At ten in the morning we let go the dock lines and motored out into Nadi bay. Our objective was to reach the northwest corner of Waya island where the Octopus resort is on Likuliku beach. We went from motoring in four knots of wind to sailing in 18 knots quite fast! The squalls passed over us, the sun came back out, we were delighted by a visit from from some very fast moving dolphins, and we discovered a reef that WAS NOT on our navionics chartplotter, but WAS on the iPad navionics chart! Go figure! Captain spotted it with his trusty eyeball navigation system long before it was a danger, but it was one more sobering fact that these waters should NOT be traversed at night or even in bad light, and that we cannot trust the charts! As a side note here, the paper chart does say,”less water reported 2006” in the very place we discovered the unmarked reef. Oh, and we DID zoom in on the chartplotter to the 500 foot scale, and it never appeared! We went around it and came safely into the bay and had the hook set at 15:30. Time enough to make sure the boat was secure in the willi waws that come screaming over the hill into the bay. Manihi came in beside us, and there were two other catamarans also at anchor here. We kayaked ashore, walked the beach, enjoyed a maitai happy hour drink as we watched the “school boats” bring the children home for the weekend. After the “bus driver” dropped off the kids, he took the boat out and secured it on a mooring, then came into the beach on a kayak. Very cool! After dark we paddled back to our Sweet Dream and enjoyed another round of our Independence Day goodies before turning in to Rock and roll all night in the relentless surf.
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