The day after I last posted, we left Savusavu Harbor and anchored for a day and night out on the reef. The next day we crossed to Koro Island where we expected to spend a couple days. Instead it was really windy and the water was rough.
The windlass broke while we were dropping anchor which is a big problem. The windlass is a motorized wench that raised and drops the anchor and chain. Since the anchor weighs 80 pounds and the chain weighs an additional 100 pounds, it’s quite the process getting it raised manually – involving ropes, hooks and sail line wenches. Anyway we diverted back to Nadi so that a replacement can be ordered from New Zealand. We stopped for 5 days at an island called Makagai. The anchorage was completely surrounded by reef. There were sea turtles and a village or about 20 people running a clam farm. They showed us around the clam farm which was situated on a former leper colony. Until about 1950 there were 6000 lepers living there. We were able to snorkel over some of the clams which were 3 feet across with beautiful blue, green and purple coloring around their edges. We spent the next two days getting to Nadi. We arrived last night and cleared into Lautoka. Today is Sunday so we can’t order the windlass until tomorrow. We spent today looking for internet and provisioning. Depending on how long it will take to get the windlass, we will either wait here for it or go on out to the Yasawas and try to find a nice place that we want to stay for several days. Since it is so difficult raising anchor, it is not likely we will be island hopping much but rather spending a couple days at each anchorage.
