Shortly after waking up, we looked out and saw a big cruise ship had pulled in. They were shuttling people to the two islands in their tenders. Then we realized that there were more than a dozen people snorkeling behind Kosmos. Boy, we picked an interesting place to anchor!
We decided to go diving first, then to the island. We loaded into our gear and jumped in. The coral wasn’t especially colorful — mostly browns with some yellows but the formations were absolutely amazing. We have seen big coral before, but these were terraces upon terraces of huge, delicately shaped coral. The deepest we went was about 25 feet. There was a good amount of fish, but not nearly as many or as big as we would have expected on this vast amounts of coral.
When we were finished with our dive, we took showers and were just about to make lunch when our new friends from the yacht Yawarra that we had met yesterday stopped by to tell us the wind was changing. We had not had a chance to check the weather report yet. It was going to come from the north, which we had zero protection from. They were leaving right then to go to a more suitable anchorage 10 miles north. We instantly decided to follow them. It was already rolly and uncomfortable in the anchorage and the thought of it getting worse sounded terrible to us. The other boat we had hung out with last night, Flashgirl, was also going to the same spot. It was 1330 (1:30 pm). We immediately went to work on getting Kosmos ready to go. As predicted, the wind steadily picked up the whole time we were getting ready to go. At 16:10 (4:10 pm), we finally pulled up anchor. Much to our relief, the anchor came up with no problems.
Because it was so late in the day, we needed to get to the next anchorage quick. There were several coral hazards along the way and the later it got, the harder it would become to see the coral. We ran at 2000 to 2250 RPM, and we normally like to cruise at 1600-1750. An hour and a half later, we were safely in the Yalobi lagoon on Waya Island. It was against the wind the whole way. Despite leaving about one hour before us, Flashgirl arrived about an hour later. We are glad we have a power boat.
The lagoon is horseshoe shaped, with one side appearing to be longer than the other. In reality, what looks to be the longer portion is really a separate island altogether, but is situated close enough to Waya that from here it looks attached. With its rolling hills, it looks kind of like a tiny version of Viti Levu. The rounded part of the lagoon has a nice beach, with several small, low buildings visible just a few hundred feet from the shoreline. The rest of the shoreline has little or no beach the mountains plunge right into the sea.
We dropped anchor and got Kosmos situated. We could hear hymns coming from the shore. After a few minutes, the hymns turned to zealous preaching, and after another hour all was quiet on the shore. The wind was blowing at 15 knots inside the protected anchorage and it started to rain. We are happy to report that even with the strong wind, we are not rocking enough to put out the paravanes. It was a wise choice to move.