A pleasant sail to a small anchorage
Blackjack is uninhabited, but as we were anchoring, four men emerged from the jungle there, waded out to their anchored boat, and headed for Begonia. They were four fishermen from the nearby Druadrua Island, about six miles to the northeast, having a midday break while waiting on low tide. We made them some tea, gave them the tour, and accepted the captain's phone for charging while they did their afternoon rounds. As a trade, Maryanne was able to convince one of the men, Soni, to show us the technique the locals use to sharpen their machetes with a metal file by having a go at our rusty, less heavily used one. Word got out and soon, we were visited for a few minutes over tea and cookies by every passing boat on its way to or from the main supply store a few miles up the Wainkoro River.
At low tide we could walk on the beach, and scramble around the beautiful rocky shoreline
A day later, on a lull between visits, Maryanne and I were out on a beach walk/jungle bash/rock skipping session when we could see a sail approaching. It turned out to be Amelting Heart again.
Unlike the last time we met, they were not planning to stay the night. They were in a hurry to get a few miles further on to Labasa, Venua Levu's second-largest city, before dark. Both Andrew needed to extend his visas, but the Fiji Government's website was foiling him at the part where it came time to pay the fee, so they eventually resigned themselves to going to the city, where they could hand cash to an official in person to get the problem resolved. As they were going by, they saw our AIS target and decided to see if they could stop and borrow our internet in the hopes of solving the problem and saving themselves the second half of the trip. If it worked, we could hang out again for the evening.
An hour later, they were weighing anchor and chasing the sun toward the horizon. They stayed in the shipping channel and arrived at the Labasa anchorage well after dark. They messaged us the next day to say they had gone in and managed to sort everything out.
And of course we managed a bit of snorkelling (mainly among the mangrove roots)
On our last night another cruising boat arrived in the bay - it was Ian and Ann of the boat Tourterelles, and they kindly invited us over for sundowners.
For being at an uninhabited anchorage, we sure got a lot of visitors!
A host of friendly visitors in a surprisingly busy "quiet" anchorage: Local fishermen, Amelting Heart, and Ian and Ann (from Tourterelles)
Anchorage location >> On google maps
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