Paradise

0800 position 16-56S 179-54E. On a mooring off of Paradise Resort, Taveuni, Fiji

I spoke to Lori the other day on the sat phone and she mentioned that there had been a 6.5 magnitude earthquake the day before in the Lau Group. We were in the Laus at the time but neither felt the earthquake nor heard about it later. No tsunami was generated, but that is one of the few potentially dangerous situations we could find ourselves in cruising remote island groups. There aren't sirens out there to warn of an approaching tsunami, and we usually only communicate with the outside world once a day via radio/email. We'd have no idea that a tsunami was on the way until it hit us. Fortunately, tsunamis are low probability events.

The gems of Fiji cruising lie on its eastern and western extremities. We've just finished our visit to the Laus in the east and are now on our way to the Yasawa Islands 180 miles to the west. In between lies numerous islands, reefs, channels, and "Bligh Water", a 3000 square mile area of reefs and shoals made famous by Captain William Bligh who first passed through the area in an open row boat after the mutiny on the Bounty. To this day there are uncharted reefs in Bligh Water. It is not an area you'd want to pass through at night so we have cut the trip into segments we can complete in daylight hours. It will probably take us at least four days to make the passage between the Laus and the Yasawas.

The wind started to increase shortly after Phaedo disappeared to the south yesterday morning, and by 10AM the engine was shut off and we were sailing along at nine knots. Perfect conditions continued until we approached Taveuni and the wind died off again. We powered around the south end of the island arriving off of Paradise Resort at about 3PM. There we found our old friend Seil waiting in his kayak to help us pick up a mooring. Seil told us that it was "Fiji Night" last night at the resort so we called them on the VHF radio and made dinner reservations.

At 5PM we dinghied ashore and found a lovely small resort with about twenty guests milling around the pool and bar. We met Alan, the Australian owner, who told us that the facility had been completely destroyed by Hurricane Winston eighteen months earlier. Insurance didn't cover the damage because it was a category five hurricane, and all policies in Fiji have a clause that says they don't cover damage from cat 5 storms. Ouch. The recently rebuilt resort looked great though. Paradise was a good name for it.

We enjoyed a fun tropical tourist evening with the other resort guests including watching the staff remove the pig from the imu, Tongan singing and dancing, good local food, and a kava ceremony, all washed down with a couple of umbrella protected maitais. They even gave all the guests leis. Good thing I wore my aloha shirt.

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