Pitufa.at

We had indeed a fast ride averaging 6 knots in winds from the ESE between 18 and 23 knots. The islands here in the Lau group are so close together that you sometimes have two or even three in sight at the same time–quite a change after the big distances in French Polynesia.
The waters are also much more lively than we’ve seen in other areas: we were trolling a lure with a single hook and after a jack, a wahoo and a mahi-mahi had jumped off that one we fixed a double hook and caught a big yellow-fin tuna. Commercial fishing is forbidden within the Lau group and that certainly makes a difference!

Matuku is a high, almost round volcanic island with a fringing reef that has several openings to natural harbours. We are on the western side in the biggest of these harbours and it looks more like a lake in here than a bay. There’s a small village in the bay and tomorrow we’ll go there, but today we are busy making fish preserves (12 jars!!) and banana-chutney–a whole stack went ripe and has to be used up.

Yesterday we decided to book flights to Austria. Go online, book–easily and quickly done, right? Not so for cruisers: with our wobbly internet connection it took me all afternoon to open sites, compare and finally book two legs simultaneously on two different airline sites (super stressful to juggle dates while keeping both pages busy without a time-out). Got the last two available seats, all done, get the credit card to book–nope, both our credit cards still have the French Polynesian phone number for the security code. Quickly, open the bank site, change the number! My bank took four attempts with my login numbers and code (I suppose the interrupted internet connection was to blame), then I had to get my card-tan-generator for another security step, but for some mysterious reason the tan number got refused three times and then I was informed that my account was blocked. ARGH. The only way to contact them is with a simple phone call to a hotline on an Austrian number. Fucking impossible with a Fijian SIM card. AAARGH. It’s already weekend, so nothing will be done until Monday in Europe (for us here Tuesday) and by then the dates we wanted will most likely no longer be available and I’ll have to do the whole search again.

We were cursing and swearing by the time we had to accept defeat, but then we we stepped out on deck, took a look around and realised that all the technical hurdles and hiccups are a small price to pay for what we have. View of our anchorage here at the Bay of Islands in Vanua Balavu, Fiji:

The past week we’ve had a strong Southeasterly blowing and it came (a bit surprising) with constant rain and grey weather. We sat out the nasty weather at the little island Makogai, a former leper colony. Until 1969 patients were isolated here and a few buildings remain.
Now there’s a marine station on the island and we were thrilled to visit it and find out about protection programs in Fiji. Unfortunately it was pretty disappointing. No turtles in the turtle pools (they raise babies when people bring them, or maybe rather if) and a few tiny giant clams in the many clam pools–they raise them to give them to communities and hotels “for reef decoration”. “Also to eat?” “Well yes, also to eat.” It looks like a good idea, lots of effort and I suppose substantial funding money (all people who live in the settlement are somehow involved in the program) has led to not many results here.

This week we have our 11th cruising anniversary. Incredible how time flies… In 2011 the three of us we set out with little experience and big dreams.
Lots of those have come true, but there’s many more out there and we keep chasing the horizon

The passage ended as it began–with fickle winds and lots of sail changes. On our slowest day we only did 78 nautical miles, on the fastest 150
We had quite a few hours with only 6 knots of breeze and an interesting hour with 35 knots gusting up to 43 when a front passed over us.
All good now, we arrived yesterday, the friendly officials checked us in with a covid test, but without much ado and we’ve already done a walk through Savusavu town (or rather village)

A friend asked, how we can post from underway. We don’t have a sat phone, so we write our blog and send it via SSB and pactor modem to a sailmail station (service for cruisers). This station sends the blog on to our homepage www.pitufa.at and from there it is automatically forwarded to facebook.
We are almost in Savusavu, 25 nm to go!

We ran into calm weather yesterday, but now a breeze is coming back. 120 nm to go!

..so no May 28 this year. My Mom’s birthday–she didn’t like them, so it’s very fitting…
250 nm to go!

We bought our sails 12 years ago in Croatia, the mainsail has been up ever since and is still in good shape–amazing quality made in Croatia. On this trip it was flogging against the spreaders in our first week of light winds and a batten chafed through, so it will need some maintenance once we arrive.
380 nm to go!