Yesterday was a very long day of sailing. We were up at 6 to check
the weather and underway with a “roll and go” by 7 am. We motored out of
Nalawaki Bay, around the corner of Koramosoli point and set sail. The
wind was in the teens, expected to fade as we headed west so we set sail
since it could be our last chance to sail on this trip. We sailed for an
hour and a half, then the wind died (as predicted), so we turned the
engine back on and motor sailed. That phase lasted for about an hour
then the wind came back and the wind and waves built. Eventually we had
20 knots right on the nose and the wind waves building to a couple of
feet. Motoring in those conditions is very slow, so we have to use the
sails to add power to push through the waves, and we have to have the
sails at the correct angle to the wind to provide that power. We end up
going about 4-5 knots through the water, but needing to tack. Our course
looks like a zig-zag and the speed toward our destination went down. Our
course was complicated by the myriad reefs and rocks, so we couldn’t
just find a course with a good angle to the wind and hold it for a long
time, like we could in the open ocean. With the wind and waves our
projected arrival started slipping out from 4 to 5 to 6 pm. Wind and
waves continued to build until we had wind in the mid-twenties and waves
building to short period 4 footers. We took in the roller furling jib,
and wished we had set the stays’l, but by that point the boat was
beating into the waves and the bowsprit was occasionally in the water.
With the relatively inexperienced crew, we just stayed with the sailplan
we had and motorsailed and tacked, making about 4 knots. A projection
showed us arriving around 7 pm; we’d be anchoring about an hour after
dark in a new anchorage. Not a good practice. The good news was that
Saweni is a pretty wide bay with a shallow flat bottom and no hazards.
All the hazards (unmarked reefs, small islands) were on the path to the
bay, and we were able to negotiate them in the fading light.

In the end, we saw 28 knots before we started to get into the shelter of
Viti Levu and the waves subsided and the wind dropped to 20 knots. The
last obstacle was a 300 foot cargo ship anchored near the mouth of the
bay that we needed to carefully sail around. We finally got into a
position where we could forego the power of the main sail, turn head to
wind and drop it. Saweni Bay is on a river delta, so no hills for
shelter from the wind. We’d be anchoring in 20 knots of wind.

We entered the bay using radar, the AIS signals from the anchored boats
that had their AIS turned on, and two different charts. We dropped the
anchor just into the bay, well away from the anchored boats, and had to
raise and drop again when it didn’t set in the mud. We tried again
slightly closer to the anchored boats (still 500 feet away from them)
and the anchor set. We were finally anchored at 8 pm, two hours after
sunset (before moonrise) and 13 hours after we started our journey.

Mark cooked dinner while the rest of the crew cleaned up the boat and
got ready for bed. We turned in without a card game, and wondered what
the bay looked like.

When we woke up this morning, it was calm and sunny. The weather is
projected to be calm, hot and sunny for the next week. We saw a nice bay
surrounded by mangroves, six boats about 500 feet away. We were anchored
just into the mouth of the bay, and out of the shipping channel. The
plan for today is to motor over to Vuda Point Marina, clean up the boat,
walk on shore, Hollywood showers for all hands and dinner in the restaurant.

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