Saturday 25 June 2011

Tonga to Fiji July 16 th - 21nd (520 nautical miles)


Once again we are on the move.  How we all love the little offshore adventures!

We left Tonga with good weather, winds a little lighter than we’d like but you can’t complain with blue skies overhead.

A bit of a scare leaving the islands of Tonga, we passed very close to an unmarked reef.  Luckily Chris was fully alert on watch and spotted the first line of coral heads.  He yelled down and we steered clear to deeper waters.  There was a moment of panic while we checked charts and all notes and found no reference to these reefs.  For any interested parties here is the GPS position:

Position of unmarked reef:
18 40.781’s
174 25.375’W

Once our hearts stopped pounding we had a few minutes of “what are we doing out here??” and then we made some popcorn and carried on.  We were more vigilant but what do you do at night when it is dark?  Make more popcorn!!!

We had light winds all the way to Fiji and gentle seas.  Luckily we were able to keep sailing at a steady 4 to 5 kts.  Once we passed through Oneata passage in the Lau group we found ourselves in lighter and lighter winds until we were finally motoring in flat seas.  Ahead we say dark clouds and lightening so we steered slightly north dodging the storm cells.  Luckily everything passed south of us and we didn’t even see a drop of rain.

Unfortunately the winds never picked up so we continued motoring south Viti Levu and headed for Kuvalo Pass.  We arrived at the pass in the dark and decided to stand off and wait for light. Several hours later we were hailed by an approaching boat and decided to follow them in, as it turned out they were much faster but kindly gave us waypoints. 

Our hesitation was over the lights, which on our chart showed a white light to port but in fact it is now a flashing red light.  We realised our way points were just fine but it was nice to have some accurate info from the boat ahead. The passage  was straightforward and well marked.  We motored up the clearly marked ships channel to Lautoka and we arrived just in time for an early morning check in with customs, immigration etc.

 Fiji looks beautiful and we already regret having so few days to explore these islands. 

1 comment:

  1. can't send email to Telaurus address, can you authorize my email adresse? Libby

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