{"id":659,"date":"2006-06-13T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2006-06-13T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/setsail.com\/?p=659"},"modified":"2009-04-15T08:59:19","modified_gmt":"2009-04-15T13:59:19","slug":"s_logs-dashew-dashew247","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/setsail.com\/s_logs-dashew-dashew247\/","title":{"rendered":"Savu Savu – Cruisers Crossroads"},"content":{"rendered":"
Savu Savu, Fiji – a crossroads that harkens back to the old days of cruising.<\/div>\n

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Savu Savu in the Fiji Islands’ Northern group reminds us very much of the way cruising used to be in the olden days (a long time ago!).<\/p>\n

The anchorage is well protected – reputed to be a good hurricane hole (but we’d rather be in the mangrove swamps) – and Savu Savu has an eclectic mix of Fijian natives, indigenous Indians, ex-patriates from a variety of countries, and cruisers.<\/p>\n

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There’s just enough infrastructure to make things easy.<\/p>\n

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Take the Copra Shed, for example. A dock for a few folks who prefer stern-to puts you right in the thick of the action.<\/p>\n

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Adjacent thereto is a very upscale (by South Pacific standards) dinghy dock.<\/p>\n

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Savu Savu is the kind of place where you never know who you are going to run into. Here are Jim and Cheryl Schmidt, cruising buddies we first met in the Marquesas Islands almost 30 years ago. Notice that flat tummy on Jimmy and the slight blue cast to his face from holding his breath while we fiddled with the camera.<\/p>\n

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The Schmidts are the kind of folks who make yacht brokers cry. They’ve been cruising on the same boat for a quarter of a century!<\/p>\n

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The Copra Shed – which was once really what the name indicates – is now a small, but definitely upscale shopping center. There is the all-important liquor store with a good inventory of New Zealand and Australian wines…<\/p>\n

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…And a tiny but well stocked marine store. They even have a large selection of Fijian charts. These were a welcome addition to our paper charts, most of which were 25 years old.<\/p>\n

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There is also a well stocked local super market. We were pleasantly surprised that almost anything that was available in Suva (the capitol) was also available here.<\/p>\n

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Near to the market is Curly’s Cruising Center. Curly is an ex-cruiser who makes things happen for a lot of the visitors. You can catch the local news on his morning reports on VHF, join special dinners, and make arrangement for shipments and propane.<\/p>\n

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Next door is a cruisers’ favorite restaurant. Good food and service, at very reasonable prices. On any day during lunch hour you were sure to find a group of friends with whom to sit.<\/p>\n

In towns like this around the world there is usually a local open air market. The sights, sounds, and smells are exotic with a good supply (in season of course) of local food stuffs.<\/p>\n

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Linda is checking the price of plantains.<\/p>\n

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Most cruising destinations have one or two really delicious fruits at very low prices. In the Marquesas it’s the pamplamouse. In Savu Savu it is locally grown, extremely succulent pineapple.<\/p>\n

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There is an abundance of vegetables too.<\/p>\n

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There is also a variety of clothing shops, hardware and building supply stores, and even a few businesses selling tourist items.<\/p>\n

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All of the fruits and veggies which come aboard get a salt water rinse to make sure there are no unwelcome critters (roaches) trying to hitch a ride. We then wash these in a solution of mild chlorine bleach.<\/p>\n

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OK, this is not a cockroach, but we thought you’d want to see it just the same. It flew out on its own to visit. <\/p>\n

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Savu Savu is a cruising crossroads for boats from around the South Pacific. For those hanging out in the Northern islands this is a base from which to pick up and discharge friends. It is also a good spot to clear in with customs when arriving from Tonga. And, as we did with Wind Horse<\/em>, clear out for the Samoas.<\/p>\n

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One of the things we like about cruising where there are not a lot of land-based tourists is it is easy to get to know and interact with the locals. This takes many forms, from simple conversations in the market to yachty kids hanging out with the locals. We took this photo of a local sailing one of the Savu Savu Optimist dinghies (there is a small fleet) while a mixed tender load of cruising kids and locals (expats and Fijians) cruise along beside. Note the practice going on for the upcoming soccer World Cup.<\/p>\n

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It is always fun for us to run into one of our designs when we’re cruising. There were two in Savu Savu while we were there: Wakaroa<\/em>, which we showed earlier – and above is Interlude<\/em>.<\/p>\n

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We had a movie evening aboard Wind Horse<\/em>. In honor of one of our guests, a former Top Gun instructor at Fallon Naval Air Station who was out cruising, we played the movie Top Gun<\/em>. That’s Mike and Dana’s Camira<\/em> above. As this is being written they are midway between Hawaii and Vancouver Island, heading back to the Pacific Northwest after several years of wandering.<\/p>\n

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Here’s Kurt and Katy, from Interlude<\/em>, on their way to shore with garbage (disposal of which is easily dealt with in Savu Savu). Kurt is a a former sound guru and mentioned that there were a few problems with our system (which we thought was pretty good).<\/p>\n

The next day we took our DVD disk aboard Interlude<\/em> and compared the sound. There was an astonishing difference. We’ve since rectified this problem with a different type of speaker system.<\/p>\n

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Island Sonata<\/em> is the first boat on which we ran across one of the Wheems and Plath digital barometers.<\/p>\n

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With all of the activity ashore and in the anchorage things can get a little hectic after a while. Yet it is still possible to find a lovely, quiet spot to hang, for a few days, until the urge to mingle is rekindled.<\/p>\n

Savu Savu is truly a special cruising crossroads.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Savu Savu, Fiji – a crossroads that harkens back to the old days of cruising.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-659","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-dashew-blog"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/setsail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/659"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/setsail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/setsail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/setsail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/setsail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=659"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/setsail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/659\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/setsail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=659"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/setsail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=659"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/setsail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=659"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}