There are various challenges involved in the cruising life.
Weather
Navigation, especially where the charts are dodgy
Sea-sickness
Stuff breaking and needing to be fixed
Provisioning and cooking
They all cause their moments, but by and large we get better at dealing with them.
The one I find most difficult, when cruising in the Third World, is poverty and inequality.
After Waya Island, we continued south down the Yasawa Chain to Musket Cove, which is a sophisticated port on the cruising circuit in the Mamanuca Islands, not far from the main Fiji Island of Viti Levu. Fiji is a country which has a GPD per capita of US$4,375. The equivalent figure for Australia is US$67,458. There is a lot of obvious poverty in the villages that we visited. Mere, the wife of our guide up the mountain on Waya Island, worked at a local resort for FJ$2.20 per hour. That is AU$1.40. She serves glasses of wine at $20 a glass.
But Fiji is also a favoured cruising ground for superyachts. Musket Cove is one of their stops.
'Encore'. 144 feet. Approx $50 million. The owners are Australian philanthropists.
I've got more balls than you!
Dragonfly, owned by a senior Google executive.
A Sunreef 60 catamaran
Likuliku Lagoon resort. Overwater bures for FJ$22,000 per week
'Atlantic' a three masted schooner 227 feet long. Available for charter.
Opulent, yes. But she sure does look pretty under sail. Here posing for a cameraman under the umbrella on the beach of a cay.
A handsome Kiwi ketch in Musket Cove
Sheraton Denarau
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