July 4 at Musket Cove, Manolo Island, Fiji

Tomorrow is the start of the next leg of the World ARC 2025-2026 but Kincsem will not be on the starting line. We will cruise Fiji for another 3 weeks and then lay up the boat at Vuda Marina until late October when we will sail her to New Zealand. Participating in the World ARC has been a lot of fun and today are two more parties: a 4^th of July BBQ organized by Martha of Salinity and fare well drinks in the evening organized by WARC, including a local dance troupe. These parties always bring together a lot of boats and are great fun. Yesterday was a Karaoke party organized by the Japanese catamaran Nacula. It went past “cruisers’ midnight” (aka 9 pm) and a lot of people (including the entire Kincsem crew) participated enthusiastically. So I am looking forward to rejoining the World ARC (2027 iteration) in August 2027 but until that time, Kincsem will be doing some independent cruising. In 2026, we will start from New Zealand and visit some of the lesser visited islands in the South Pacific, including the Cook Islands, Samoa, Wallis & Fotuna, the Banks Islands and the North of Vanuatu and then sail to Australia via New Caledonia. If you are interested in joining the Kincsem team, please ask me to send you the cruising plan.

But back from the future to the present. After spending time in Somosomo, as described in the last episode of this blog, we hopped across the Somosomo Straight to Viani Bay to dive the Rainbow Reef. Viani Bay is a beautiful bay but it is full of coral so anchoring was a bit challenging. Whenever a 55 kg anchor is skipping across a rocky floor you know it’s going to be challenge. But my trusted Spade eventually hooked onto something and held well for the duration of our stay. Getting the anchor up and down has been a bit more challenging lately because our starboard anchor winch has been acting up. Sometimes when you press the button you only hear the clicking of the relay but the winch does not start. A light tap with the rubber mallet is all that is needed to get it going again but over the last few weeks, this has been more and more frequent and the necessary tabs have been getting a bit more forceful as well. But in the Fiji Compendium – a 250 page tome put together by a number of volunteer cruisers that is distributed for free - I found an electrician in Savusavu who has a great reputation for repairing electric motors and I made an appointment with him a few days hence.

At the Fiji Dive Academy in Viani Bay

Bar and Restaurant at Viani Bay Dive Resort. The resort has all but 3 cabins but the restaurant serves great food. We used the resort for diving the Rainbow Reef.

The diving on the Rainbow Reef was truly spectacular – not so much because of the fish but because of the different types of coral we saw. One dive was called Purple Corner because of the many purple soft corals. Another was called White Wall because – you guessed it – it includes a big wall of all white coral. It also included a few tunnels which were very exciting for me as I have never dove into a tunnel. I have no pictures of these dives but videos are in the Videos section of this website if you’re interested. https://kincsem-adventures.skipperblogs.com/videos.

We needed to get to Savusavu, a larger town, for two reasons. First, because Jeremy and Nicole wanted to go to their favorite restaurant there for their silver wedding anniversary – congratulations, Jeremy & Nicole! Second, we needed to have Rome, the electrician, fix the starboard anchor winch. The appointment with Rome was a 8:30 and he was on time – showing up with his young trainee. He confirmed my thought that the brushes needed replacing and he said he had done that on a winch like mine just last week – a good sign! Taking the winch off was hard work for the trainee – it weighs 34 kgs!

Savusavu – why is it that many names in Fiji are double takes? We cleared in at Lomaloma, we are going to Savusavu and we have to do Sevusevu to get permission to anchor!?? Well, ChatGPT doesn’t know the answer and who cares - Savusavu is a delightful town. There is very little, if any tourism except for the few yachts in the two marinas. There are no less than seven “supermarkets” – which sell mostly the same stuff, like spam and frozen chicken feeta and, of course, large sacks of rice. None of them carry French or Italian cheese or cooked or smoked ham or salami. I could not even find a salt shaker. But people seem to survive somehow! People laugh a lot and are incredibly friendly.

At the bus depot; Hino is not a Chinese company but a Toyota subsidiary

Sunbrellas? Yes and no - multi use against sun and rain!

Some nice and some not so nice houses!

We had the good sense of not eating here

Home Depot Fiji style!

Rome came back a couple of days later and with my help, installed the winch again. He complained about his trainee – why would a young guy like him go off on vacation when there was work to do? But still, he was the best trainee he had had in a long time. We tested the winch – purred like a cat for a few times. Then I tried it again from the helm station – nothing. Rome looked distressed but calmly declared he would have to go for lunch and then take it off again. The next day he came back and reinstalled the winch: it was working perfectly. He explained that he discovered a broken washer which shorted out the motor. He hadn’t noticed the problem before because he hadn’t needed to disassemble the entire motor to replace the brushes. When it came to payment he said his accountant said F$600 but he’d give it to me for F$495 because he hadn’t fixed the winch the first time around. This is about US $240 – and included a half-day taxi trip to the next town to pick up the new brushes! Of course I gave him the full F$600, still an excellent deal. The winch has been working flawlessly since.

If you look at a map of Fiji, it’s a straight shot from Savusavu to Nadi on the West side, which is close to Musket Cove. However, what looks like open sea is covered by coral reefs. To get through the maze of reefs one has to get through a number of narrow passes and then follow a winding, narrow fairway between reefs along the entire North side of Viti Levu. As always in coral waters, I overlay satellite pictures over the course to make sure that we’re not hitting any reefs. In critical places, we also have someone on the bow and of course, the forward looking sonar running. One entertainment was to see whether the various markers indicated in the chart actually existed. Less than 50% did!