Freewind's Log: Freewind in Savusavu, plus: Fiji

www.sailbayofislands.com

And there's that one particular harbour
Sheltered from the wind
Where the children play on the shore each day
And all are safe within

-- Jimmy Buffett

Bula from Savusavu, Fiji!
Freewind is still enjoying the tropical island harbour of Savusavu, like the many yachts that have stopped here this year. The bunch of bananas hanging in the cockpit is ripening faster than they are consumed, and the pineapples will be ripening soon. The town was busy last week when the cruise ship the Pacific Pearl stopped in Savusavu, and later the National Library Week festivities attracted many people to the town center.
Saturdays are still dedicated to Junior Sailing Club coaching, and sailing the Optimists and Lasers. The senior kids are training hard for the Oceania Games in New Caledonia next month and fundraising for the trip has been going very well – a big thank you to everyone who has contributed, both locals and overseas yachties. Ron has caught up with most of the repair and maintenance work on the Junior Sailing fleet of boats; it’s really good to see the kids putting so much into their sailing and showing results in the Saturday racing.


Home-grown bananas and pineapple from Savusavu	Savusavu Junior Sailors racing Optimists

Did you know?
The first to survey and extensively chart the Fiji Islands was Lt. Charles Wilkes, leader of the US Exploration Expedition in 1840. Many of the expedition’s charts were still used by the US Navy in the 1920s, and during WW II when planning the invasion of the Micronesian islands of Tarawa, the only available chart of the islands was the one drawn by Wilkes more than 100 years before.
Wilkes’ first port of call in Fiji was Levuka, in Ovalau, where a number of American and European sailors and whalers had settled, taking local wives. Wilkes’ guide and translator was David Whippy, who had been living in Fiji for 18 years and had gained a reputation as a reliable ally to foreign ship captains. Whippy introduced Wilkes to Chief Tanoa, one of the most powerful chiefs in Fiji at the time. Whippy, with another mariner named William Simpson later bought land in Wainunu and in Savusavu on the island of Vanua Levu and nowadays, one seems to run into their descendents everywhere not only in Vanua Levu, but scattered all over Fiji as well as in Australia and New Zealand. The Whippys were well known, and still are, for their exceptional boatbuilding skills.


Chart of Fiji drawn by Charles Wilkes, US Exploration Expedition, 1840	Drawing of Chief Tanoa’s drua (canoe) in Ovalau, from Wiles’ narrative of the voyage.

Apart from the surveying work all around the Pacific, many thousands of scientific specimens and over 4,000 artifacts were collected by the expedition’s scientific team. Most of them are now housed in the Smithsonian Institute, Washington D.C.
Here are some of the pieces collected in Fiji, available for view online at: http://www.sil.si.edu/digitalcollections/usexex