6th July 2019 Waya Island, Fiji

We sailed down here this morning after spending three nights in the Blue Lagoon. Those of you who are of a certain age will probably remember the movie of the same name starring Brooke Shields. Well, we can tell you, it is simply beautiful scenery there so we can see why it was chosen. We anchored off the reef and the beach in 15 metres of water (quite deep, but everywhere around these islands seems to be deep) in the company of a few other boats: the Yasawas don't get a lot of visiting yachts despite being so beautiful.

It was Debra's birthday on Thursday and she and Nicky (from Chanto) both fancied some spa pampering at the resort and opted for two hours of massage and facial treatments. We also ate out in the restaurant in the evening to round off her happy birthday, enjoying a cocktail or two as the sun set.

One of the highlights in the lagoon was the frequent landing and take-off traffic of seaplanes ferrying guests to the resort. Surprisingly they need only a very short landing distance, which is just as well because they landed very close to our stern! We both fancy a flight on one ... something else for the bucket list!

We had some surprise visitors yesterday, a couple from Plymouth we last saw in Lanzarote in October 2014! They did the World ARC in 2015 and are now going around again, this time under their own steam. What a small world the cruising community is!

After a great sail down this morning, we are now in Waya island, a mountainous island that vaguely reminds us of the Marquesas with its pinnacles of rock jutting vertically above the landscape. It's stunning! We are anchored in Octopussy Bay, a very nice anchorage in which there are two other ARC boats besides us and Chanto. No doubt happy hour ashore at the resort will be quite lively!

Tomorrow, we will head on down to our  of last port of call  in Fiji -  Musket Cove where we will rendezvous with the rest of the fleet ready for the next leg of our odyssey to Vanuatu. We have already started gathering gifts for the Vanuatans as they don't have much, so whatever clothing, food, tools etc we haven't used for some time will be gifted when we get there.