The wind forecast was brisk, 18-25knots. That will be a sleigh ride, mainly downwind. We delayed departure from morning to noon. Goal was to arrive early morning Tuesday, with a 3 night passage.
Leaving Tonga, we had a comfortable apparent wind-angle of 120 degrees, which keeps 2 white sails on one side in 20kn true wind. For the night we added a second reef and still were flying. The wind shifted a tad more north of east and pushed us a bit too far south with this sailplan. Next day we set the whisker pole for running wing-on-wing. The wind increased further, but wind and most waves were from behind, except for the occasional out of the blue wave throwing a bit of water in the cockpit.
The most eastern islands and reefs of Fiji, the 'Lau' group of islands, were coming up and we wanted to be able to see the reefs while navigating in the deep water. Charts are reasonable, plus satellite imagery, helps to be confident enough to do it at night. We still wanted to wait for daylight and sailed all night with the double reefed main alone.
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The Lau group does not have a port of entry, and while it is tempting to stop here before having cleared in, the fines are high. We do want to see some of it and that means trying to find a couple of no-wind days to motor ~24h against the prevailing winds.
Still traveling too fast, it was clear, we can't slow down the boat any further without rolling excessively. By 01:00 am we came up to the reef entrance 5 nm SW of Savusavu. "Point Passage" is 1nm wide, not a problem at all, but one still stares into the night and sees nothing...
A bit further into Savusavu bay we were able to get in the wind-shadow of the hills, took down the main, and drifted, waiting for daylight. With plenty of time on hand, the mainsail cover was put on, and the inside of the boat cleaned up from passage-mode to anchor-mode.
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We had learned from friends already there, the guys allocating the moorings in Savusavu creek are up bright and early. At 07:30am we were the third boat calling "Coprashed Marina" for a mooring ball. First up in Savusavu is the Waitui marina, a bit more low key and they also rent out mooring balls:
A bit further is Coprashed Marina, which does have a decent restaurant, a 'yacht club' (=bar), and a breakfast / coffee shop.
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With 6 boats in total arriving that morning, it took us past lunch to get it all worked out. It all was super friendly and helpful, we asked a lot of questions in case we want to stay in Fiji for longer, and all was answered in good spirits. Later one has to go to several offices and pay, some cheap taxi rides are involved too.
Re-united with several friend-boats, plus Hefeweizen available at the yacht club, Dirk had a liquid dinner and some headache next day.
