Vuda Point to Savu Savu
by Andrew and Clare Payne 3 Jun 2019 14:35 UTC
Anchorage at Makogai © Freedom and Adventure / Andrew and Clare Payne
We sailed in a gentle breeze along the north coast of Viti Levu anchoring in two very beautiful and peaceful bays. We lay on the deck late afternoon soaking up the warmth of the fading sun and listening to the birds singing and flitting about in the impenetrable tropical forest along the shoreline.
For us, this was a perfect start to a new season, calm, relaxing, sunny, quiet and totally at peace with the world.
A time for learning
Our first step back into civilisation was on the island of Makogai some forty five miles south of Savu Savu. Makogai in the early to mid 1900's was home to a Leprosy Hospital that housed 4000 patients from islands throughout the Pacific. There are still some old buildings and a cemetery from this time.
However, today with a population of fifty, Makogai operates a fisheries hatchery for turtles and giant clams. The giant clam grows to over a metre and a single clam can filter hundreds of litres of water a day offering a good line of defence against an outbreak of pesky crown of thorns starfish by filtering out thousands of their microscopic spawn. The fishery people have some giant clams they leave in the ocean and at spawning time transfer them into salt water tanks ashore.
The baby clams are cultivated there and we witnesses some eight month old clams being individually scrubbed with a toothbrush to remove any parasites before being relocated to tanks at a local resort. They stay there for a year as a tourist attraction but at the same time, growing in a safe environment. By this time they are big enough to be relocated into the ocean. Even then they are released in cages for further hardening of their shells before they have sufficient protection from ocean predators and can be transported to one of the many coral reefs throughout the Pacific.
We were pleased to learn that it was an Australian funded project that began culturing the giant clams at Makogai and thousands have since been transplanted to various parts of Fiji. Whilst we were at Makogai a delegation from the Ministry for Fisheries and the owner of the receiving resort came by light plane to transfer 500 baby clams to the resort tanks.
Can we help
We felt we did our bit towards this wonderful project when Andrew was approached (a day before the delegation arrived) by a local boat asking if he had a multimeter. So he went with them armed with his multimeter to find they had run the water pump dry and it was all melted inside. This pump supplies seawater to the giant clams and turtles being grown here in the seawater tanks.
The fishery guys were trying to get the 240v generator to make 72v to run a spare pump that only ever run on solar panels (which were blown away by cyclone Winston in 2016). When that idea failed they wanted Andrew to connect the spare submersible pump to the 3 phase outlet. Luckily they had a new plug for Andrew to wire up. Andrew, although he understood what he was doing, had never actually wired a three phase outlet before so he warned them that he wasn't an electrician. Their reply was "Neither are we" so everybody stood well back. All went well and the fishery guys said they would be ok with finding the bits they needed to get the seawater to the tanks the clams were waiting. We received four papayas for Andrew's efforts.
Cruisers to the rescue
We also travelled by the 60 hp outboard school boat with nine school children around to a small village where the school for 26 children is located. A large part of this small village was blown away by cyclone Winston along with the class rooms. We spoke to one mother of five who's house survived the cyclone. She said they were all very scared huddled inside watching other houses being blown down the street. The only one not afraid was their two year old who played happily oblivious of the danger that sounds right:) After cyclone Winston, members of the cruising community built two new class rooms. It took them a year or more to complete, a job well done, the class rooms have been fully operational since.
Today the school has expanded with a new cyclone proof steel framed classroom and accommodation for the teachers. There is still a lot of work to be done but they are well on the road to recovery. We walked back across the island to our boat which took about an hour, a good bit of exercise up and down hills and great views of the shoreline.
Catch of the day
After three days at Makogai we sailed 50 miles in sporty conditions across the channel to the larger island of Venua Levu and into Savu Savu in Fiji. We had the fishing line out the back and averaging 7 knots of boat speed, in some ways I was hoping we didn't get a strike. Fortunately whilst slowing down to make landfall we caught a magnificent Wahoo about a metre long a truly delicious fish and greatly appreciated.
So what's next
By this time quite a few of our cruising friends are returning to Fiji after spending cyclone season in New Zealand. So it is party time and we are enjoying renewing old friendships and developing new ones. So more of Savu Savu in our next newsletter.
This article has been provided by the courtesy of freedomandadventure.blogspot.com