Yagasa Group

We did a day-sail from the Bay of Islands to an anchorage on the west side of Lakemba. Spent the night and then sailed off in the early morning in a fairly strong NE wind toward the Yasaga Group (pronounced yan-gasa and sometimes spelt that way too). As we passed north of Namuka island we crossed the Bounty Boat Passage. This is where Capt. Bligh  passed through the eastern portion of Fiji on the longboat off the Bounty with his 18 loyal crew after being rudely ejected by Fletcher Christen and his followers in the famous Mutiny on the Bounty. While navigating through the uncharted islands in a feat of superb seamanship focused on saving the life of his loyal crew (and himself) he managed to take the time to accurately chart the islands as they passed through in 1789.
Yagasa is an uninhabited group of islands surrounded by a barrier reef. We tucked behind Navuilonga island to hide from the strong winds (18* 58.391S 178* 28.892W) in 45ft of water with some bommines around. It was a pleasant spot to hide out and it was only Georgia and the German boat, Qi, there. It felt very remote.
When the winds shifted back to SW and then SE we scooted around to the other side of the island and anchored in a nice small bay (18* 37.660S 178* 29.28W) in 15ft over shallow sand. Not great holding but well blocked from the wind. While the islands are uninhabited you see plenty of detritus in the fisherman camps. The fishermen come over from the neighboring islands and stay a few days to fish and sometimes to collect wood for their carving activities. The west facing bays had almost as much plastic waste on them as we’d seen in Panama. Not sure where it all came from as the winds are prevailing SE and there is a lot of water east of here till you hit anything that looks like civilization.
Since a front was passing over we didn’t have good weather. Even with the cloudy skies the clear water was really impressive. We dove a few of the bommies, once by dinghy and once we took out
and anchored close to one.


Just to give an you idea of the scale of the hard corals this is Chris with her GoPro.

For all the dives we’ve done we still never get bored with the rainbow of colors on the reef

A Long-nose Butterfly fish brightening up our day

There are giant clam shells laying all over the fishermen’s camps, so it was nice to see some still alive on the reefs.
Enough gratuitous underwater shots. After 3 nights we beat our way down to Fulanga – the next blog update.
Paul