We leave the beautiful, and not totally explored island of Kadavu to go to Musket Cove.  It is only 100nm from our current location, but we need to do an overnight to ensure we arrive at daylight (famous last words).  We pick up the hook at 0700 and head around the island to the SW side and drop the hook at Cape Washington / Denham Island for a quick lunch stop. 

Cape Washington

Wow, what a truly beautiful spot with such a diverse landscape!  You look one way and you see long, white sandy beaches, another direction is a towering lime stone hillside, and behind you is a deserted resort begging to be brought back to life.

After our lunch, we make way toward Musket Cove which was a super easy and very pleasant passage. 

Trip Details

• Total Miles:  96nm
• Max Speed: 10.6kt
• Average Speed: 6.0kt
• Waves were following at 1-1.5m
• Total Moving Time :16 hours

We have a spectacular sunrise.  The white spots are stars and the large dot near the tallest mountain is the moon.

Just because I am so in love with sunsets, here is another one about 30 minutes later.

Remember how I said we left late afternoon to ensure we would arrive at daybreak?  Well that did not work out so well.  We arrived at 0330 and decided to enter the shipping channel which was wide, deep, and well lit.  We had no problems, then headed to the anchorage, dropped the hook and took a nap.

It is super pretty here with gorgeous views, despite the many boats that are here (well over 60!)

We head to shore to explore and have some lunch.  There is a little resort on Malolo island (aka Musket Cove) and loads of cruisers wondering about.  A little supermarket, pharmacy, laundry, showers, and trash are available.  In addition to the multiple bars and restaurants.

Snorkeling the Reef

The next day we head out to the reef and a popular bommie (right in the center of the channel).  Boy these two places were fun.  Not a ton of fish, but super interesting coral, schools of reef fish and more.

These look like they would be hard corals, but they were in fact soft.

The coral had beautiful formations, indents, and caverns.

And I fell in love with all of the brilliantly, bright blue starfish.  These are the obvious ones that were begging to be noticed.

These were the shy ones that made me look for them.  I love the upper left one where he looks like he is hugging the coral.

Seventh Heaven

After our snorkel, we decided to do a drive by a place called Seventh Heaven.  This place has only been open for 4 months and sort of is a copy cat to Cloud 9.  But, we are equal sharers in love so we stopped by.  You pay $50F up front and that amount is applied to your food, drinks, water toy rentals, massage, and items purchased at the store.  We did not have any problems meeting that quota.

The food was amaze balls and the drinks were delicious.

Yep, life is good on Sugar Shack!

The boys even take the “Leap of Faith”

Port Denarau

It was time to take Wayne back to the main island of Viti Levu where he could catch his flight.  So, we motored the 2 hours to Port Denarau.  Well, this is very similar to Tahiti.  It is necessary evil to have to come here.  We need to provision, fuel, dump trash, and deliver Wayne.  But, YUCK the water is green and muddy, there are tons of boats, tourists, cruise ships, and just “so much.”

Wayne’s funny track from this holiday.  We really had a silly sail plan, but this is what the weather allowed us to do so we sailed 6 of his 20 days with a total of almost 700nm!

Stay tuned for more on Port Denarau next week.

Events from this blog occurred in the first two weeks of July.  Our blog posts run 8-10 weeks behind actual events.   In our last blog, we continue our Lao Group Island Tour.