Where in the world…

 This is the ‘where in the world are you, anyway?’ post.

Fiji.  In the middle of the South Pacific.  Best look I could find is from Google Earth:

So you have Hawaii in the upper right-hand corner, New Zealand at 6 o’clock, Oz at 8 o’clock and Fiji right dead center.  Can’t you see me waving?

Let’s zoom in a bit…

There’s some places you might have heard of:  American Samoa, Tonga.  Fiji is there at 9 o’clock.

Zooming in some more…

There are two big islands and a ton of small ones and coral atolls.  Savusavu is approximately in the middle.

You guessed it - we’re going to zoom in some more…

South shore of Vanua Levu island.  Says ‘100 mi’ in the GE legend.  Seems about right for the horizontal distance shown.  Savusavu is the dead center.

OK, closer still.  25 mi scale.

Ok, sailors take note - this is where it gets interesting.  You see that appendage pointing down to the lower left-hand corner?  The pale green is one big-ass coral reef.  There is a resort on the tip of land associated with the Cousteau Foundation.  (Of Jacques Cousteau fame). The anchorage there is sweet - clean sand, 20 feet of water, and you can swim to the reef.  Or you can dinghy around the reef tying up at moorings.  Was there with Joe and Michelle last Tuesday.  The water was crystal clear and a 6-ft. white tip reef shark came up to within 20 feet of Joe.  I didn’t see it, on course.  I was busy filming straight down.  Probably for the best.

Moving right along - Savusavu!

The bustling metropolis of Savusavu.  The blue dot is our mooring.  The waterway is Nakama Creek and is a series of mooring fields run by three separate marinas. A fourth marina is being built on the island in the center of the pic.  They have already dredged for slips so hopefully they won’t add to the congestion of the moorings.  There is a path between the boats but it takes a bit of getting used to,

Speaking of paths, here is the path I have to trace with Peregrine to get to our mooring.

This is a Navionics chart.  The red trace is my path.  It’s kind of marked; there are tall steel poles with faded red and green signs on them that mark the really dangerous bommies.  (Coral outcrops are called ‘bommies’ for some reason.  They are hard on your hull.)  Oh, and the red and green convention is backwards.  It’s Green Right Returning here.  Even the dinghy must follow this path as the bommies at low tide are close enough to the surface to ruin a prop on the outboard.

I think it’s time for a swim.