stoms & Immigration:Weather:
Fiji is in the Southeast trade wind belt but occasionally
fronts reach up here, creating strong southwest winds, and also can be
influenced by the South Pacific Convergence Zone, which brings a lot of rain and
sometimes-strong winds too. It is necessary to check your weather sources before
sailing to avoid this stuff.
Fiji is in the cyclone zone. There are places to store your
boat here for the season – one in the water in a protected basin, and another
place where they dig a hole for your keel and store you up on land with or
without your mast up. Best to have insurance if you decide to do this in my
opinion!
Temperatures are nice and ‘cool’ 30 degrees C and
usually a breeze. Suva is quite rainy, being on the windward side of the island,
but the western (leeward) side of the big island is quite dry.
Charts & Guides:
We have DMA charts, which are supposed to be very bad for
this area (inaccurate), best to buy BA charts. Also, if you want to cruise the
out-islands, the Fiji Hydrographic Office in Suva (a short walk from the Royal
Suva Yacht Club) sells very good colour charts for 22.00 Fiji or about 12.00 US
each.
There are 2 cruising guides for Fiji – A Yachtsman’s
Guide by Michael Calder who charges a phenomenal 26.00 US for a book he has not
bothered to update since 1987, and a little book called A Migrant’s Guide to
Fiji by Phil Cregeen. You kind of need one of these, preferably the Yachtsman’s
guide that has a good reputation, because of the difficulty of navigating Fiji
waters. They are reefy; visibility is not all that good and the charts not so
good either (except maybe the Hydrographic charts).
Customs & Immigration:
Get ready for a lot of bureaucracy and be prepared to spend at least ½ a day getting cleared.
When you come into the harbour you call “Port Control” on VHF 16. The bugger will not answer if you call “Harbour Control” or “Harbour Master” or anything else. He will tell you to go anchor with all the other sailboats. Put up your yellow flag. They are big on yellow flags.
A guy will come out to your boat in a big ugly orange tug
and jump aboard. He is the Health Inspector. He does not inspect anything. Just
fills out a paper and tells you to go to an office in Suva and pay some money
when you get a chance. But he asked us if anybody had died on passage, and if
any of the ship’s rats had died on passage. We assured him that nobody had
died.
After
that you are allowed to go ashore, you are supposed to go directly to Customs.
The first stop was Quarantine (in the Customs building in the main industrial
shipping wharf where the big ships come in). We filled out a bunch of papers in
triplicate. The guy stamped them and we were told to go upstairs.
So we did. This stop was Customs. He was very friendly
(like all the officials were) and filled out another paper and questioned us on
what we had aboard in the way of food and liquor. He pretty well told us what to
say in order to get us through without having to get inspected.
Next
we were told to take a taxi to Immigration in the Civic Center. No problem. We
went into a very busy office and filled out a couple more forms and got our
passports stamped.
Not finished yet. Next we had to find a yellow building
where we were to pay our money (remember the Health Inspector?). We asked
several people on the street and finally found the place, went upstairs and paid
about $15.00 US.
Now you can take your yellow flag down.
The last thing to do is to get a cruising permit, which
allows you to leave a particular harbour and get to another. You must list all
the possible harbours and islands you might visit. A taxi ride is required to a
very obscure building in suburban Suva, which is really a big house, and there
is no house number on it, so the taxi drivers have a hard time finding it. Part
of the fun I guess. You go in and tell the nice Fijian lady where you want to
go, she has a look at you and prints out a letter all in Fijian which I guess is
your permission to go cruise. There is no charge for all this.
Now that you are cleared in, when you are finally ready to
leave that particular port, you must go to Customs again (!) and clear out to
the next Port. Again, you fill out in triplicate the same forms you filled in
when you arrived, only you check off the box marked “outbound” instead of
“inbound”. The guy stamps the papers and you are free to go. You are
supposed to leave the port within 24 hours of getting the clearance.
Suva:
Goods & Services:
Yacht Club – info sheet, laundry, weather fax, docking, fuel & water
Provisioning-
Lots of good grocery stores & local markets with excellent prices....
Repairs – In Suva, being the hub of the South Pacific, you can find almost anything you need and get almost anything fixed.
Shopping -
