This post got stuck in my drafts folder.

Here’s the last part of our Fiji adventure in June.

Better late than never!

June 2023

We said farewell to Auriane at the tiny airstrip on Tavenui.  She flew away on the first leg of her long trip to Paris.

Bryan and I were now short-handed, planning a passage 200nm to the west. Our target was the remote reef break at Frigates Pass, south of the mainland of Viti Levu.

We had planned to sail that day, but a nasty band of wind and rain threatened. We had seen quite enough of that on the way from New Zealand so we postponed the trip and found the only wood-fired pizza oven on Tavenui.  A long lunch was declared while we waited for the bad weather to pass.

We were anchored pretty much on the dateline, which seemed to confuse our Navionics app, and us. 

Exactly 180 degrees from Greenwich and getting some strange and unhelpful local distance measurements as our longitude flipped between E and W.  Consequently we set out for a 10 mile trip one morning which in fact was 25 miles!  We found the chartplotter to be more accurate than our phones in that area.

We tried to leave again the next day, but when we realised we would need three reefs in the main before we rounded the southern tip of Tavenui, we postponed. Again. So we were behind schedule when we eventually we departed for our overnight trip from Taveuni to Beqa, south of the main island of Viti Levu. 

By this time a major windsurf contest was underway at Cloudbreak.  The world’s best windsurfers were sailing heats in giant surf.  The semifinals were being broadcast live and we were able tune into some heats as we sailed past islands with phone masts.  An elite group of wave riders were competing, including my good friend Brice, now a Cloudbreak aficionado. 

He rode the waves of his life against the world’s best.  

Then our friend Sarah fought her way to a win in the women’s final.  We were between islands for the final but ready to celebrate when we tuned in to hear that Sarah had won. It may be a long time before the windsurf world sees a contest run in such impressive waves. 

Thanks to our friends at Fishbowl Diaries for these amazing photos from Cloudbreak.

Next morning we arrived at Frigates under a grey sky.  There is technically an anchorage just inside the pass, but it didn’t look very relaxing after our night at sea. The waves were big and gnarly, and busy with a pack of surfers who had travelled by boat from the mainland.  We decided to pass on the pass.  Eventually we arrived on the ‘Coral Coast’ and tucked in to the bay at Natadola.  

The windsurf contest and prize giving was all wrapped up so Sarah and Brice got a taxi and a longboat from the event site and moved aboard Escapade to decompress for a few days.  I suggested we all go ashore for dinner at the hotel on the beach…

Going ashore for dinner

We all had so much to catch up on.  Sharing tales of our travels and the windsurf competition.  The sun had set and light was fading fast, barely enough to see our way in over the sandbar and reef.  We all jumped in the dinghy and motored off in to the dusk.  

Sarah calmly announced that there was a snake in the boat.  A snake?

Yes, there is a black banded sea snake writhing across the floor of the dinghy past our bare feet and heading for me in the bow.  Bryan swiftly turned the dinghy round and brought us back to the mothership.  Sarah was telling us to stay calm and pointing out that the poor creature is far more scared of us than we are of it.  Well maybe so, but this is a one metre long, venomous reptile moving very quickly towards my legs.  I very calmly leapt back on to Escapade.  Sarah grew up in New Caledonia where these things are clearly no big deal, she deftly returned the snake to the sea with a flick of a dinghy paddle.  Now it’s really getting dark.  Between us and the lights of the hotel is a line of whitewater in the gloom. Bryan times the set waves perfectly and we surf over the shallow sandbar at full throttle with foaming waves all around.  We beat the tidal flow and finally pull the dinghy up the sand in front of the restaurant.  Phew. The tide will be rising all evening, so to secure the boat I throw the painter around a coconut tree and electrocute myself.  The wet rope is in contact with a wet garden light which is (poorly) wired to illuminate the palm tree.  Every time I try to move the rope I take another jolt of mains voltage through my arms.  Eventually we extricate ourselves from that one without plunging the whole hotel into darkness.  Ok.  Snake, sandbar, electric shocks. Time to find the bar.

By the way we have since Googled the snake, which has one of the most deadly bites on Earth.  A banded sea snake has enough venom to KILL TEN ADULT HUMANS!  They are actually common through this part of the South Pacific, but not in dinghies.

The good news is that they rarely bite people and they have very small jaws.  About the size of one of my toes..

Natadola swell

Back on board it was a rolly night, the swell was pounding the reef at the entrance to the bay.  Next morning we were keen to leave for a flatter anchorage, which we did as soon as Bryan could be persuaded to leave this wave.

Back to my favourite wave.

In my last few visits to Fiji, the wave I have had the most fun on, and feel most at home on, is the glorious Namotu Left.

This is a very different vibe to the deserted wave we discovered in Eastern Fiji.  Back here on the West side of Viti Levu there are tourists, surf resorts, local boat trips and some motivated surfers living on sailing boats. It can be busy.

But for me, it is still the most fun wave I know.

It’s a special place for Escapade.  We like to anchor in the turquoise sandy patch, just north of the island.  From here we can sit and watch the waves, picking our moment. 

We have ridden it big and small, always fun and not too intimidating, though it can still give you a pounding once it gets overhead.  So many happy memories of this place.  Photoshoots with the Slingshot crew, late sessions with nobody out, towing a foil into empty waves with the dinghy when the current is too strong for anyone to paddle.

This was a happy time for the four of us.  Sarah and Brice in the afterglow of the contest, Bryan and I happy to be back in one of our favourite playgrounds.

We surfed and windsurfed and winged and towed around Namotu until our friends had to leave.  

It was also time for Bryan and I to go and find our wives.

We left Escapade safely on her swinging mooring and flew to Europe.