky and full moon with whales and dolphins all around. On deck we could hear them blow before taking a breath. Below deck you could hear them talking with squeaking chirps and clicks. It was an enchanting night.
Starting the engine before dawn, we motored through the straits on the northbound tide and found an anchorage that morning at the north tip of Taveuni. Our community partner in Taveuni is Island Spirit Eco-tours, headed by a very affable young red-headed woman named, Kirsty Barnby from the UK.
The first full day in the water the group learned coral reef gardening and used their new-found skill in an area of reef that had been damaged by cyclone Thomas two years ago. Coral gardening utilizes live but broken coral, replanting it to re-secure the foundation. It can be a bit challenging holding ones breath long enough, it may take 10 tries, to find a fitting notch where the coral can reattach itself.
The next day, the volunteer crew, did a snorkel dive and inspected a Marine Protected Area (MPA) comparing it to the nearby fishing zone. It is 14 years old, the oldest MPA in Fiji. Thus there was quite a dramatic difference between the MPA and the fish zone.
The following two days were used learning to build fish houses to restore the fish population to the fishing zone. The fish are smart and stay within the MPA. However, in order for the MPA to be sustainable to the community, they need to be able to harvest some of the abundance of fish. Making fish houses is like making glorified sand castles. Each person's was unique, decorated with colorful shells. We all got a bit competitive, trying to out-dazzle each other.
The 5th day in the water our people removed over 100 Crown of Thorns starfish from the reef. A couple of the them had coral cuts on their feet, and a few more were stung by the starfish; but all in all, casualties were light. At the request of the chief, our Econesian students became instructors teaching 10 people from the village how to plant mangrove trees where they had been removed to build a road. (The road washed away because the mangrove trees were not there to protect it.) Sunday many of the crew visited Arthur's family and went to see the waterfall there. The guys had fun leaping off the ledge into cool water. The waterfall was used in one of the Blue Lagoon films.
Alex, Lou and Nina left us here. Ben, an Israeli Navy patrol boat captain, joined us here. With reinforced Trade Winds of 20 to 25 knots forecast for the coming week it was a quick passage over the top of Vanua Levu to Kia Island. We anchored just before sunset the following day.
Fiji's Great Sea Reef, (Bai Ni Vualiku), lies to the north of both Viti Levu and Vanua Levu the two largest islands; it is the third longest reef in the world and the only one with blue coral. Kia Island is inside this reef about 20 miles north west of Lambasa, Vanua Levu. Kia rises out of the sea like a mountain top. Breaking upward through the green jungle bush are several vertical columns of gray lava rock, the necks of an ancient volcano.
We anchored near the school off a quarter mile long white sand beach. A half dozen teachers and chiefs came out to welcome us ashore along with Male our main contact. Our people helped clean the beach of the plastic debris blown across the lagoon from Lambasa. We gifted them 8 Vessi Wood trees and helped plant the trees.
Our director Carrie and Esava from agriculture gave a talk at the school. Nearly all the crew did a home stay. With a family in their Bure they helped prepare the evening meal as part of the family and slept the night in their beds. It was the most cultural immersion the group had experienced and for many it was the highlight of the journey. Frances, from the Community Conservation Centre, joined us here.
Departing Kia Island it was a day sail inside the reef to the shallow bight at Navidamu. We had to anchor nearly a mile off shore with only 2 fathoms under the keel. (The cool thing about a two-fathom anchorage is that weighing anchor by hand as we do it, is quick and easy.)
The Altrusa Society in Nelson had asked us to deliver 20 cases of books to the school at Navidamu. We delivered the books to a very thankful school principal. The books more than doubled the size of their library. Most of the crew went ashore to visit the school and afterward the village where they gave a sevusevu. Our next stop was Matacawalevu Island in the Yasawa group on the western side of Viti Levu. Seen from at sea the island group looks like a sunken mountain range with submerged valleys forming narrow channels and peaks rising out of the sea. It was my first time visiting these islands. The entry to the group was difficult.
We arrived before sunset. According to the chart the reefs extended a mile off shore. The charts were admittedly inaccurate to over a quarter mile and as we later learned the reef area was exaggerated . With the sun in our face and having no local knowledge of the area; it was unsafe to enter the channel into the lagoon. It was a dark, moonless night, we had to motor into a fresh headwind and tidal current all night to keep from being swept onto the reefs to leeward behind us. The windward side of the Yasawas was scattered with shoal patches and coral heads dropping off into deep water. It was either too deep to anchor or you run aground. Then the GPS lost the satellites just to make the situation more interesting. If the engine had failed, Alvei would have been lost on the reef that night. It was a long night.
The next morning, with the sun behind us it was an easy passage through the lagoon at Sawa-I-Lau to the western side of the island chain. It was a beautiful 14-mile passage down the leeward side of the islands to the anchorage on the southern shore of Matacawalevu. We anchored close south of Devolaui Island between Matacawalevu and Yaqeta Island. There was a shallow, hard-sand and coral reef between the 3 islands. From there it was a 10-minute dingy ride to Long Beach.
We delivered another load of books to the school at Vuaki and planted two gardens, one near the school in Vuaki and the other at the Flying Fish, an extended family community on the south-end of the island. The Flying Fish had hosted Carrie for a month and a half, when she first arrived in Fiji last year and was the place where the Honour Fiji Journey was first conceived.
Together with Dan Lund and some people from Global Vision International (GVI) we inspected sites for water tank installations. Our last day there GVI supplied us with a 5200-litre water tank. We rolled it up the hill through the bush to its concrete pad in the small community. It will provide fresh water to the families there.
It was another day sail to the south end of Naviti Island and into Soso Bay. There we met with Villi a builder of eco-lodges. There was also an excursion to see the Manta Rays at nearby Drawaqa Island.
After 6-weeks in the bush we have arrived in Lautoka and the end of our first season working with Honour Fiji Journey. It was a lot of fun, but a financial disaster. Out of the 9 to 12 crew/volunteers, only 2 were paying. I sponsored the rest. All of the crew have departed here and I am nearly broke.
I am scrounging for crew for the passage to Vanuatu. If you know anyone, send them by.