The Last Wilderness!

No land, not another boat sighted, not one plane crossed the skies and we had been sailing for 8 days, when a distant fishing boat appeared briefly and disappeared from view on the horizon. There was no other sign of mankind or anything made by humans outside our little world onboard Celtic Star! Even if you climb Everest, there is plenty of evidence of Homo sapiens, striving to reach the furthest extremities of our blue planet, but out here you are alone. That’s not true, of course! We were in touch with others via the radio and we knew that there were other sailing boats heading towards Fiji but we didn’t see anyone. We kept regular radio contact with a radio net run by volunteers in French Polynesia, called the Poly Mag Net! We also established a daily chat with another boat called Gentoo, who left Bora Bora a few hours before us. Coincidentally, they were on the Atlantic Rally, ARC, with us in November 2019 and were in the same radio net group then. Mark is travelling with his partner and their little girl, Matilda, who is 5 years old now. When we crossed the Atlantic she was the youngest crew member in the fleet!

The sailing for the first 6 days was fast and fabulous! We flew white sails, one on either side, as the wind pushed us across the surface of our blue, blue world. Celtic Star was going like a train, our best days run was 185 nautical miles, and we marked halfway to Fiji on our sixth day at sea, Sunday 29th June, which we duly celebrated by opening a packet of crisps and having a can of pop! Laura did a a halfway handstand before the fizzy drink!

It had been plain sailing, apart from a wild Friday night, which left me staggering, dishevelled and nauseous, not due to alcohol, but to big squalls which brought winds of 35 knots and heavy rain on my watch! After the weekend the wind dropped overnight and the motion of the boat was getting unbearably rolling, so bright and early Monday 30th, we had all hands on deck to get the spinnaker back out of its locker. We hadn’t flown “the kite” since our arrival in Tahiti back in March 2020, so it was due for an airing! It took us an hour to figure out the various ropes and take down the white sail plan. We had been flying our storm jib as a third sail, but that meant more ropes, stays and shackles to undo, put away and replace. At last the spaghetti was sorted, which involved Laura and Richard performing what appeared to be a maypole dance around the mast whilst I worked the lines from the cockpit, then we launched the spinnaker, which is always a pretty sight. Celtic Star responded well and settled down to make comfortable progress along latitude 15 degrees towards our destination. Poems were written and poems were learnt, shanties and songs were sung, cards were played, books read, weather forecasts downloaded via our satellite phone and the boat rhythm of eat, clean, sleep, sail soon became our norm. Over the next few days the spinnaker came down and went up several times and one day we gybed it twice as well as putting it up and down, which was quite exhausting! Celtic Star doesn’t have any electric winches so it’s a good work out for the abs and arms!

The night sky was huge and surrounded us, at times there was only space, stars and the dark ocean so it felt like we were travelling through space and time. In fact we were, because we crossed the international date line and moved a day forward, effectively missing out Saturday June 4th 2022 for ever! We were then 11 hours ahead of the UK, not behind. Stargazing was a big past time because the tropical nights are 12 hours long, night watches enabled a few hours of solitude to contemplate the universe in its glory, especially as there was no light pollution and the moon was waning when we set off. The celestial sphere was visible from horizon to horizon and night after night we saw the patterns change as the moon and planets progressed through their orbits.

On day 6 we discovered a stowaway, Geraint the gecko appeared and then his little mate or offspring perhaps, which Laura called Goliath, but mysteriously Sally spider disappeared, and thankfully so did the ants! You can see cabin fever was already affecting us, the Life of Pi started to make more sense! however, neither gecko has been seen since!

Day 9 we caught a fish, Wahoo! Not an exclamation, but the type of fish we caught, which had big teeth! We also found a flying fish in the port heads, (toilet), it had managed to fly through the small window to use the facilities, perhaps it was escaping being eaten by a Wahoo! On day 10, the wind died again and we motored for 10 hours, mainly overnight before the wind came in with day break and we launched the spinnaker again. We sailed south of Samoa and navigated north of Tonga, neither of which were visible, we dodged Curaçao reef which dangerously breaks the surface hundreds of miles from anywhere, before we turned left for Fiji! The tiny island of Niuafo’ou was visible to our north for a day, before Zephyr Bank was skirted to starboard and we continued our final few days sailing towards our destination.

Fiji is another island group that was colonised by Europeans in the early nineteenth century by missionaries, whalers, traders and deserters. The early reputation of Fijians as fierce cannibals was probably false news to deter the Western take over! It didn’t work and the British officially took governance in 1874, introducing indentured labourers from India to work the sugarcane fields. When Fiji regained sovereignty in 1970, there remained a large population of Indian descendants which then led to political division, upheaval and coups through the later part of the 20th century .

We drifted along in light winds for a couple of days and our arrival was due on Saturday 4th, which was actually Sunday 5th in Fiji but as they charge double for weekend arrival we were happy to wait for Monday morning. With under 250nm to go to Savusavu on Vanuatu Levu, Fiji the wind changed to southerly. Our heading was now south westerly so the wind was forward of the beam, which meant we were on a fine reach and the boat was leaning over crashing through waves, quite a novelty, but not very comfortable. Definitely too rough for Bananagrams and we had to close the hatches and windows because spray and waves were soaking the side decks. We were now making good speeds of over 7 knots and were going to arrive too early, but despite three reefs in the fore and main sail there was no stopping Celtic Star. She was sailing like a dream, keen to go fast but light on the helm and we arrived at the outer islands of Fiji in the dark, traversed Nanuku Passage in the early hours of Saturday 4th June. Still heeling over and uncomfortably on the wind, as the sky lightened we could see land looming darkly off to starboard. When the sun rose at 0700 French Poly time, and 1800 UTC on 4th June 2022 we crossed meridian 180 degrees and started to head East! A momentous occasion that deserved a tot of rum despite it being 0600 local time!

We were 1744 nm from Bora Bora with 50 nm to go so I raised the Fiji courtesy flag and the yellow Q flag, requesting free pratique! The yellow comes from Yellow Fever days and the Q is for quarantine, traditional maritime rules that are still in use! We were on our 12th day at sea and our passage had taken 11 and a half days. I also raised the Ddraig Goch, red dragon of Wales on the port cross trees, the Fijians love rugby and definitely know where Wales is, we hope to attend a game while we are here.

We arrived at Suva Suva at 1500 hrs Polynesian time, and were greeted by Tex from the Copra shed, who had a huge “Bula” (hello) smile as he helped us to pick up a mooring. It was Sunday afternoon in Fiji, and we had to stay on board until customs and immigration came to swab us and clear us in on Monday morning. All our devices were still telling us it was Saturday and we had no wi-fi yet, so we were finding it difficult to adjust! Hey ho ! We had a rum punch and a beer or two to celebrate and then retreated below decks to avoid the rain which came down in torrents and lasted all night. A film and early nightly (or was it? ) in a bed that wasn’t moving was wonderful and we were looking forward to exploring Fiji.

The following day was Monday and we waited hours for the health and COVID testing personnel to come aboard, we waited had another couple of hours before, biosecurity and customs arrived to check us and the boat. The officers were al very friendly and welcoming and at last we were allowed on shore to get cash so that we could pay for the various tests and pieces of paper that confirmed our entry status.

Our first impressions are that it is very different from French Polynesia, there are saris for sale in the shops and overall I was feeling a blend of India meets the Caribbean! We have booked a day trip and a dive already, and once we obtain our cruising permit we will be allowed to visit some of the other beautiful islands of Fiji.