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Firefly - Giant Clams, Mantas and the embroidered bag is returned



we finally left the Blue Lagoon on Friday 12th having had a brilliant kitesurfing session the day before. Brent from Aurora Star and Peter from Vegas joining Paul in absolute spectacular conditions - 20 knots of wind and flat, relatively shallow azure water. We had an excellent sail down to the west coast of Naviti. The wind was stronger than expected so the planned stop at Somosomo was replaced with anchoring off the Botaira Beach Resort.

We established it was the Botaira Resort by consulting our Fiji Lonely Planet guide, a useful resource on this kind of cruise. Exactly as the guide said, the staff at the Resort were very friendly allowing us to book in for dinner and also join in the herbal walk around the grounds conducted by Sam who was extremely knowledgeable about Fijian herbal medicines. The snorkeling in the bay, a marine reserve, was some of the best we have found in Fiji. The real highlight were giant clams, recently re introduced into Fiji and measuring about half a metre across with fantastic 'fleshy lips' in an amazing variety of colours.

We have been 'buddy boating' with Brent and Sarah off Aurora Star so we had excellent company for happy hour while we watched the sun go down. By the time we got back to Firefly the wind had disappeared altogether but a gentle chop was entering the bay so we were lulled to sleep as she rolled from side to side.

The following morning we motored around to the Manta Ray pass off Drawaqa Island, just 2 miles further south and this time we saw plenty of Mantas. The current flows quite quickly through the pass and the rays swim into the plankton rich water very near the surface. Even with fins its difficult to keep up with them as the water is flowing so fast and they can move with effortless speed. There were probably ten rays in total with some of the larger ones approaching 4 metres across.

Moving off further south we planned to go down the west side of Waya to anchor off Yalobi village. The reason we were heading to Yalobi was to return an embroidered bag to a young lady called Tauoni who makes jam there. Quite a number of weeks ago, our World ARC friends Dan and Emily on Skyelarke had ended up bringing the bag back from this bay - borrowing it and not managing to hand it back as the wind came up in the night and they had to up anchor and move. Since then the bag, complete with empty jam jars has been passed around several yachts heading to the Yasawas on the hope that they would make it to Yalobi....Chez Nous, Starblazer and then Firefly.

In fact we did not quite make it to Yalobi. As you may see from our yellowbrick track we ended up anchoring on the south east side of Waya as the wind came in quite strong from the south west and we decided it would be more sheltered there and it was initially. Going ashore at the currently derelict 'Sunset Beach Resort' we met Kenny, the caretaker who is starting to rebuild it. Kenny knew Tauoni and being very happy with the Kava bundle we gave him, promised that the bag would be returned the next day! We had a brilliant fish (self caught) curry cooked by Sarah on Aurora Star and were just contemplating desert when a moderate north easterly breeze popped up from nowhere and we had to head back to Firefly rather promptly as she was now in a 'lee shore' situation and we needed to make sure our anchor was holding. We managed to stay put but it was a quite bumpy until the early hours.

Currently its Sunday 14th and we are motor sailing to Vunda Point Marina ready to check out on Monday and make the passage to Anatom, having obtained special permission to make this our first stop in Vanuatu. The reason we have chosen Anatom is that its apparently very beautiful, slightly closer to Fiji and is upwind of the island chain so from there we hope to have easy downwind sailing. In this part of Fiji we have good mobile phone coverage and the I pad, via a data SIM is connected to the internet most of the time - this is how we manage to get our approval to arrive into Anatom from the Vanuatu authorities (by e mail) and also how we are checking out the weather forecast for our passage. If we do manage to leave on Monday we hope to reach Anatom by Thursday afternoon - its about 470 nautical miles.

Paul and Susie

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