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One of many
spectacular sunsets on our New Zealand to
Fiji passage. We call these “bad religious postcard”
or
Power of God (POG) lighting.
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Whew! Less than an hour before dark we
dropped anchor in Suva,Fiji, 2 weeks plus a few hours past our starting point, Opua, Bay of Islands, New Zealand. While not our longest sail*, we
traversed 17 latitudes, 4 longitudes, over 1,050 “crow fly” miles. Amazingly,
we’re still on the same time zone as New Zealand.
*over 3,000 miles, from Galapagos to French Marquesas,
roughly a year prior, which took us over a month; 32 days to be exact.
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This new
custom-fabricated
stainless steel drip pan did its job
well capturing goo when
our
engine fuel pump leaked.
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In case you were wondering…
no -- that is not fast.
Worse, Suva’s a bit closer –
100 miles or so -- than our originally planned Fiji destination, Savusavu. Embarrassingly, we averaged only 3 ¼
miles/hour on track (“rhumb”), not taking into account a path that periodically
was more akin to a slalom course mating with a loop-the-loop roller coaster
than a mostly straight rhumb line from our start to our finish point.
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Our foresail mast;
the ring flopping off to
the side of our jib sail is supposed connect
to the
top of our mast via a shackle, which
is missing in action. Now that we’re
anchored, we can fix it.
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We left Opua well topped off
on our fuel, with 65 gallons of diesel. In totally calm conditions, that would
allow 4 1/3 days of motoring, enough to cover about 520 miles, about half our
passage, if we used every drop (never prudent to do!).
Ok, we left on a Friday, May
13th, but we’re not superstitious. In fact, that was a great day.
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| Close up of our disconnected jib sailpoint. |
- Miraculously, we got the part we were waiting for from the USA first thing in the morning.
- Despite a veritable armada of 30-40 boats leaving for their long Fiji passage within 24 hours of when we were, we slipped into the dinky one-pump marina fuel dock at slack tide as planned without needing to queue up.
- We even left 2 hours ahead of schedule; we’d figured between getting the part, making the fix and fueling up, we’d be racing the dark before making it to sea. Instead, we were on our way at 1:30 pm.
- The winds were far better than what was forecast. They were largely in that nirvana zone of 11-20 knot winds, on our beam.
- Our first 24 hours, we logged 117 miles, nearly all of it sailing. We’re generally happy with just about any day multi-day passage when we log 100+ miles in our 1977 Pearson ketch sailboat. We knew when bought her, our boat was built for comfort and safety, not for speed. So, 117 miles – we were stoked.
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Sunset over calm,
glassy water, between
New Zealand and Fiji.
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The next day, though, the
winds got light, less than 10 knots.
And for a substantial portion of our passage, they remained light.
Challenge #1:
Fuel Leak
On our second day after a
few hours of motoring, Wayne decided it would be wise to see our fixed fuel
injector pump was performing.
We’d been plagued with minor
fuel leaks for some time. It’s not
an uncommon issue with our otherwise very reliable engine type, a Westerbeke. We spent a significant chunk of change
and time getting it fixed before we left, including some last minute additional
work. And for that hour Wayne
tested it before we left, it ran like a champ – the best it has since we’ve
owned our boat, for 4 years, logging 16,000+ miles.
Arg! The engine was leaking worse than
ever! Wayne was concerned if we
ran it much, we could cause the engine irreparable damage. Thus, our plan was to avoid using the motor
as much as possible, revising our first Fiji stop to Suva, Fiji’s big city. Nor
only did it offer better diesel repair services, Suva was about 100 miles
closer than Savusavu, our originally planned first Fiji stop. Besides, after logging over 100 miles
on our first day, we figured the rest of the passage would be a breeze.
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Our first Fiji
sunrise. We were passing outside
Astrolabe reef on our way into Suva.
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Instead, we were plagued
with light winds, even doldrums (0.0 knots of wind). When we did get wind, for most our passage, it stubbornly
resisted the normal trade wind flow, which would’ve naturally eased us along
most of the way from New Zealand to Fiji.
We didn’t expect that, as about 2/3 of the way through our passage, my Iridium Go satellite wifi hotspot decided it would not communicate with the network needed for me
to fetch our updated PredictWind passage weather reports.
Challenge #3:
Disconnected Jib Sail
As with most of our long passages,
again found ourselves “sail challenged.”
This time, the squirrely force from a 30-knot wee-hours squall stressed
a shackle holding in our foresail (aka jib or genoa) to the top of the mast,
disconnecting it. It also created
a small tear. As we had to keep a
portion of the jib wound (“reefed”) in to hold it in place and prevent further
damage, that ruined its aerodynamic capability. Instead of tautly funneling the wind, it inefficiently
flapped (luffed). Our jib is the
sail we normally use the most.
It’s fixable, but playing mast monkey to fix it while underway was not
wise; we figured we’d make due until anchored in Fiji. After all, our sailboat’s a ketch. Our temporarily lame jib could be
supplemented with our main sail, and if needed, our miniscule, rarely-used
mizzen sail.
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| Close up of the surreal tangerine sunrise over Fiji. |
Our autopilot was not too
happy with our need to just find something, anything we could that didn’t take
us backward. Often it meant continued pinching as upwind as we could in lots of
light, fluky wind. The autopilot
would adjust and adjust and adjust until it ran the wheel out of wheel. Then the autopilot would stop, and our
boat commenced with slow, lazy donuts or sailing backward across the water until
we could regain enough helm control to get at least kind of back on track.
Challenge #5:
Insufficient Power
Plus, the particular arc of
the sun relative to our sail’s shadows kept us from getting much (solar) power,
needed to run all things electric on our boat… refrigerator autopilot,
navigation instruments, laptops….
Normally not getting enough
solar power wasn’t a big deal; our Honda 2000 generator filled that gap. We’d run our generator maybe an hour
our two a day, if needed. Except
having just replaced our corroded generator in New Zealand, we were loathe to
run it on passage, figuring that’s what killed our last one. Alternatively, our boat batteries
recharged whenever we motored.
Except… we were trying to not motor.
We kept turned our fridge
down or off to conserve. I greatly
reduced my use of the oven and stove, whose proximity prompted to the fridge to
suck power as greedily as a stray dog gobbles food. We also minimized the use of our laptops. And we ran our engine, a little. And we ran our generator, a little.
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Even on the
calm day we entered Suva Harbor, the waves breaking at its fringe were impressive. The photos I took don’t do them justice. |
Finally, on our 14th
day, after first getting pushed uncomfortably close to Fiji’s enormous boat-eating
Astrolabe reef at 5:30 am, the wind finally decided to resume its normal trade wind
pattern, giving us an easy ride into Suva, Fiji.
Arriving after 5 pm on a
Friday meant we were too late for regular check-in with customs and
immigration.*
*Saturday check-ins cost significantly more - even though the officials, nice as they were, didn't complete any of our check-ins. Today I visited all 5 offices Monday, which are scattered across Suva. I spent the day walking,waiting and paying with our newly required Fijian money.
*Saturday check-ins cost significantly more - even though the officials, nice as they were, didn't complete any of our check-ins. Today I visited all 5 offices Monday, which are scattered across Suva. I spent the day walking,waiting and paying with our newly required Fijian money.
But after two weeks with
all-too-much aimless drifting, we’re just darned glad to here, and to arrive
and anchor safely in this shipwreck-littered bay before dark.
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These rocks highlight
the importance of entering
Suva Harbor in good light.
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One of these days, we’ll
have a long passage again as smooth as our 1,000 mile passage from Panama to Galapagos, or from Huahine,
French Polynesia to Suwarrow, Cook Islands, or Suwarrow to Pago Pago American
Samoa. We don’t have many more
long passages left before we’re all done.
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This wreck is not
that many feet from us in Suva
Harbor anchorage. It’s not the only wreck in the harbor.
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- First, you gotta float (to the tune of about $2500 NZD to repair the honkin’ big hole in our hull – that at least held well).
- Then you gotta be able to go (sails, rigging, engine – oy – our long passage track record on that is not that great. We believe this time the sail and the fuel leak will be easy and not that expensive fixes).
- Then you gotta be able to get where you’re going (steering, wind, current – we’re at the point it takes particularly contrary conditions for that to be an issue – just – this time that’s what we got).
Still, spending two weeks in
mostly sunny, calm, 70-degree (F) temperatures in the tropics isn’t all bad. We didn’t spend a dime. Using a mere 7 gallons of diesel (12.7
hours motoring at .6 gallons/hour and a few more for our fuel leak) plus a bit
of gasoline to run our Honda generator makes for a pretty tiny carbon
footprint.
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This dilapidated
harbor building is rises up in Suva
Harbor’s anchorage. Not sure its original purpose.
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Regardless, Wayne and I
agree on this….
- Some cruisers love sailing.
- We love arriving.
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Suva port at
night. It’s an industrial harbor,
active all day and night.
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As of May 27, 2016, we’re
anchored off Suva, Fiji’s capital city (S35.18.772 E174.07.485), after
traveling 1056 “crow flies” nautical miles from Opua, New Zealand (S18.07.366
E178.25.482). Our passage took us
14 days, 3 hours and 45 minutes.
We hope to spend less than a week in industrial Suva on repairs,
provisioning, etc. as our intent is to explore Fiji’s natural wonders. We plan on spending no more than 2
months in Fiji, to allow more time for our next country, Vanuatu. After Vanuatu, we’ll stop briefly in
New Caledonia, then proceed to Australia by November, where we plan to sell our
boat.
