With the furler fixed, the sniffels gone, we are heading to Suva, the capital and biggest city of Fiji, mainly for shopping some technical stuff.
To split the distance into daytrips, we stopped in Makogai, as we did many times before, a logical stop 55nm from Savusavu. From there to Suva it is 75nm which is a bit too much for a day and to arrive at daylight.
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| The green track is the latest! |
There are possible stops, we have stopped at Leleuvia before a few times. We had always passed on stopping in Levuka, on the island Ovalau. Levuka is the old capital of Fiji, should be interesting. But Levuka is on the windward side of Ovalau, and the fringing reef barely protects the anchorage. In typical tradewind conditions the anchorage gets uncomfortable quickly, we were told. Then there is a fish-canning factory which can produce some good stink. Plus then the island captures the clouds and it rains a lot.
So why stop at all? Supposedly the architecture is different from the rest of Fiji.
We made the decision to stop in Levuka once we had left Makogai. There was no wind, only a good size, long spaced swell. With no wind, there were also only few clouds over Ovalau.
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| Ovalau on a nice day |
Entrance thru the reef is marked with a pair of buoys and the "Church of the Sacred Heart" serves as the lower part of the leading mark with the triangle on the bell tower. Due to overgrowth we never saw the inverted triangle, the upper mark, in the hills. It didn't matter, charts are good, weather was perfect.
Just one other boat was anchored here. The tuna canning factory is south of the main pier, to which we came by dinghy to check in. A small anchoring fee has to be paid here. The town is quaint, very quiet.
Fronts street ("Beach Street") buildings could serve in a wild-west movie, minus the palm trees.
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 | | Many buildings have rain shutters, |
|  | | to keep up some ventilation when it rains |
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 | | 199 steps to Mission Hill |
|  | | Little bridges connect to the houses |
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 | | Another church |
|  | | "German" cemetery |
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 | | no, not another church... |
|  | | Tuna canning factory in the distance |
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The wind was supposed to pick up next morning, so we raised a sail and headed to Suva next.
