Saturday, September 5, 2009

SHIMMI ZERO

Well, my dearest blog readers, we are getting to the end of our Fiji adventure. We have had 3 sets of visitors and with each we have had a unique shimmi experience. The are roughly 4 kinds of shimmi experiences:
1. Shimmi "Zero": this is when you are tied up in the marina most of the time with short hops mostly inside the lagoon and very safe "bullet proof" anchorages. Lots of beaching, surfing and resort swimming pools.
2. Shimmi "Light": few days in the marina, few rolly anchorages, bit of open ocean sailing. One or two surfs at known spots, a sevu-sevu ceremony and a few boat jobs.
3. Shimmi "Medium": Some dodgy anchorages, maybe one or two overnight crossings, bit of rough weather, some throwing up, multiple sevu-sevu's in remote locations, full on surf exploration, you are lucky if you get a wave. At least one big repair job. Most of our life aboard shimmi has been SHIMMI MEDIUM.
4. Shimmi "Hero" - Full Strength Shimmi: Open ocean crossings lasting weeks, storms, too scared too get seasick, no surfing for months, counting diapers and carrots. Avoid Shimmi Full Strength at all cost. If you can't, bring a spare pair of underpants.
Off course prior to arrival each visitor has a picture in their heads off what they think their shimmi experience will be, and its often not easy to match the expectation to the experience. Liz came over thinking its was going to be like "Turkish Island hopping in the med". What she got was Shimmi Medium. But she just went with the flow and in the end she was stoked to have had a "real" slice of our shimmi lives. Deon and Rosa had Shimmi Light. I think Rosa came prepared for Shimmi Full Strength, but lucky for her that never happened. They had a great trip, Rosa embraced the shimmi galley and churned out a series of meals which have since achieved legend status. Incidentely, the spinnaker raised its ugly head again during our last sail back to the marina. We were sailing dead downwind with the marina entrance dead ahead, when I tried to snuff the motherfucker. We were doing about 7 knots in 16 knots of wind. This time the sock simply would not slide more than a meter down. It was jammed tight and the spinnaker stayed full, pulling shimmi straight towards the harbour wall. After some screaming and shouting by yours truly (the spinnaker brings out the worst in me) we managed to turn shimmi around. I let all lines on the spinnaker fly, including the halyard, and finally the bastard of a sail was back on deck. Its amazing how quickly a mellow afternoon sail can go to shit. But I digress. I was talking about "the shimmi experience". After Deon and Rosa we had Rory and Vicky and their 2 sons Jamie (7), and Roan (5). Shimmi instantly became a cross between a creche, a playschool and a short order restaurant. The experience was definitely Shimmi Zero, but with 2 families on board there were times that it was as hectic as Shimmi Full Strength, with the '4 boy meal times' creating a true test of motherhood. However, for 5 days we were simply tied up at the Musket Cove Marina, acting exactly as if we were resort guests. Hung out at the pool most days, a few snorkel trips, canoe paddles, barbecues and rugby on tv. Rory and I had 3 days of great glassy surf at Wilkes Pass which is about 3 miles from Musket Cove. Wilkes is a difficult wave, its very sectiony with a strong rip which keeps you paddling non-stop. No real barrels and lots of mindless gunning down the line. After a while at the resort we decided to head north, up to the Yasawa Islands for a bit of Shimmi Light. Off course you never know when Shimmi Light may become Shimmi Medium. I suspected that the southerlies would start blowing again, and they have.
Here's Chantal's take on it:
The day before leaving Musket Cove we had some high action. A 70 year old friend of ours, Danny Miller, (whom we first met in the Galapagos) on a beautiful 60ft ketch "Jubilant", missed a channel marker on his way out, and drove straight into the reef. (Deon and Rosa: He is the older guy who joined us for dinner at Vuda Point). Golla, Rory and Russ spent the whole morning, during a falling tide, wedging wooden supports for the boat and hammering them in between the reef and the hull all in a great hurry before the tide got too low. This was to stop the boat from getting holed on the bommies when it healed over. But they got that done and watched as the tide dropped out with Jubilant well supported. There is only one thing worse than running aground: that's running aground at Musket Cove within plain sight of 30 other yachts and 2 big resorts! On the plus side it meant that help was at hand. Danny just sat dumbfounded on his healed over boat, watching Golla and co get on with the job at hand. The boat was lying on its port side...looked terrible. At 3 pm the tide was high enough again and my darling super husband got that boat OFF the reef, pushing it with our dingy like a little tug boat. And you know what? Danny Miller left the next day without even saying "thank you". As Deon would say: "Shabby".
After a week in Musket we decided that the surf was going to get smaller and blown out by the SE wind so we agreed to do a little tour of the southern Yasawas which has no surf. On our itinerary was the island where the Tom Hanks movie "Castaway" was filmed as well as another island which was the location for the movie "Blue Lagoon" with Brooke Shields. I think Vicky was stoked because no surf would mean more time on different beaches for the kiddies. Vicky's expectation for her holiday was definitely Shimmi Zero... this is a common holiday fantasy wherein Shimmi functions as a self catering hotel room within snorkel distance of a pristine beach. As Liz would say: "In your dreams, honey, in your dreams!" Jacques too will confirm that this is strictly a fantasy and that shimmi is just another place where real life happens. If you join us, be prepared to go from Zero to Hero (Full Strength) at a short notice, hahaha. What happened in the end was that the wind was more out of the South rather than ESE so all the anchorages were blown out and we struggled for 2 days to find a suitable anchorage, at least with all the driving, Rory managed to hook a few nice fish, the pics will come soon ....in the end the Trow family swam to the beach and checked into the Octopus Resort on Waya Island (google it) for their last 2 nights. The resort speed boat came and picked their luggage up on the Shimmi. We could not stay in the Octopus anchorage as it was blown out, and have now found some sort of shelter behind a sand spit with 4 other boats 8 miles south. We are all waiting now for favourable winds so that we can sail back to Musket Cove or Nandi/Lautoka (vuda marina.) Basically we are now stuck in no man's land. Being stuck in an anchorage is getting towards Shimmi Medium. BUT spirits are high as it is quite a novelty to just be the 4 of us. Lots of Shimmi school, bread baking, reading, little drives to the beach, sundowners with my man etc etc.
Back to Golla:
Fiji is a crazy area to cruise around because there are hundreds of uncharted reefs. You have to wear polaroids and you can only cruise in a "new" area if you have the sun from behind so you can eyeball the reefs. Danny made the classic error of leaving a tricky anchorage early in the morning with no sun. I still cant believe that we spent almost a whole day helping the guy and he just upped and left. Maybe the embarrassment fried his brain.
Overall the surf in Fiji has been a disappointment. Most of the reef passes along the coral coast of Viti Levu are flawed and get blown out by the prevailing trades. Frigates is an average wave most of the time, only getting good with a very specific swell size, direction and rare 'no wind' conditions. All the waves around Tavarua area are out of bounds except for Wilkes Pass which is a strictly B-grade wave, onshore during the trades which blow most days. By the way, Taverua gets blown out a lot, in my opinion the surf resorts like Taverua and Nomotu are bit of a joke. And an expensive joke at that. We found a great wave in Lau Island called "Vinaka". It has real class, but its hard to get to, very remote, with big gaps between islands. Up in the Taveuni area we discovered a wave we called Googles, but this area has a small swell window and faces into the prevailing winds. Another problem is that most of the waves are situated on the outskirts of outlying barrier reefs. This means that there is no landmass nearby to create offshore conditions and there are no overnight anchorages nearby. Any wind ends up being a bad wind, especially during high tide when an offshore will blow the lagoon chop into the wave face. All of my best sessions in Fiji were during those rare glassy moments, but these were few and far between. I am sorry, but the verdict is out: The surf in Fiji sucks. Those of you who think it has great waves should travel more, hahaha. The reef pass hit rate in French Polynesia area is much higher, for some reason the reef passes in Fiji are not nearly as good. What I have noticed is that many of the Fijian reef passes and outer reefs have quite box shaped narrow shelves which drop off vertically, not gradually as in Tahiti. In Tahiti the reef passes are also much closer to the land, so they don't get blown out. But I dont really want to compare Fiji to Tahiti. We are enjoying the friendly Fijians immensely, the vibe here is just fantastic. And on that note I will say bye for now. Our next mission is to get shimmi to Australia (Brisbane), where we will sell her. We are looking for crew to help us sail to Oz with probably a stop in New Caledonia (which has a wealth of surf near Noumea). If you know of anyone who is looking for some real adventure (SHIMMI MEDIUM!!!) please let us know. We plan to leave Fiji around mid September and we should be in Brisbane early October. Anyone keen?
Cheers
G