Sunday, October 9 - Wednesday, October 12, 2011

Early Sunday morning, before the crack of dawn, Michael and I got up and pulled anchor and watched as the island of Niuafo'ou grew smaller and smaller behind us. In front of us were 300 nautical miles to Fiji.
Not far from Niuafo'ou Island, we noticed that there was quite a swell coming from the south. At anchor, we were on the northwestern side, so we were basically in the lee of the island, protected from swell and the predominant trade winds that come from the east/southeast.

The farther we got away from the island, the brisker the winds became. We were surprised, because our weather information was different from what we were experiencing. We were happy to have the wind, but the seas were confused with the swell and wind driven waves that were hitting each other from different directions. As the hours passed, the wind settled in to a nice breeze of about 6-8 knots and the swell lessened, so we sailed along pleasantly for the next 36 hours.

Late on Monday afternoon, we noticed some menacing clouds behind us and realized that there were squalls on our heels. We checked our radar and it showed that they were heading for us! We battened down hatches and prepared for the rain and changing winds that squalls bring along. Usually, they are relatively short lived and pass quickly. Well, these ones didn't. In fact, they turned from squalls into a storm. The gentle breeze turned into a 25-30 knot wind and whipped up the seas in no time. This was now a problem for us because we were within 50 miles of the Nanuku Pass, which is a safe, reef-less passage from the Pacific into the Koro Sea of Fiji.
Of course, we had no idea how long this storm was going to last. We had reduced our sails to slow down, but still we were moving too fast and as a result we were in danger of arriving at the pass entrance during the night and even though the pass is very wide, we try never to arrive anywhere at night!

We turned from west to north hoping to just hang around in the area, but we soon saw by our speed, that we would get too far from the pass in even a few hours, so we had to do something different. Michael suggested that we turn Gromit about 180 degrees, retrace our route for a while and at the same time, stay at least roughly at the same angle to the pass. As we did this, by luck and good fortune, we found a new way to 'heave to' -- this is the process of setting up the sails and rudder so that forward movement of the boat is minimized. We remained hove-to throughout the night and in the morning, the winds lessened and we turned Gromit back 180 degrees and set our course for the pass.

Again we had wonderful conditions during the day and made good progress. However, around 1 am, Wednesday morning, our wind completely died, so we started the engine and motored the last 12 hours.
As we were approached the town of Suvasuva, we called the Harbour Master on our VHF radio, but got no reply as we were still 4 or 5 hours away. When we radioed again an hour later, to our surprise and great pleasure ,we heard the voice of our dear friend, David, on s/v Rhythm, a Canadian catamaran with David, Peggy and teenagers, Olivia and Joey aboard. Zoe, Maia and Liam were thrilled - - yahoo, Rhythm is in Savusavu!!!!!!

David had heard us hailing and explained that there is no Harbour Master and that the marinas take care of incoming vessels. David gave us instructions on how to get into the anchorage and he let the people at the Copra Shed Marina know that we were on our way.

Upon arrival, around 1 pm, we were led to a mooring ball by one of the marina staff. The marina also arranged for the quarantine officer, customs and immigration and the health officer to come to the boat to get us checked in. By about 5 that afternoon, all formalities were finished and we were free to go ashore.

David and family aboard Rhythm, who were living ashore for a week in a house they'd rented, invited us for dinner that very evening, so after our showers at the marina, we jumped into a taxi and spent a wonderful evening getting caught up on all our adventures since we had said good-bye more than a month before in Pago Pago, American Samoa.

We lost track of time and when I finally asked what time it was, I couldn't believe that it was nearly midnight! We couldn't get a taxi that late, so the very kind owner of the house lent David his truck to drive us back into town. We were all pretty tired and had a great sleep, becalmed and securely moored!