Hello again!  I hope you are returning to finish reading about our Fiji Sailing Adventure.  If you have not already, we suggest you read part one or you will surely be lost, Gilligan.  To recap, we had just completed our midweek and requisite dinner off the boat at a local Fijian resort, giving the crew a chance to turn our cabins.

Her View

Thursday, I woke with this, and was not sure what it was from. I got a benadryl from Bex and starting rubbing aquaphor on it. It didn’t really hurt, but it was tender and really weird to eat and drink.  #kyliejennerlipsforfree. On this day we went to Musket Sand Bank, this was the first day we jumped off the front of the yacht, which was so cool. Bex got super hot after diving and putting the equipment away and jumped off the bow of the boat (front), she came up from the water and said who’s next!  Of course Derek and I were on this. Ann said when she saw Bex do it, she looked over at us and wondered if we were going to do it as well. I said, good guess. I had been dying to do that!

Also on this day we got to swim with hundreds of squid which was just an incredible moment. The fish would just swim around you so many different kinds and colors and hundreds at at time.  The coral was beautiful as well.

After that we went to RoRo Reef and the water was so much like the Caribbean here, actually we called it a swimming pool.  It was beautiful, calm, blue and I honestly think we all had the most relaxing fun here. We drank floating on our noodles, swam under the yacht, swam around in general, Derek paddle boarded for the first time (and killed it of course).  It was just incredible. Bex and Nofo said this is one of their favorite places to go, but the weather never allows for them to do it, this was only their second trip in a year and half to this location. We felt blessed to get to do that with them.  Sadly, after lunch, the waves really picked up and the calm was gone. We packed it up and headed to our next location.

The days start to blend together and we crisscrossed our paths a couple of times because the weather was so nice.  There was a day of swimming with reef sharks, which was bad ass! A day where we went to Castaway Island, this is where they filmed the movie, and it shows how movie magic really works! This island gets hot, they kept saying we have to get here before noon, otherwise the sand gets too hot to walk on.  I could actually only stand to be on it for about 30 minutes, it was incredibly hot. So we swam back to the boat and got lots of little baby jellyfish stings. We could not figure out what they were, but we mentioned it to Bex and she said that is probably what it was. She sprayed us with vinegar told us to let it set about 15 minutes to neutralize them and then rinse.  It worked, DO NOT, I repeat DO NOT pee on yourself or anyone else if they get a jellyfish string! Look it up, it makes it worse!

One night we traveled (we got to sail again, which I love, it so cool when the engine goes off and the wind just takes you where you are going), to Survivor Island.  This is the island survivor leases when they are doing Fiji challenges, which is a lot. They currently have a three year lease and we found out some interesting stuff.  We saw the cottages they have built for crew and for cast members. We were there pre-filming, but they were still filming lots of stuff. Like intro dancing from the tribes and stuff like that.   FYI, it does not go down like you think it does. The world of TV magic. The island had a lot of traffic and they use water cabs essentially to move around. Also we were told when we were at Castaway, that from like March 21 for three weeks the island would be off limits for filming challenges.  The whole things was interesting. Once the show airs we are going to try and match of photos of large groups of people diving and moving around in general. We will let you know.

So, like I said at this point the days have all blended together.  But I can tell you on Thursday night, we were docked for the night and I bet a wager that I hardcore LOST.  So, Penny, my adorable Penny, one of our boat mates, is not a strong swimmer like I am, but she is a bit more concerned about it than I am.  She had not spent a lot of time in the water and I was 100% certain that when someone told her to jump off the front of the yacht that she would never do that.  So I said, you know Penny, if you jump off the front off the front of this boat, I will do it with you fully clothed (I had changed out of my suit at this point) and….I have my good Bra on!  She laughed, her husband and friends looked at me and said, oh man that is a good bet. So while she was going back and forth on if she was going to do that. I had to pee, so I told her, you let me know when I get back.  I told Derek what was happening and the possibility that boobies could be out, oh did I mention that my bra was strapless as well as my top. This is a big wager here folks!

When I get back upstairs and up to the front of the boat there is Penny waiting for me.  I was like well eff, a bet is a bet, lets go. I honestly never thought she would do it, but man did we have fun jumping off that boat.  So much that we started a trend and everyone began jumping off the front of the boat, swimming around, getting back on and jumping again.  Penny and I laughed and laughed and laughed. Her friend Ann, said, Oh those two could get in a lot of trouble together.

I had to take a full on shower with my bra to be sure I got it fully rinsed since I needed it the next night for dinner out.  Funny, when I took it off, the cups of the bra held all of that water, so like I said, my good bra! It was definitely one of the most fun moments we had on the boat as friends.

I will let Derek tell you about the day he got to be Captain Derek and not only drive the boat, but he got to sail it as well.

On Friday, the day before our last day, we had literally the BEST snorkeling experience of my life.  We went to Honeymoon Bay, where the water was clear and still, so the colors were bright and I could get right over the reefs to really see the sea life and the coral clearly.  I actually had an entire school of fish swim with me, it was amazing! I mean, honestly I cannot describe it. It was like being in fish tank, they just swam in and out of your legs and arms.  We saw the most royal blue starfish (photo here) and the most colorful coral.  We lost track of time but Derek and some point tapped my leg and pointed out how far we had gotten from the boat and that kind of put time into perspective for me.  Again, not a strong swimmer, so the farther away the farther back. We started back to take a break. We took a little break and decided we had time to head to the other side of Honeymoon Island, where we spent another hour snorkeling.  You just get lost in this world under the sea that, as humans, we will never fully understand and it is so majestic.

As we swam back, you could just feel the trip coming to an end.  There is a little excitement, in that you are going to take a real shower soon and get to use as much toilet paper as you want, also the ice thing and air conditioning.  But sadness that the adventure is coming to an end and the connections you have made with all of these really great people, it won’t end but you won’t be seeing each other every day anymore either.  It is just weird and surreal, we hardly know them, but in less than a week we all became this little family. We climbed on-board and broke out the cocktails.

Somewhere along our trip I became DJ Taunya and I had my phone hooked up to the boat speakers and let me tell you, I have some great playlists! Nofu the captain loved my yacht rock list.  The entire time we sailed she was dancing and singing to almost all of those sings, which I find fitting, since she is a yacht captain! LOL. Everytime I looked around on the boat, one of us was dancing to the songs that were playing.  But a little extra on the last day. A little melancholy like at this point, you know it is the last full day so you are trying to make the best of every last moment. So drink the drink and dance to the songs, we are about to pull into our last night on the boat and dock back at our starting point.  

We have one last night out for dinner together and since we are docked, we have full a/c running the whole time so the cabin is super cool, I can take a nice long shower and I can blow dry my hair.  That was glorious in itself. So we took our time getting ready and all snazzed up. Then we headed out to dinner with our new found friends.

We ate at Rhum-Ba, did some more of that fun chatting and then sadly I started to not feel well.  I got a really bad headache and as soon as we were done I went straight to bed. Missed hanging out with everyone that last night, but I slept really well.

We did sign up for some more boat excursions with Tradewinds because we really enjoyed our time except for a few amenities that would have been more up our alley.  Like a bigger room and A/C anytime we wanted it. I attributed this more like a camping trip and I am not that fond of camping unless I have all the comforts I like!  So good news, we will be taking another yacht trip but on one of their Flagship Yachts, bigger, more room in our cabin, ac, food all day, you know the luxuries of life.

When we were debating on another trip the gentleman we were talking to looks straight at us and says, I get the feeling you like the finer things in life, we chuckled and said well ya!  He said, nothing wrong with that, I am the same way! So they hooked us up! It is going to be totally worth it. The only question now is, where, where shall we go?

— Taunya

His View

We hello again fellow travelers, are your ready to continue our adventure? I hope you enjoy reading about it as much I am enjoying sharing it with you. Let’s continue shall we!

The morning after our dinner ashore was another clear and beautiful morning, although we did miss the actual sunrise.   Before breakfast we motored about a mile to the west and stopped at a sand bank. I believe they call this the magic island, because at low tide the sand bank is exposed, but at high tide it’s covered.  We saw some people make a run to the bank on jet skis, and the water was still shallow enough for them to get off and stand comfortably. After breakfast there was more snorkeling, however unfortunately my sunburn was still bothering me enough that I didn’t feel that well, so we did not snorkel here. I did jump in the water to keep cool however.

At about eleven we moved on.  The weather was phenomenal, and I heard Bex talking to Aunofo about checking out RoRo reef.  There is a barrier reef off the coast of the main island, that is famous for its big surfing.  After asking questions, we determined that normally the waves are way too rough to go there. Today it was like glass.  We anchored in probably the shallowest water so so far. The water was so clear we could see easily all the way to the bottom, and it was such a brilliant light turquoise color that I had not seen since the Bahamas.  It was quite literally like a warm swimming pool. This wasn’t the best snorkeling location, so I tried paddle boarding for the first time. I got on the board quickly, but fell after about a minute. Getting back on, I was able to find my balance, and was able to slowly paddle around the boat.  I had no idea how much work it would be. You know when people say “hey, you are a natural”? Yeah, that was not me. I went quite a ways from the boat, but not necessarily on purpose as it took me a while to figure out how to reliably steer.

After a while I got off for more swimming. Kate and I jumped off the front of the boat, followed by several others including Taunya. Most of us just swam and floated while enjoying beers or cocktails until lunch. Someone tossed a beer and made an errant throw, and luckily I have pretty fast reflexes and snatched it out of the air before it could hit someone.  First world problems right? It was about this time we found out that we were almost of of beer. After talking with Bex we discovered that apparently, there was another previous group on Dream that drank more than us. As much as I wanted to, I did not say “Challenge accepted!”. 😀

After lunch the water was much much less calm and by now the tide had shifted.  We did get back in although it was not nearly as enjoyable, and I got swamped once and ended up with salt water in my beer.  Before it got too bad we moved on. We headed back north, although the wind was really not enough to sail. We ended up that evening stopping off Likuliku Lagoon on Malolo Island.  Looking at map, I think we only ended up about five or six miles from where we started the day, however we had taken a circuitous route and probably traveled more like twelve to fifteen miles. We anchored in pretty deep water, and we ending up having a sort of contest off the front of the boat.  Seth and Kate, ever the adventurers, were trying to outdo each other jumping into the water from the bow. I verified with Aunofo about how deep the water was, then I decided to do a swan dive. I could not allow those two to have all the fun. Taunya had already changed out of her suit, and everyone was trying to get Penny to jump in.  Finally Taunya convinced her that if Penny jumped she would jump in fully clothed. She finally acquiesced and Taunya jumped in, good bra and all!

We were docked near the the Likuliku Lagoon Resort, which has over the water huts.  Personally, I don’t think Fiji is the place to do over water rooms after seeing those, but to each their own.  Apparently we were having too much fun swimming, laughing, and having fun, because while I was changing into dry clothes the resort sent a boat over to us with a note asking us to keep the noise down.  During that evening, we heard the resort start up some sort of event. We were too far away to see it very well, but it kind of reminded me a luau. I joked to Bex if we would send over the dinghy with a note telling them their music was disrupting our dinner.  By now we had settled into a routine, at night after dinner we would hang out on upper sundeck with wine or cocktails. That night, apparently we were still being too loud because the resort shined some sort of laser at us; it was dark but not that late. Personally, I think they were jealous of all the fun we were having.

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The next morning we woke up and had our coffee on the upper deck with Seth.  It was another beautiful sunrise. As we were relaxing/waking up, Seth noticed a wake. We could not get a really good look, we just saw a nose however I am pretty confident it was a sea turtle swimming around.  After breakfast we headed over to “Honeymoon” Island for our last snorkeling trip. I think it’s real name is Mothiu Island, but it’s called Honeymoon Island because it is owned by one of the resorts and they basically drop off couples there to spend the the day alone.  I am going to be honest, by now I was kind of burnt out on the snorkeling. However, it was our last day at sea, and I didn’t want to miss out.

Boy am I glad we went, because for me this was the some of the best snorkeling we did. The tide was high enough that you could swim over the reef without worrying about the swells dropping you on them, but close enough that you felt you could touch them.  We got to see some the bright purple starfish we had seen before, but much closer. We also saw some sea cucumbers, which are kind of ugly but beautiful at the same time. I started out trying to use my phone inside my Yosh to get pictures, but ended up just swimming to the boat to grab the GoPro. I think pretty much everyone was reluctant to stop snorkeling because once we left we were heading back to the dock.  Honestly for me though, this was a great day, one of the best of the entire trip.

Finally, with everyone out of the water and fed, we prepped to head back to the dock.  I asked Aunofo if we’d be able to sail, but sadly we had to be docked before four pm for some reason this landlubber didn’t really get.  We couldn’t get enough speed under sail to make our time, so alas we motored home. I was a little surprised that we were spending our last night tied up to the dock, however we found out that it was pretty standard.  Below Deck did NOT help me out here. Once we docked, we got a sort of debrief, and were reminded that we’d be politely asked to disembark by nine am.

For our last night, we ate a the Rhum-Ba, and we all pitched in and invited the crew to join us as a thank you.  Dinner here for me was better than our midweek stop, although still not quite on par with what we had on the boat.  After dinner, a few of our group wanted to hang out around Port Denarau which has several bars and restaurants. We decided to head back to the boat.  Now that we were at the dock, we were not a slave to that damn generator and we had full time air conditioning. Considering it was our last night, I kind of wanted to hang out with our shipmates for the last time, however everyone was doing their own thing, so we ended up heading to bed.

The next morning we woke up early as usual, and had ourselves pretty much three quarters packed before breakfast.  Bruce, Penny, Steve and Ann had an early flight, however we were topside early enough to say our goodbyes. After one last delicious breakfast, it was time to leave for our trip back to reality. Our trip home was an adventure in and of itself, but that is a topic best covered in another installment of this saga.

So what are my takeaways from this little adventure?  First off, before I go anywhere again I am buying a UV blocking rash guard.  Seeing Fiji from the water is an experience next to none, and something you can’t get from staying at a resort.  Honestly, the food was absolutely incredible on the boat. My only complaint was that there were some days breakfast lacked a protein, like eggs or bacon, or where the only option was a hard boiled egg.  Lastly, I love boats and would love to try this again, but would prefer less cramped quarters. We were on the fence about buying into Tradewinds, so before dinner on the last night we met with Steve on Dream’s sister Fijian vessel, which was an older luxury boat.   And yes, after a very frank discussion we ended up becoming members, so we will definitely be blogging in the future about another trip on a Tradewinds boat, however this time it will be a Flagship boat! Maybe it will be the British Virgin Islands, maybe somewhere else in the South Pacific, or maybe some place else entirely, you’ll have to stay tuned to find out....

— Derek

Conclusion

Rest assured, this is not the end of our Fijian saga. We still have more to share, about the food, our airline travel experiences, and more over the next few weeks. So for now go! Go, live life, love life, drink life and travel for life!

Read part one of our adventure here.

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