As we near the end of the Konis family trip, we visit 4 islands in their last few days onboard Sugar Shack.  We stop in Naviti, Mana, Malolo, and Viti Levu in 3 days!

Day 9: Naviti Island to Mana Island

We were blessed with northerly winds which gave us a super comfortable downwind sail with our medium size spinnaker.  Everyone was a little nervous considering our last “longish” passage was pretty rough.  This time they all enjoyed the calm conditions as we surfed the seas and averaged 7kts to Mana Island.   35nm down in a blink of the eye.

I love exploring all of these islands for the first time with my family!  They get to see how we navigate into new passes and anchorages.  The pass into Mana island is crazy narrow and curvy.  It is certainly a challenge, especially during low tide.  But we manage to enter it and drop the hook with no issues (thank goodness).

We frolic in the water in the afternoon and enjoy a tasty porkchop dinner and chocolate raspberry ice cream for dessert.   Then we get real goofy watching Zoolander 2.

Day 10: Mana Island and Malolo Island

The next morning, we go ashore to explore Mana island.  It is filled with many backpacker resorts on one side of the island and a posh resort on the other.  A huge ugly fence separates the two halves of the island which is rather unfortunate!  The village and backpacker side is super friendly and very welcoming to cruisers.  We enjoyed some cold beverages, a walk through their small market, and chatting with the locals.  We did venture around the fence to the resort side and found it to be a typical posh resort.   Friendly enough to us, but not overly welcoming like we are used to with the Fijian culture.

This was a funny sign using “kava” as a pun…

The anchorage looks so pretty and peaceful from shore.

We ran into some beautiful little children while here.

We tried to do sevusevu here as well but the chief was not on island during our visit.  The local lady suggested we buy from the artisans instead of presenting kava and we happily obliged as they had some lovely wares.

We left early afternoon to visit Cloud 9, a similar over the water bar as Seventh Heaven. We were very surprised by the large number of people that came and went (in 2-hour increments) and the slow service.  Very different atmosphere than Seventh Heaven, but the food was good and the drinks were cold!

Even though it was drizzling a little, we still enjoyed ourselves.

A huge rain cloud was coming our way so we quickly headed back to Sugar Shack to motor to the east side Malolo Island.  We were hoping for protection from the winds, but as it turned out the weather forecast was delayed and we ended having a super bumpy night.

We were blessed with a beautiful double rainbow after the showers stopped.

The Musket Cove anchorage is super crowded – we spotted over 50 boats on AIS alone plus another 20-30 boats not broadcasting. Good thing we did not go there to anchor in that mess!

Day 11:  Malolo, Musket Cove

There is a pass from our anchorage to the Musket Cove anchorage.  We thought we could easily traverse this but we did not take into account the King tide.  Of course, it was low, low tide when we wanted to go ashore.  So, we dinghied to the reef, found some sandy areas and gently walked across to the shore.  Once onshore, we found a beautiful little trail that lead us all the way to the Musket Cove Resort.

We had lunch at Dick’s Place and enjoyed some pool time at the resort.  A calm, chill day.

Day 12: Malolo Island to Port Denarau

Around mid-day we leave Malolo Island for Port Denarau.  It is a short 2-hour motor directly into the wind.  We grab a mooring and decide to head to shore for a late lunch and then well-deserved hot showers (love marina life sometimes).

Back to the boat to pack and enjoy bhan mi for dinner.  We were meeting our taxi driver across from the “Sails Restaurant” who happened to be hosting a special event.  Outside Sails were some beautiful local Fijian dancers who gave the Konis family a proper send off!

It was so much fun having Troy, Kimberly, Cole and Cameron onboard as we explored the Mamanuca and Yasawa islands.  We are so grateful they chose to spend their holidays with us onboard Sugar Shack!

Events from this blog occurred in the first two week of August.  Our blog posts run 8-10 weeks behind actual events.   In our last blog, we adventure through a series of underwater caves in the island of Sawa-I-Lau.