[password] NZL9424A27ZMU3791
[position] 16 56.7S 177 21.9E
[status] On Tuesday 14th July we left Nananu-I-Cake, and motor sailed around the northern coast of Viti Levu arriving in Musket Cove on Wednesday afternoon. Musket Cove has a new Trader store, boutique and cafe. The previous Trader store burnt down and the replacement building is really lovely fitting into its surrounding really well. From here we went past the new Marina being built called Vunabaka. It has a large housing development planned ,but only the earthworks and some plantings are visible now. Give it another year and it will be a filled in area of housing with water ways and the Marina. Snorkling around the Mamanucas is good. Lots of reefs, some charted, some not. You need to be very vigilant on board while cruising around. We had a night at Monuriki Island. This is the island where the Tom Hanks move Castaway was filmed in 2000. It is a beautiful island with white sand and the brightest turquoise water surrounding one end of it. We took my sister and her husband back to Musket Cove and waited for Peter and Debra to arrive on Sunday. We are now in the Yasawa's. This is a large group of islands further north of the Mamanucas. There is a lot more wind up here whistling around us at anchor and making cruising uncomfortable. The Yasawa's is a spectacular area though and we are enjoying seeing some different landscape. Lots of resorts are scattered around here as well. We are anchored at an island called Nanuya-Sewa, the location of the Blue Lagoon movie filmed in 1980. The Nanuya Resort, has just installed 10 really large solar panels and spent a lot of money on refurbishment, it is very cruiser friendly and we enjoyed happy hour there last night and dinner. We have just come back to the boat from a walk around the island which is 5 kilometres of beach, rocks, and wadding through creeks. We had the company of a dog that was just hanging around the beach and decided to follow us. He swam and walked with us, acting as our guide.
We are all good on board and enjoying everything that Fiji has shown us to date. [END]