Cyclone season in a brand new marina is quiet. Only a couple of boats have people on them. We thought we’d be in a bigger hurry to leave, but it’s actually a pretty nice chill place to spend some time. We’re slowly getting things together, and will move on soon enough, though.
Afternoon routine doesn’t vary much. We grab our snorkel gear and the surfboard, zip outside the bay and then Ouest jumps on the board for the first skurf (water skiing with a surfboard) for about two miles. Then Lowe hops in for a turn and when we get to the mooring balls at the Split Rock coral head he lets go and I tie us off. We all jump in and snorkel the coral for a while, then tend to slowly drift on out to deeper water. Not too far off it levels off at seventy-two feet (the kids got dive watches for Christmas so we actually know the exact depth now). We hang out there, do some freedives, blow some bubble rings, and just float around enjoying the water. After about an hour we climb back in the dinghy and the kids take turns skurfing home again. This has definitely become the routine that everyone expects to happen each afternoon.
We have never seen another person out at Split Rock, but that doesn’t seem to keep the fish from expecting to be fed when we jump in. Little buggers nip my legs all the time.
Snack foods aren’t what we’re used to, but they’re good.
No matter where we are we always fall back on Mexican food. Avocados are in season. They are massive, and cost a dollar.
This clown fish lives here and you better not even try to encroach on his territory. He will come for you.
About twenty feet down there is a crack that goes through this mass of coral (Split Rock). It’s about thirty feet long and just wide enough to swim through. Not too confining, but also takes some effort not to kick the coral, so after the first couple of times we don’t really go through there any more.
Lots of coral closer to shore, too. One thing they don’t have here is big fish. No sharks, only a couple small eels, a couple of rays, and no fish that would be worth spearing if you were looking for them. Lots of teeny tiny fish, and some nice coral, but that’s about it. As someone who actively seeks out things with big teeth it’s a little disappointing in that regard.
Getting to be about dinner time.
Speaking of routines, here’s my shopping. The family quickly grew tired of this routine, so I do this mostly (every other day maybe) on my own. I take the dinghy across from the marina to the dock in town that is just a block from this spot. From here I have Maravu Meats across the street. They have good chicken breasts, okay ground beef, and some other things that are probably good, but that we wouldn’t really eat.
A couple doors further along is The Bread Kitchen. Everything here is fresh and ridiculously inexpensive. However, anything not eaten that day will probably have to have mold scraped off of it by day two.
Supermarket stop number one. Maybe once a week this store might surprise me with some random fruit or vegetable I don’t see anywhere else, like seedless red grapes, a head of iceburg lettuce, or maybe even some imported tomatoes. Usually, though, I just get potatoes and onions here. Most of the other stuff is available at the market.
Across the street is the IGA. Apples are about the only thing I ever get here. This is where I grab other day-to-day snack type stuff like granola bars, rice cakes, peanuts, Indian snack foods, M&Ms and gummy worms. It’s also where I scored tortillas and refried beans. Since I bought out their bean supply there has been no shelf refresh. Makes me think that was a one off.
The lad on the left of this picture is the produce weigher. They don’t do that at checkout in most of the world. Usually, like here, you bag up what you want, they weigh it and print out a price sticker, then use the sticker to close the bag up tight.
Each grocery store also includes a little side annex of beer and liquor.
Now loaded down with bags of groceries I walk over to the fruit and veg market. There are probably about two dozen vendors in here with their own tables. Almost every table holds the same thing, but again, if you walk through slowly you can sometimes find a surprise. Lettuce is really hard to come by on this island, but every so often there will be one lady in here who has cut a few small stalks of some sort of leafy lettuce out of her garden that day. And every week or so there might be one or two people with some small tomatoes available. Two things I buy every time from the same two vendors is an 8 kilo ($8 Fijian, $3.20 US) watermelon, and a pre-sliced pineapple or two ($4 Fijian, $1.60 US)
Making dinner on the back step.
And that’s a full day here in Savusavu.
Finally got to work on the new trampolines. They are awesome. We’re all really happy with the upgrade here. The old ones had definitely reached their end of life.
I wasn’t comfortable walking near the edges as this was starting to happen regularly.
The new nets. The company already had the dimensions for our boat, including all the attachment points, as well as pre-cut dyneema (labeled nicely) and instructions for exactly how to lace them. They also tossed in some gloves with rubber grip and two hooks, all of which were extremely useful in tightening everything up. I don’t shout out companies very often, but I’m so happy with the quality and service here that I think Sunrise Yacht Products (www.multihullnets.com) deserves it.
Why black instead of white? Because you can actually see through black better.
Things are tightened up pretty well, but over the next couple of weeks I’ll keep cinching it up as it settles in. It’s way more comfortable to walk on, kids can actually jump on it and I won’t wince, waiting for them to pop right through, and I can climb out there in rough seas and concentrate on the sails instead of where I’m stepping. All in all, this is one of the better upgrades we’ve made.
30 Comments on “The Savusavu Routine”
Wow! Great pictures, great story!
Thanks for the great update. Nice to know your “routines,” which sound wonderful!!
We weigh our produce and print a sticker. We have been doing this since about 1990. Makes for a faster checkout.
Completely agree about the nets and service from Sunrise…we upgraded ours last year and love it!
Black is more UV resistant than white do should last longer. Those Indian snacks are great.
Black is actually more UV resistant than white so should last longer.
I’ve not seen coral that looks so healthy where I’ve snorkeled and dove, Caribbean islands. I do remember it looking like that in Cayman but it was over 30 years ago. Now? All bleached out and dead looking.
I don’t think most people realize how bad the Caribbean is. Of course there are pockets of decent coral in the Carib, but overall it’s a really disappointing place. These Fiji pics are only three miles out of town and are still in a bay type area, so this isn’t even representative of how good the coral is in Fiji.
Lots of good stuff! I always think it’s hilarious when Pat will talk about how hard it is to get certain food items like “I found 1/4 of an egg and two molecules of beans” and then the picture of the booze section will have every type of alcohol imaginable, all shiny new bottles. Don’t get me wrong, I like to drink but it amazes me how strong and thorough the booze distribution business is worldwide.
So true. And I didn’t even mention that there are actual liquor stores in town, too, not just these little grocery store annexes.
That was a very well documented update, great pictures as usual, snorkling in Fiji is some of the best in the world.
I have been following a few YouTube videos about couples and families cruising the world and recently found “The O’Kelly’s” which I was pleasantly surprised to see he co-authored the book Live on the Margin with you.
I’m surprised they have not been able to buy new boat yet, hopefully they find something soon.
I have been researching Nautitech Open 40’s and there are quite a few nice ones for sale, (my wife gave the go-ahead to start looking at a new cruising catamaran), seems there are problems with some manufacturers, we are in the early stage of research so need to find a reputable cat builder to avoid major warranty and repair issues.
Any recommendations you can give would be appreciated.
David
haha, we are the last people you’d want to ask that question. We bought our first cat on the first day of looking. We bought our monohull sight unseen on Craigslist. The Grand Banks was the first boat we looked at. And this catamaran was the only boat we looked at. I have never spent any time contemplating different boats. Personally, I think people spend waaayyyyyy too much time preparing to do and too little time doing. Don’t worry too much about the boat, pick one you like, and go.
Great update….Keep safe…
Find the local bread maker right next to the fruit and veg market. Also surprised you do not mention the fish market. I spent a while in Savusavu in 2022 and 2023.
Yeah, this wasn’t a full accounting of everything in Savusavu, just one typical day’s shopping for us.
Always nice to read your updates. You all do a great job with the photography. Safe travels 😊
Really nice to see healthy coral! The nets look first class!
Oh man! These pics are absolutely breathtaking! Would it be completely impractical to have a potted tomato plant aboard? I think the cherry tomato plants produce a lot throughout the season. Being a landlubber, I have no idea how impractical that may be. At any rate, love this update. Still awaiting a boat tour, though. She’s a beauty from the outside.
Boat tour. It’s funny, we just don’t think about the boat all that much. To us it’s just another boat. Catamarans overall are pretty uninteresting boats. No teak, no surprises, just the same basic layout on every one of them. Aside from sleeping I doubt if I spend fifteen minutes a day inside the boat (if anything, that number is exaggerated to the upside). Our Spindrift monohull and the Grand Banks were actually interesting boats to look through. But I get it, not everyone lives on boat, so we’ll try and put together a boat tour one of these days for you landlubbers. 🙂
As for plants onboard… you could probably manage a tomato plant, but seems like it’d likely be a mess, and there’s also a good chance Customs wouldn’t appreciate it when you showed up with a plant. I know there are people that do it, though.
Thanks for the lovely update and beautiful pictures.
Fun to read! We were in Savusavu in 2022 and I remember hitting all the same provisioning stops. Bread Kitchen was our carb-eating kids’ favorite and I, too, was delighted to find refried beans! Enjoy the rest of your time in Fiji. We loved it and snorkeling there was unmatched.
Great update! Reading between the lines, I sense that you’re stoked to be back in your element, Pat.
Wow – An 8 kilo (17.6 pound) watermelon for $3.20usd is astonishing to me! I live in Yuma, Arizona these days, and this is where much of the continental US supply of such things originates during the colder six months of the year – yet I pay twice that for what I consider small-ish watermelons from the local Kroger supermarket.
Upgrading your tramps was a smart move. It looks like a professional installation, too, and it must be a blessing to have Ouest and Lowe to assist you as their competence with such duties just expands. Working the foredeck in the middle of the ocean atop a tramp you can’t entirely trust certainly drains all the joy out of sailing, IMO.
The idea of growing your own tomatoes aboard makes me think of two movies I love . . . “Mister Roberts”, a 1955 film with Henry Fonda and Jack Lemmon, and “The Caine Mutiny”, a 1954 film starring Humphrey Bogart. In “Mister Roberts”, it’s the despised Captain’s beloved Palm Trees that get chucked overboard, while in “The Caine Mutiny”, it’s the mentally ill Capt. Queeg’s prized strawberries that are a major plot point.
I suppose if you’re the Benevolent Dictator sort of Captain, your crew probably won’t mutiny, Pat.
Not to jump too far ahead in the story of this circumnavigation, but are you giving any thought yet to dealing with getting around Africa? Will you again choose the Gulf of Aden/Red Sea/Suez Canal course to enter the Med? It’s not exactly an appealing option these days, but then the Cape of Good Hope has challenges of its own, to say the least, and could greatly affect your decision whether to include the Med at all.
Lastly, I always enjoy your pics and looking closely at the details to analyze how certain shots were achieved. I have to admit, though, you’ve stumped me on the two pictures of your young surfers in reflected images that seem to be from overhead yet clearly show the skeg, as well. I’d guess that they’re shot from below the surface, but how to explain the reflected image clearly giving a top-down view as though shot from the drone? Nicely done, Pat.
TJ
When we go snorkel/freediving we tend to drift off and do our own thing at some point. I spotted Lowe goofing around with the surfboard as I was coming back up from a dive. I thought it looked cool, too. I’ll leave it to you to figure out the pics.
Plan is Cape of Good Hope. We’ll see.
I can only see two ways to get this shot:
1 – The board is upside down and floating on the surface, and Lowe’s feet are in the straps as he assumes the surfing position, or . . .
2 – They have a different physics in Fiji.
Either way, that’s an awesome shot.
Big sharks off Nadi. We dove there and there were massive bull sharks. Sadly the tiger shark didn’t make an appearance.
Try diving at Namena Marine Reserve. Was our fav in Fiji.
We’ve got the Namena dives planned for next week. Can’t wait. Will be doing more in Nadi, too. Big sharks would be fun!
Still blows me away how big the kids are! Been so many years now and I’m still keeping up with you guys. Hope we cross wakes someday, till then stay safe.
Did Duran Duran ever play sausavu?
Ni sa yadra! This stuff brings me back to my childhood in Levuka and Suva. Miss the Hot Bread Kitchen and the Indian bean snacks.
You might want to watch out for lettuce. Rat lungworm is a thing in the Pacific – rats carry a parasite that causes menegitis – when they poop, slugs eat the poop and carry the parasite – then when the slugs travel around stuff you consume raw (like lettuce), it goes straight to your brain. My mom got menegitis that way.
Here in Hawai’i, we only eat locally grown lettuce if it’s grown hydroponically (which actually might be a great grow for your boat?) or if we have grow it ourselves and know it’s got a nuclear arsenal against slugs.
Also: no matter what anyone says, the only way to be 100% sure your food is rat lungworm free is to cook it or freeze it – that’s the only way to kill the parasite.
How is the pool coming along at the marina? We were bummed it was still under construction while we were there. Maybe next season…