Explore Sailing Voyages in Fiji 🇫🇯

Checkout was remarkably straightforward although navigating through the construction yard to get to the customs office was a challenge. After clearing the decks and stowing any loose items Brioni raised the anchor and we motor-sailed north-east out of the bay at around 1400. We've started on a roughly 4- hour watch pattern. That gives everyone 8 hours off but it's interesting getting to sleep inside a washing machine. With 20 knot winds and 2.5m waves that's what it was like! After a glitch in an electronic alarm system led to dash up top i had a brief episode of seasickness. Some fresh breeze and a dramamine took care of that and probably helped me sleep too. Day 2 Rinse and repeat. On watch 0200 to 0600. Several squalls requird sail changes accordingly. Wind still generally 20-25 knots and the sea swell 2.5m so we now had one reef in the main and 2 in the genoa. It was a relief to see the sky brightening in the east as sunrise approached. Next watch conditions had calmed down a lot to 10 - 15 knots and 1.5-2m swell. Time to fly the "Kraken", a custom asymmetric spinnaker which pulled us along at 8 knots instead of the 5 knots we had been doing. By sunset the wind had freshened again so we altered course to windward and set genoa and main sails for night running. After a hot meal, bed, to rest before another early morning watch. On approach to Minerva Reef two other sailing vessels appeared on the horizon. We flew the Fachan to get up some speed but couldn't quite get ahead so we finally dropped the anchor in 5m inside Minerva Reef.

The boat mantra is “No adventures, just good times”! But we had adventures- lots of things went wrong, but redundancies saved the trip. We had an idyllic first 3 days- good wind, easy sailing And all going as planned… Then we were presented with a slowly developing set of issues. (Kinda like cooking the proverbial frog slowly, they crept up on us). Electronics became glitchy early on day 4- no wind info or boat speed/heading most of the time, (but occasionally restored on its own). Later that day, the Main GPS went out, so had to use backup plotter and its internal GPS, comparing it with handheld GPS and backup charts. That’s not good, but we can continue. Main VHF had no position info (sourced from failed main GPS), so constantly alarming- turned main VHF off and began using backup VHF, (which unbeknownst to us wasn’t receiving…) Day 4 the autopilot failed, so hand steered for the next 5 days. Then, day 5 the Hydraulic steering got air in lines, so we bled it at sea- it was mostly functional, just spongy. This made hand steering possible, but challenging and fatiguing. At least we didn’t need to use the emergency tiller. Then on day 6, the port bowsprit stay parted (brand new refit, visually normal on inspection prior to leaving Fiji). Wow! That was fun! Lashed it out of the way, and recovered and stowed the Code 0. We were closer to NZ than Fiji, so we kept going. Other issues included: discovered some chafing on the jib furler line- replaced; a reefing block failed at gooseneck- lashed replacement block to mast and continued; deck hatch seals leaking in both the port forward and starboard aft cabins; the salon door latch broke and the ice maker quit (big bummer! LOL). We made it (mostly) happy and without any real mishaps, just more work and much slower passage than planned. This caused us to not be able to execute the “avoidance of heavy weather” plan we had. We had to use the “hang in there, we’ve got this “ plan instead. 5 meter seas and gale force winds are more “adventure” than we want! Now to get repairs and such sorted. We have to decide where to go from here. Have we reached the point of diminishing returns? Should we continue to restore, replace and upgrade? Or should we get OCEAN serviceable and sell? Begin with a newer boat and (hopefully) fewer senescent systems? For now, we’ll clear customs, get the boat settled into a berth and take a week to sort things out and re-assess. For now, we’re thankful for Providence and each other.

Transit back from Namena to Savusavu. Made great time in moderate wind and moderately bumpy seas. Sunny skies. Single reefed, making 7-8 knots in 10-13 knots of wind at 60-80 TWA. Surfed up to 11.6 in a gust of 19 knots… Sailing at its finest!