Hello! It’s been a while, I know. Apologies. 6 months since our last update…wow. It’s hard for me to know where to start, how best to share some of the events that have transpired. The task of recounting the last 6 months seems insurmountable as I sit here, so I’ll just start taking small bites. I don’t think there will be much of a narrative to this post and I’m keen to try a shorter format style of updates. Let me get through this first and then I’ll try to work on that.

Also, I must add, it’s so great to hear from so many of you. We love it when you reach out, or comment, or, well, just say hello. Cruising is awesome and we love meeting new people. But it can also be very isolating and it’s always wonderful to hear from friends and family.

My last post came from Fiji, just after the Musket Cove regatta, which was a really great experience. The regatta followed our time in Fulaga, which was one of the most special places we’ve ever visited. In fact, we found it so special, that we visited it again! Briefly, after the regatta, we went our separate ways from Noonsun, first stopping at Vuda Marina to pick up our 2 crates that we had shipped from Florida in April. It was great to get our stuff but the overall experience was quite negative. The costs skyrocketed and if we had known it would cost that much we’d have never bothered shipping our stuff. It would have been better to part with it in Florida and rebuy stuff in NZ.

With another month of time left before we could depart Fiji for New Zealand (due to the seasonality of the weather), we were eager to see more of Fiji and set off for Kadavu and the Astrolabe Reef. There we met a wonderful kid boat from New Zealand and had a great, adventurous hike across Ono Island. It was another experience made more special by the local Fijians. The hike was sold to us as an easy 45 minutes. Almost 2 hours and some tough hiking later, we had made it to the other village on Ono Island, which houses the school. Keep in mind this would have taken us about 15 minutes to dinghy over to from our anchorage , but it was a really fun hike. But due to the time of day we had to politely ask if we could get a ride back by boat as it would be dark before our return if we retraced the hike.

After a week in the Kadavu area we made our way up north to Beqa in an effort to a) see more of Fiji and b) meet up with Noonsun again and, hopefully, so other kid boats as Oliver’s 9th birthday was coming up. All Oliver had asked for was to be with other kids for his birthday so Melissa and I we prepared to do just about anything to make that happen. That commitment was quickly tested when Ted from Noonsun texted asking “will you meet us in Fulaga in 3 days from now?”

This was very different from what we had pictured in our mind. We figured we’d be heading back to the west coast of Viti Levu, hanging out at Musket Cove, Vuda Marina, the Yasawas and Tavarua with fellow kid boats, while we waited to head back to New Zealand. I can’t say we were excited about that plan, but it seemed the easiest and most reasonable plan. But instead we were now presented with an option to sail a bit over 200 miles to our favorite place. We knew Noonsun would be there, we knew there would be 1 other kid boat sailing with Noonsun, so we said “yep” and quickly headed to Suva for some provisioning. We’d be celebrating Oliver’s birthday in paradise.

3 days later we arrived in Fulaga at dawn, mere minutes before Noonsun, who had departed from a location over 125 miles from where we departed. Crazy! Upon arrival we saw a few fins and thought they were dolphins but we quickly realized that, no, these were whales! This was so cool! We were absolutely stoked. We had just completed a pleasant 200 mile passage to one of our favorite places and now we were seeing whales. And not just a few, we ended up spending an hour with nine incredibly curious pilot whales. We were SO close to them and they seemed to be just as interested in us as we were in them. We shut off the engines and just floated with these creatures for an hour. What a memory! Ted, hilariously, dead panned over the radio “classic Fulaga” and we all laughed, knowing just how lucky we were.

As the pass in to Fulaga can be a bit tricky we had to wait about 3 more hours before slack tide. We drove about 3 miles offshore, shut things down, napped, rinsed, cleaned and just sorta collected ourselves after our whale encounter. Despite having done the pass once before it was still a bit intimidating though we had zero problems again with our entrance, heading directly for our last anchorage there which is a pretty special place.

We were happily surprised to see that Rainbow Safari, another kid boat was already anchored in Fulaga. We had last seen them more than 6 weeks prior in Savusavu and were thrilled to know more kids would be around. More amazingly, the next day 2 more kid boats arrived with 9 kids between them! Suddenly we had 6 kids boat and 20 kids in Fulaga, Fiji! Amazing! We ended up staying for 12 days in Fulaga. It was just as special as before, perhaps even better the second time around. Oliver had 18 kids at his birthday party…more than he had the previous year in Annapolis during the boat show! WHAT?! CRAZY!

Part Two will come…someday.