Dear F&F, August 5th to August 10th
We upped anchor from Navivivi Village at Qmena and went back to Wayevu on Taveuni for food and fuel. On a whim while talking to Bruce and Alene of s/v \”Migration\” on the VHF radio, we decided to go to Yanuca Island 20 mile to our north. We set sail and a glorious FAST ride it was. We were doing 10-11 knots with two reefs and the staysail.
We arrived and were not comfortable with anchoring off the village so we went around to the back of the island where the most well kept school building I\’ve seen in the South Pacific was located. It just blew and we eventually moved to Cobia (Thombia) Island. This is an extinct volcano crater which had a very nice hike, internal lagoon in the crater and good diving just to it\’s north on \”Budd Reef\”.
We picked up the mooring we were told was okay to use and it holds a boat normally that\’s 5 times our weight, so I felt comfortable with it. That afternoon we went with the dinghy to explore and found a spot where we thought we could \”scramble\” up to the top. This was much more than a hike!
Anja led the way and we finally go to the ridge top which had an obvious trail. Goats were abundant, the views spectacular.
Anja, who had lived in South Africa and has some very wild snake stories remarked, \”This feels like snake country!\” Snakes are very rare on the islands of the South Pacific but do exist. Thankfully, none poisonous. Two minutes later, Anja found a 3 foot long (1 meter) Pacific Boa Constrictor. (We ID\’ed it on the internet).
We took lots of photos (see photo gallery). Rain, wind, rain wind. We tried to see if we could anchor three miles back at the village. No luck. The next day, I dinghied into the village reef and picked up Will. Will is the son of the local Chief and he took us out to Budd Reef for two dives. Very nice. We picked up several sea cucumbers for Will as he makes a fortune from them. One, which we threw back, spewed a white spaghetti like substance all over me and Anja just laughed at me. Will said it wasn\’t a keeper type, so back it went.
That afternoon we moved to the main village and had a lovely evening\’s sleep in calm water. The next morning we did \”sevusevu\” with Will in his Father\’s stead as \”Dad\” was out fishing. We asked Will what \”Yanuca\” (Yanutha) meant. He said, \”Bad People\”. We asked him why and he didn\’t know? We think it might have been from when the locals all were waring and eating each other. He just smiled a Chesshire Cat smile!….
Rather than stay on, we decided to head toward rarely visited Rabi Island (Rambi). No, there are no Rabbi\’s on Rabi Island..:-)))
The people of Rabi aren\’t even Fijian!… Stay tuned…. Scott with Anja and Sandrine