We followed 'Corvidae' out the 'South Save-A-Tack' Pass and headed toward the island of Makogai which should be an easy four hour sail. It's meant to be an interesting island full of history. It holds the ruins of the old Leper colony. At one time, thousands of victims of leprosy were sent here. They lived in segregated colonies, one for ethnic Fijians and one for Indo-Fijians. Thank goodness leprosy has been wiped out. Now just a few families live on the island and are employed by Fiji fisheries in the cultivation and re-introduction of giant clams. I think they also raise and release turtles. We wanted to go there but now that we are out from behind Namena Island we are noticing the wind is a nice 10-15 knots from the east-southeast. We contemplate bypassing Makogai in favor of the long overnight trip to Kadavu and the Great Astrolabe Reef, about 120 miles away. I recheck the grib files and my recent weather notes. A huge (1040!) high pressure system is almost upon Fiji and once that big guy kicks in the wind and seas will be too rough to go south for some time. We'll most likely get stuck in Makogai for a week or more. Even then we won't be able to sail south and will probably end up missing Kandavu altogether... I'm happy to say this is when our 20 years of experience kicks in and we make the decision to go south now. We call 'Corvidae' on the radio and say goodbye and off we go. We sail down the east coast of Makogai and have to motor to the east for a few hours to get around the HUGE reef that connects to it and surrounds the island of Wakaya. We can't believe how big this reef is...Don says if I wasn't here he would have sunk 'Buena Vista' ages ago :). Once we get past that reef we are under sail again, making a slow 4-1/2 - 5 knots but still moving along steadily on flat seas. That's the best part of doing a passage before the next big winds...the sea state is flat and 'Buena Vista' can ghost along slowly without needing a huge amount of wind. The forecast says this light south-easterly will veer to a southerly late tonight so we shall see how far south we get before we have to sail more to the south-west (the direction we need to go anyway). The sun goes down and we are happy to be well on our way toward the Great Astrolabe Reef. Yippee! We have soup and toast for dinner and settle in to our watch schedule. The stars are amazing tonight. At one point I looked straight up and was surprised to see a big white cloud overhead. Looking more closely I realized that it is the Milky Way! Billions of stars out there - and - we are sailing directly at the Southern Cross that is low in the sky in front of us. Looking off to the west, you can see a very large hazy blob of light on the horizon...the lights of Suva about 25 miles away. Why do humans need so many lights? Even in the middle of the night? In the city, it's so easy to forget that stars even exist. I pass the next few hours looking at the stars through the binoculars, watching the sparkly white phosphorescence move off the bow wave and drift by as we cruise along, just amazing. Around 2am, instead of veering to the south as we thought, the wind just dies. We roll up the headsail, disable the hydrovane and crank up the engine. The autopilot refuses to operate (you never know lately if it will or not) and we take turns hand steering now to the southwest. At my favorite time of day, NOT!, 4am, Don wakes me up and says we've got a ship off to our port side, coming up from the south. I turn on the radar and the computer. We are about 10 miles north-east of the North Astrolabe Reef and this ship is cutting close by the Reef inbound for Suva. I can see on the radar that he is also about ten miles away and coming right at us. I look at the AIS on the computer but he is not showing up there. If the ship was sending out an AIS signal (which I thought all big ships were supposed to by law) I would see the ship's name, their course and speed as compared to mine, and would be able to easily tell if we were on a collision course. Well, they weren't there on my AIS screen so we could only tell how far away they were by looking at the radar. I got on the VHF radio, identified myself as Sailing Vessel Buena Vista and my position (latitude and longitude) and said I'm hailing the Ship that is inbound Suva and their approximate position. They are now eight miles away. I call again, then again. Now we are starting to feel panic. I have no idea if they can see us or not, maybe no one is even at the helm or by their radio. We light up 'Buena Vista', turning on all available lights up on deck. I'm thinking of grabbing a flare. Don pulls out our big spotlight, untangles the cord and plugs it into the 12V socket in the cockpit. I call them on the radio once more, he is now at about four miles and closing too quickly. Finally there is a radio call and while he's got our boat name wrong, I answer immediately (trying to keep my voice strong and clear and calm) and give him our new position. He confirms that he does in fact see us and I wonder if maybe they did all along. Maybe the person at the helm had to go and wake someone else up before contacting us? We were very relieved when radar showed that they were turning a bit to starboard and would be passing behind us. Jerks!! I think we did everything right but I don't understand why they would have waited so long to contact us. Even as they were well past us and on their way to Suva, they called us again and asked for our newest position and course and speed. Maybe once they actually make contact with another vessel they are required to fill out a report which they don't really want to do. Why does this seem to only happen at 4am?? Anyway, we survived but will list that near the top of our list of 'Oh-Shit' moments during the past five years of cruising.