Having got the nod from local Dr. that my stitched up finger was stable, we set out eastward from Savusavu towards Viani Bay and Taveuni. Our plan was to leapfrog East on favorable weather windows to get out to the more remote Lau Island group along the eastern edge of the Fiji archipelago. However, the prevailing SE trade winds have been blowing strong at 20-25 kts and we only saw favorable winds for about a day at a time each time a front rolls by; which seemed to be every 7-10 days. With that in mind our strategy was to motorsail up to Viani Bay and spend time around Teveuni Island waiting for another window to hop over to the Lau islands.

In Viani Bay the water was deep and we had more wind than I expected so we picked up a mooring from a local guy named Jack Fischer. Jack is a Samoan who has been in this area so long the Fischer House was actually noted on my electronic charts. The first afternoon we enjoyed a pleasant visit with Jack who turned out to be a wealth of local information both technical and gossip. In particular, Jack pointed us to some good snorkeling spots on Rainbow Reef in the outer reef system which is ranked among the top 10 dive areas in the world. There were lotsa dive boats out there to prove it too.

Although I couldn't dive because of my finger, I took Wendy to the outer reef the next morning to snorkel. She loved it, but by midday the wind and waves were getting up so I called her back into the dinghy and we carefully motored the 2 miles back to the boat in Viani bay. It must have got even rougher on the reef because the next morning there was a capsized dive boat washed up in Viani Bay. Jack told us everyone from the capsized boat climbed up on the reef and were rescued by another dive boat.