Yasawa Islands & Prepairing For The Migration South...

We sailed the Yasawas for the first time back in 2010 on our last boat and loved the many different anchorages and attractions each island has to offer. Fast forward to 2019 and we still think that island group is pretty awesome!!!

For those of you who haven’t been to Fiji, or the Yasawas, this island group has some very scenic anchorages with lots of them just a few miles apart. We took our family up there back in July as it’s an easy way to see a few different places and easy and quick sailing, mostly a few hours or a day trip between the islands.

Playful dolphins on your bow while sailing between islands and swimming with Manta Rays or diving an old sunken airplane are just some of the things you may get to enjoy and pass time with. Of course there is also the famous ‘Blue Lagoon’ anchorage (yup from the movie) which we love as it is a very lovely and protected anchorage and an awesome spot for kitesurfing at the same time ;-) Further north one can dive the Sawa-I-Lau caves which we had done 8 years ago but since the price jumped from then $10 to now $55 per person we gave it a miss this time around!

All in all we spent a few weeks here again at the end of the season when there were much less boats around and to get a few weeks of splendid kitesurfing in the tradewinds while our other favourite spot was lacking wind! One thing we were amazed by was the amount of pumice we’ve come across. This is from the underwater volcano eruption by Tonga back in August which has slowly drifted across to Fiji and is expected to make it across to the Great Barrier Reef in Australia! I’ve included some photos to show you the extend.

Here are are some pics:

Once our provisions ran out and the finals of the Rugby World Cup neared we made our way back towards Denarau and Musket Cove in a bid to reprovision and to be close to a large TV screen to watch the final of the RWC!

Lucky for us the wind has been providing us most days with kiteable conditions so we’ve been out there kiting our hearts out since we’ve come back. Winning the RWC was just the icing on the cake ;-)

With November comes the beginning of cyclone season so we’ve been getting the boat ready for our migration south for cyclone season and the daily rhythm of checking into the SSB nets and weather forecasting sites has started and is in full swing...I will let you all know when we are on our way :-)

While we aren’t looking forward to leaving this slice of paradise behind, we also look forward to some exploring and kitesurfing back in New Zealand and are already planning where to in Fiji next season as we are really keen to sail to the Lau Group next year! If you are keen to join us either in NZ or Fiji, please make contact to ensure you don’t miss out on the opportunity to be onboard :-)