There are those destinations that just seem to have it all. Fulaga is like that. It has a sheltered lagoon with lots of anchor places, which are well protected from winds from all directions. It is big enough to house many boats, and you can easily find your own, private anchorage, or go where “everyone else is”. So, you can combine a remote lifestyle with a social, sundowner-on-the-beach-with-other-sailors type scenario.
The lagoon itself has crystal blue waters, and offer shallow enough anchorages for us to feel like we were anchored in a swimming pool. It has limestone islets clad all over the lagoon, which is the first we have seen in the Pacific.
There are about 400 people living inside the lagoon, and they are spread across three villages. We did the sevusevu (welcoming) ceremony at the Southern most village, Muana-i-cake.
The village is used to getting visits by sailboats, and had a good system in place, where we were assigned a host family while we were there. Our host, Qele, was a lovely lady, who introduced us to her family, including her son Noah and his wife Uni and their three sons.
We enjoyed having lunch at Qele’s house after attending church with her on a Sunday. They are mostly Lutheran Christians here, and we attended the Methodist Church for one of their four Sunday services. They start with a service at 04:00, then one at 10:00, one at 15:00 and the last one at 16:30.
The villagers are well known for their handicrafts and especially their woodwork. This lagoon supplies most of Fiji with woodwork, and we were lucky enough to get to buy some directly from the artists. There were two different wood carving “studios” which were social spots where it was easy to meet up with the locals. It turns out that almost all of the men in this village do wood carving, and fathers teach their sons.
The lagoon is perfect for wind sports like kiting and wing foiling, as well as other activities like SUP, snorkeling and diving. There were many New Zealanders who are into wind sports, who visit this lagoon every year. Combining boat life in Fiji when it is winter in New Zealand, and then going back to New Zealand for their summer, when it is cyclone season in Fiji, is popular with New Zealand sailors.
Every day this group arranged wing foiling regattas to different locations around the lagoon. We have one wing and one foil on board, but need to make some adjustments before we have a setup that works for us both. So, we spent time on learning how to kite when we were there, instead.
We had a short kiting course in Cape Verde about 12 years ago, but were both a bit rusty. We were lucky enough that our friends on SV Gerty, Michael and Jill, were there to coach us, as they have been avid kiters for several years.
We also enjoyed social activities with other sailors, and a few boats had built a location on the beach, which was baptized the Fulaga Yacht Club.
We had to take advantage of the abundance of activities which one can do here, so we also enjoyed hiking, snorkeling and diving.
We were also given a tour of the location of the old village, which was just further up the hill from the current village location. It was situated there because it was safer, when the islands were in conflict with one another. From the hill, they could easily spot if anyone entered the lagoon, and thereby prepare their defense.
On the way up to the old village, we were showed a cave, with human remains – skulls and bones. There are many stories going around that these were from cannibalism or a plague, but none of the stories have been verified. The most probable story is that in historically, this was the traditional way they buried their deceased.
Fiji is considered the soft coral capital of the world amongst divers. Most of the best known dive spots are located more to the north west, which we will visit later in the season. However, we did want to at least get one dive in, when we were here.
It is not always easy to find another boat who can be your buddy boat when diving, and since we venture outside the lagoon, we really shouldn’t go alone. We were lucky to meet another boat sharing our plans, so on a quiet day, we got to dive on the outside of the lagoon, just by the pass.
Fulaga is a very social place, and since it is so high up on the list for sailors in terms of its beauty, many boats started to trickle in over the past couple of weeks we were there. We enjoyed meeting sailors we have met several times in other anchorages across the Pacific for these past two years we have sailed here. We enjoyed several sundowners and also hosted dinner on our boat.
We were a little bit surprised about the temperature, but as it is June and mid-winter here, and we mainly have winds from the South, that means they are coming from the Ant-Arctic. Mostly we had from 20-24 degrees Celsius in the air and 26 degrees Celsius in the water.
We did have a serious blow when we were there, with winds forecasted up to 40 knots. The lagoon is very sheltered, so we were located in a very good spot for the blow.
It is certainly not easy to find a good weather window coming up from New Zealand, and even though we had a rough passage, we were very happy that we started the season here this early. When we left Fulaga after four weeks, there was almost 30 boats in the lagoon, and more will come.
This was one of the longest places we have stayed in one lagoon, and a very welcomed, calm start after a long break off the boat. We are now planning to island hop through the Lau group, so we’ll keep staying remote for another few weeks.
