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Back on the road - Kavala to Vunasea Monday July 13 Janet I feel a twinge of anxiety; How windy would it be out there? Will I feel seasick? Shall I take a pill or not? Images of the rough passage from Suva to Kadavu are still fresh in my mind. We are on the cusp of leaving the sheltered womb of Kavala Bay to head to Tavuki.
In Fiji we are almost always in unfamiliar waters. Most of our cruising in New Zealand is in familiar places, so if the wind in wrong direction we know where we can go to find shelter. The trip to Tavuki holds lots of unknown factors; the wind could go to the north (it has three times already and most of the anchorages around here are exposed to it), the anchorage may be too deep, there could be too much coral for safe anchoring, or rain may obliterate coral visibility.
"Now Janet, nine times out of ten you get out there and you love it." I reassure myself. "For now just breathe deeply, in and out, in and out." My anxiety eases a little.
Then suddenly there's no time to worry. Motor gently forward, anchor up. It's grey and raining as David hoists the main and eases the headsail out.
We hand-steer for a while. The wind is from behind making it tricky. I don't want the it to back the sails but can't go further to port because of the invisible coral shelves jutting hundreds of metres out from the coast.
I look back at Kavala cloaked in cloud. We are in bright sunlight now, feeling relieved we may not to have to navigate the coral of Tavuki Bay, our destination, in dull conditions. My mood lifts. I love the thrill of being at sea again, being challenged by the elements. Excited and anxious at the same time, it's a fine line.
I look at the land. It looks familiar, reminding me of cruising along the east coast of Northland. Then I remember there are no roads, no power wires, no shops, not much reception, and the people speak a different language. It feels remote again.
Now there is enough wind on the beam to put the auto-pilot on the tiller. We are racing along at seven knots in 28 knots of wind.
"Fine sailing," I say to David.
We settle in to tea and Christmas cake. Cake baked months ago in another lifetime in Bay of Islands. Neil Young's Take a Look at Yourself belts out from the stereo. Fine indeed.
*** I let my thoughts drift back to our three weeks in Kavala, two lunches with the chief coming to mind. Sharing food is so integral to forming relationships for me.
Lunch is the main meal of the day in Fijian village life. As Seru, the chief's wife, prepared the food I asked her what she was cooking, and all about each ingredient. She seemed to enjoy my interest.
Another meal that stood out was our second lovo. This time we accompanied the lovo baskets to the local school and ended up sharing ours with the head-teacher and his family. What a country this is when you can rock up to the house of a stranger and be welcomed in to share a meal, then sent on your way with armloads of produce from their garden. Lunch guests are rare and treasured here it seems. We went back another day with a banana cake and a jar of Kavala Bay orange marmalade to say thank you.
*** "Just as well we left those reefs in the sail," I say to David, as another gust blasts out of a valley, heeling Navire over. It feels like sailing along the vicious Wairarapa Coast. We are well off the land. I measure the distance from the unseen rock shelf to our plotted course, 200m. I measure distance to our destination. 16 miles. Less than three hours at this speed.
"I can see the reef," David points ahead at a line of turqoiuse water, waves breaking, stretching well out to sea. We head out around it.
As we pass the bay where Kadavu's main town, Vunasea, is the wind speed increases and white caps abound. Boat speed 7.4 knots.
"Visualise the cloud lifting," says David.
I look ahead and the land is hidden by rain. Mmmm, not good coral-spotting visibility. As we turn into Tavuki Bay the wind heads so we roll up the genoa and turn on the engine. It's howling. This isn't what we signed up for. What would we do if we couldn't anchor at Tavuki? We have plans but still a little of my anxiety returns.
"Ten degrees to starboard," calls David from the cabin where he is watching our progress on the laptop. Up top there appears to be miles of room but most of it is actually too shallow. I push the tiller across and duck another blast of spray.
"I think I'll stay down here," David jokes, "It's much better." We get as far as we can into the bay before the coral shelf prevents us getting into the lee of the land. The wind is howling. The anchorage is too deep and exposed.
"It's not going to happen," says David, pushing the tiller hard to the side and gunning the engine to turn Navire quickly. "Let's go and look at Vunasea." I radio a yacht we passed earlier and ask about the bay. We'd been concerned it could be gusty there as it was on the lee side of a narrow piece of land.
"Good anchorage," they assured us.
I go down below and stare at the computer. "Go to port," I keep telling David.
I feel the boat lurch hard to port and go topside.
"We just missed a rock by inches," said David, "The trip could have been over." I go back and look at the chart. There should have been a beacon there, more often than not beacons that show on our charts just aren't there.
Heading out of Tavuki Bay I pass David a bowl of unheated leftovers.
Vunasea Bay is a myriad of shallow coral patches that we have to weave our way through. Finally we reach a small clear area near the shore.
"What's the depth?" David calls from the bow.
"Seven metres.
"Yahoo!" A shallow anchorage is a good anchorage.
I lick my lips. I touch my face and hair. Caked with salt. In the galley I sluice my face again and again till I can't taste any more salt.
"Beer?" David offers.
"Yes please."

Kavala Church Day Janet Mid July "Bula, bula, bring your dinghy over here." Jovesa gestured to a little beach off the end of the seawall.
We'd come in to the village early Sunday morning, to help fix Jovesa's outboard pull-chord, before going to church. While the men communed down at the boats Joe's oldest daughter Lusia invited me up to their house. It was a typical village house, a kitchen, living room and two bedrooms, no internal doors. Lusia gestured for me to sit on couch.
I pointed at some lemons on the kitchen table in the other room.
"Could I gather some of those?" I'd come with a list of local produce to procure.
"Veronika," Lusia called. Her 10 year-old sister came running inside. "Go and get Janet some lemons," she ordered in rapid Fijian.
"Last week I picked some basil at a house near here, could we go and get some more?" I asked.
"What is basil?" Lusi asked.
"It has a strong sweet smell and Fijians use it in a tea for coughs." "Ahh," she nodded. "Come." We gathered sprigs of basil and a bunch of bele, a green leaf used like spinach. As we passed a baigani bush, eggplant, Lusia picked half a dozen small black fruit and added them to my bag.
*** Down at the seawall David and Joe had made good progress on repairing the pull-chord.
David looked up "Time to go?" I nodded. He went up to the house to put on his Sunday best. Laughter rang from inside as David modeled his clothes for the women, and consulted about what was most appropriate to wear to church. Trousers not sulu, Shirt tucked in, and not out was the verdict.
We arrived at the other side of the bay at the same time as Jean Pierre and Dana.
They had done sevusevu here so proudly showed us around "their village". We'd come across to Kavala Village to attend a combined church service. On the first Sunday of each month Methodists from the several villages in the bay gather at one or other of the villages in turn.
We were seated in the front row of the high roofed, whitewashed, plaster house of God. The first bars of the choir's opening song resonated in my chest. When the base came in I felt it down to my toes. The sopranos followed and lifted my soul up to the rafters.
"I can see how gospel music helps people find God," I thought. Two hours soon passed with song after song of stunning choral music.
We'd been invited to join the Solotavui Village contingent for lunch afterwards.
"The host village puts on the food," Luisa explained, "and each village eats in a separate house." Just as we were heading for the 'Solotavui' house we got invited by the pastor to what turned out to be the VIP lunch. He led us through the village, stopping for us to shake hands and say hello to half the congregation.
Taking our shoes off we entered the village community hall where a long cloth lay across the floor, set with crockery and cutlery, and groaning with plates of food.
"Please sit," the pastor gestured to the floor at one end of the 'table'. Once we were seated everyone else sat. One of the pastors said grace and indicated for us to start. The food vibrated with freshness. No food miles incurred here. First, fried fish and rourou (taro leaf). It swam in coconut cream, probably grated and squeezed less than an hour ago. So succulent and sweet, melt in the mouth. I finely chopped a red chili and added it to my bowl with a squeeze of lemon, as I'd learned to do at lunch at the chief's. A few people nodded approvingly. My neighbour sawed off a hunk of taro for me to dip into the juices. Next I tried the ota. This is a fern similar to baby punga fern fronds in New Zealand. Crisp and crunchy it was served raw in coconut cream with tinned mackerel. I went back for more.
"What's that?" I pointed to some dark meat on a saucer.
"Wild pork," my neighbour told me.
"From up there?" I pointed at the hills behind the village. "With a gun?" "No, with a spear." Other bowls were laden with chop suey and curry, but teeming with the ubiquitous noodle, so I passed on those.
Over the course of the meal a number of other people wandered in the room and sat down behind the diners. Most people got up when they had finished so others could take their place but we were told to stay put.
When we had finished eating the food was moved to one end of the cloth and the ladies from the kitchen brought us tea and large chunks of cake topped with pumpkin custard.
Finally the cooks sat down and ate what was left of the main course. We lingered much of the afternoon and motored back to the boat replete.

4A Lovo for lunch Kavala Janet Jully 26 "What's the menu for?" I asked gesturing out the door. Taped to the wall at the shop entrance was a notice, mostly written in Fijian, including 'menu' and '$20'.
"It's for a lovo," the girl behind the counter said, "food cooked in the ground." Her mother told us "Whole chicken, fish, palusami, and raw fish, at noon on Friday." *** We were at the local bread shop in Kavala Bay. We'd motored along the edge of a bank of seemingly impenetrable mangroves when an opening appeared suddenly. Peering into the muddy water we monitored the depth to make sure we didn't catch the outboard propeller on the bottom. After paddling the last few metres we tied the dinghy to a tree, and asked the first person we saw where the shop was.
"Up there," said the woman, "blue house." She pointed to a muddy track.
The locating of shops here is very different to how we do it in New Zealand. Foot traffic - not a consideration. The shop in the bay near where Navire is anchored is a 15-minute walk from the nearest village.
"Is the shop over there because it has a wharf?" I had asked Luisa, our local host.
"No, that is where their family land is." She said matter of factly.
Same with the bread shop, up the back of three other houses and no signage down on the road to say its there. I guess everyone knows where it is.
*** On Friday our French-Canadian neighbours, from yacht Vanille, motored over to join us for the lunch outing. On the way across the bay we stopped in at Solotaviu Village to deliver a chocolate cake to Luisa and her family, a gift to say thank you for their help. This village seemed moderately prosperous (from yaqona production) and giving basic food items like tinned corned beef didn't seem appropriate. But a cake, we thought, is a treat because most people don't have conventional ovens.
Luisa was out so we gave the cake to her mother. Within seconds ten small children materialized. They sat on the mat in two rows like they were at school, eyes glued to the cake the whole time we were there. Later we heard that almost every child in the village had a piece.
Motoring on we arrived at the rocky inlet near the shop. We guided Jean-Pierre and Dana up the muddy path to the blue house. Paying our $20 we sat outside on a concrete slab we discussing where we would eat the food. Two women emerged from the shop with our 'lovo', two baskets woven from coconut palms loaded with foil wrapped food, each topped with a pink hibiscus flower.
Before we'd had a chance to unload our plates and cutlery and set up our picnic on the concrete the women said "Wait!", and dashed inside. Moments later they came out carrying a table between them and proceeded to set it up under a little shelter on the edge of the platform. Then out came four chairs and a tablecloth.
They understood kaivlangi needs.
Table set, I undid the foil bundles releasing smoky meaty flavours. A whole chicken, a piece of rather well done tuna, the best palusami (taro leaves cooked in coconut) I've ever had, a whole breadfruit, and two separate containers, one with kokoda, marinated fish, and the other cassava in caramel sauce. As we were packing up one of the women came to chat. It transpired that the lovo was a fundraiser. Each family with children at the school had to contribute $480 for various repairs. So much for Bainamrama's free education policy.

On Saturday we will be flying out of Vanuatu, we will briefly touchdown in Auckland before flying to Tokyo for a few days stop over and then on to Amsterdam. We are picking up a campervan and touring through The Netherlands, Belgium and France, meeting up with several friends along the way. Karl will introduce his new bride to his family in The Netherlands. There will be a family reunion as Karl's two brothers plus his sister from Toronto and respective partners will all be getting together. This will be the first time that all the siblings have been together in 11 years, so it is a very special occasion. We will have some adjustments to make as we leave our yacht behind for 5 weeks and adapt to life in Europe. We will miss the paw paws and coconuts, but will be quite happy if we don't see any more bok choy for a while. We will trade our tuna meals for salted herring, which Karl is looking forward to. Of course, we might have to remember not to eat with our fingers while we are in Europe - the table manners are a little different in Vanuatu! We are not sure what to wear! After living in swimming togs and sarongs for three months, I guess we will need to find some other clothes now, which will be a bit strange. The landscape will be a little different too. We are used to silver white beaches in Santo, jet black beaches in Ambrym, chocolate brown beaches in Ambae and the golden sands of the Maskelynes - all fringed with palm trees and tropical jungle. Not just that, but after a small area of sand, volcanic mountains rise straight up to 800m, or in some cases 1800m. The landscape in Vanuatu is like a child's picture book of volcanic peaks. We will trade this scenery for the flat low lying fields of the Netherlands - I think the Dutch Alps are only about 8m high? The people will be a little different too. In Vanuatu, most people are small in size. Heather can look over the tops of most heads in a crowd here. Once in The Netherlands with all those tall people, Heather will probably feel like a midget. There will be an adjustment in the language we speak as well. Heather has been learning Dutch, but has picked up more Bislama in the last 3 months. Bislama is the local pidgin English and the national language of Vanuatu. It might help to speak a little French when we are in France, which will be a struggle for both of us! For the next 5 weeks we will leave our watery world behind and be land based. We will have to adjust to driving at more than 6 knots I suppose and get used to traffic again - there are no traffic jams on the ocean! But the world will be less wobbly and we won't need to check the weather forecast every day. We might need to remember not to jump out the back of the campervan to go for a swim! So this will be our last blog for a while. We will return to Vanuatu on 5th September and resume our cruising life - and our blogs. Tomorrow we leave Aradonna in storage in Vanuatu, awaiting our return.