Week 103: Denerau to Blue Lagoon (84nm)

Having finally physically recovered from the ordeals of our recent passage, we headed out to the Fijian islands in search of some peace to restore our mental wellbeing, whilst also managing the growing pressures of where could finish our adventure in the current world of COVID travel restrictions.

Captain’s log

Friday 28th August: The morning was spent coordinating the various teams of workers that were helping with the gelcoat and joinery, primarily making sure they stayed focussed on the repairs that actually mattered as they had a tendency to drift into other areas. With most of it finished by lunchtime, we had the opportunity to leave the boat and go watch a couple of rugby games where the local Nadi team were up against the Namosi league leaders. The stadium was packed (even for the preceding Veterans game in which our taxi driver friend Opeti was playing) but the noise went up a level for the main event and helped the local underdog complete an exciting victory. We finished the day sharing some drinks with Aaron and Nat of Catherine Estelle, who had finally completed their quarantine and were desperate for shore side comforts after 40 days at sea (that was capped off with an extremely intensive customs inspection).

Saturday 29th August: With the work on the boat either complete or as done as it needed to be, we decided we wanted to leave the marina and head over to nearby Musket Cove, which is a cruising Mecca of the South Pacific. The carpenter was a bit lax in his timings (and we may also have been distracted by a wonderful Fijian veggie brunch), which meant we ended up manually refuelling via jerry cans to save some time, but it was good exercise and with the last fresh veggies stored below we cast off our lines. With the wind on the nose and the sun sinking fast, we ended up driving the whole two and half hours, but were immediately welcomed by Influencer, Amari and Amazing Grace as we picked up a nearby buoy, and then treated to a lovely chicken curry and movie night aboard Influencer.

Sunday 30th August: There was a fancy brunch happening in Musket Cove, but we’d been eating out too much and so decided to catch up on a bit of life admin in the morning instead. By the time we dinghied into the marina, the brunch was winding down but the bar was filling up and so we caught up with various cruisers and locals that had all converged on Musket Cove for the day. The most notable introduction was to Luke and Colly off Lucid who are another young cruising couple that we had been told to look out for by numerous boats in French Polynesia – finally our paths had crossed. They were just going through the sales process on their boat and so had lots of good tips to share with us and we made plans to reconvene the following day. 

Monday 31st August: We received the go ahead to apply for our Australian exemption, so the majority of the day was spent preparing all manner of paperwork and writing our supporting letter that detailed the challenges that we would face if we weren’t able to get to Australia for cyclone season. We also started up a number of conversations with brokers in Australia to see what stage we would need to start working hard on selling the boat, and the good news was that they were all excited to be involved with selling an Elan as apparently the boat has a very good reputation in Australia. After such a hectic day, we were grateful for an invite to a BBQ with Luke and Colly, where we also met Andrew and Julie of Hullaballo (another English couple with links to my home town of Guildford!).

Tuesday 1st September: We sat down with a local broker called Anna in the morning to start assessing our plan B option of selling the boat in Fiji if we were rejected by Australia – she was very nice and clearly had a love of cruising boats that gave us a lot of confidence in the positive view she had on the outlook if we ended up listing the boat here. We then spent the rest of the day working through other research on the boat sale process and were feeling pretty brain dead by the late afternoon. Luckily, that was the moment our friends on Amari returned to Musket Cove, and we had a rejuvenating evening learning their dice game on the beach, before returning to Serenity where we hosted them for a low key curry. 

Wednesday 2nd September: We had done all we could now on the Australian application and broker preparation – it was time to go see some of the famous Fijian islands whilst we were waiting for various parties to get back to us. There wasn’t much wind, but we were running low on water and took the opportunity to make a load whilst we drove the 40nm north to a spot near the Manta Ray resort. We arrived in time to find a space alongside Influencer, Amazing Grace and Maxillan and although the wind was too much to check out the snorkelling we were hosted for a fun dinner with the others by Nick and Thez on Max.

Thursday 3rd September: Although the wind didn’t fill in overnight any more than than the forecast predicted, the deep anchorage and side swell meant it started to feel precarious and we decided to leave at first light in search of a more protected spot. By the time we found one at nearby Somosomo, the other boats had all reached the same conclusion and welcomed our reports of flat water and good holding. We split up between two parts of the bay and we ended up having a fun evening of liars dice with Matt and Sydney on Influencer, as we also made plans to explore the island the next day. 

Friday 4th September: Went with Matt and Syd to try to find a submerged WW2 plane wreck for snorkelling on the other side of the island – got there eventually after some serious bushwacking and then organised a search grid in the poor vis which eventually revealed a propellor but nothing more. We later learnt that this was all that now remained so we’d done the best we could, and were duly rewarded by a fun brunch on Amazing Grace when we returned. Had a quiet afternoon working through some boat beautification projects seeing as there was likely going to be some photos taken for the sale in the near future, and then had an early night in this wonderfully protected anchorage. 

Saturday 5th September: With the group keen to move onto new pastures, we then headed up to the Blue Lagoon anchorage, which during normal times is one of the most popular spots in the Yasawas. Of course, these are not those times and so the arrival of four yachts trebled the number in the bay, but thankfully the nearby Boathouse resort decided this was a sufficient number to open. They advertise themselves as a dedicated rugby sports bar, but the internet signal made watching the streamed games impossible and we contented ourselves with a nice meal out on the terrace instead, before finding some other international rugby that we streamed ourselves on Influencer’s onboard widescreen tv that evening.  

Story of the week: So close and yet so far

Ever since the COVID lockdowns started, a recurring (and mostly depressing) topic of discussion between cruisers in the South Pacific has been what to do about cyclone season. Hundreds of boats typically time their journeys to arrive in Australia or New Zealand by November, to remove the risk of having to deal with these yacht destroying events / maintain their insurance coverage, and our choice of Australia was in our plans from the very beginning. As the prohibitions on foreign nationals sailing to either of these countries were repeatedly extended, many cruisers started forming other plans such as sailing to Hawaii or staying in French Polynesia for another year where there are some safer cruising grounds.

We couldn’t afford to continue sailing for another season, couldn’t face the challenging passage to Hawaii, and so maintained an optimistic outlook that eventually our Antipodean cousins would see sense / find their humanity and let yachts come to their shores with whatever COVID restrictions they deemed necessary. When Fiji partially opened its borders to sailors, we welcomed it as evidence that suggested others would follow in their wake. And, seeing as Fiji was no worse than French Polynesia for people needing to leave their boats during cyclone season plus that much closer to Australia, it was an easy decision to make the two week passage here. The fact that there is now a major COVID outbreak in French Polynesia whilst Fiji remains COVID free seemed to further justify our decision of this as the most likely location from which we could be accepted into Australia.

Unfortunately, Australia had a major outbreak of its own (as well as New Zealand to a lesser extent) and the political will to reopen any part of its borders quickly dissolved. It was particularly frustrating as the outbreak was essentially limited to the state of Victoria, whereas New South Wales didn’t have a problem and state officials there were signalling that they would be willing to welcome yachts in the port of Bundaberg – sounds like there should be an easy compromise solution right? The problem was that it was the federal Border Force that had the final say, and they weren’t showing any willingness to understand the cyclone challenge facing stranded yachts in the Pacific Islands.

The Ocean Cruising Club (OCC, which we are a member of) has taken a lead role in trying to find an acceptable solution with help from an Australian cruiser that runs the Down Under Dash rally to Bundaberg. After a lot of back and forth, they advised us that our best approach was to submit an application to the Australian Border Force, asking for an exemption on humanitarian grounds. So this week we spent a good amount of time pulling together all the necessary paperwork, including a supporting letter that tried to set out how our situation was not one we found ourselves in by choice (i.e. we left Panama before the global pandemic was declared) and that cyclone season was a genuine source of danger and not us trying to game the travel restrictions.

At this stage, it felt like even money on whether the exception would be granted, which is the lowest chance we’d given ourselves since we first considered this problem. For this reason, we finally had to properly consider our Plan B for the first time, and the serendipity of bumping into a locally based broker in Musket Cove was certainly something we couldn’t dismiss. The downside is that we are now having conversations about selling Serenity a couple of months earlier than we had hoped, and that has started to signal the beginning of the end in a very visceral way. Finishing in Fiji will mean a lot of things – some of them important (getting insurance for cyclone season if she doesn’t sell before then will be hard), some of them not (we won’t reach our 20,000nm target) and some of them in between (she will probably sell for a bit less and our flight home will be more difficult). The key at this stage has been to keep our options open and ensure we finish this voyage in the most positive way that the situation allows.

Parting thoughts

Having worked so hard to get the blog as caught up as possible in French Polynesia, the more observant of you have noticed that we have definitely fallen off the pace in Fiji, even accounting for the time we lost dealing with my leg injury. The truth was that it took us a long time to rebuild our energy after all the stress of that experience, and then even more time to be able to face reliving the experience in the course of writing that post.

Thank you all for your patience, the gentle nudges to resume our efforts, and all the messages of support we received on the back of the last post. We feel very lucky to have grown our wonderful shore-based network of family and friends to now also include the various global cruising companions we’ve encountered over the last few years, and all your words have been instrumental in helping us restore our even keel. We love you all!