16th Sept, Drawaya Island, Yasawas, Fiji

We finally managed to get the dinghy ashore – it was low tide and the surrounding shoreline had dried out to reef making the beach inaccessible.
We headed to the village and met the fishing guy from yesterday who invited us into his house. He had collected some papaya for us and we gave him some snorkel masks. He had some shell necklaces for sale but they weren't anything special.
He took us on a tour of the village which was much bigger than it looked from the sea. There are about 200 people living there. Across the hill is a resort and they have given the village a lot of money for school and generators. We had a stop at the school where we took them some pencils, crayons, baseball caps and a game. Each item was met with a 'aahhh' or a 'ooohhh' as it was pulled out of the bag!! The children were very cute and sang some songs for us although a couple were too busy eyeing up the gifts to sing!!
We headed back to Newt and pulled up the anchor to carry on to the next island – a short 8 mile trip. We had a scary moment as we headed out of the bay and our depth dropped rom 30m to 8m in an instant – there was nothing marked on our chart but a lot of the Yasawas is uncharted or the charts aren't very reliable – obviously we had found a patch of uncharted reef luckily the depth rose back up just as quickly.
We found a bay on the next island but there was some swell. There was a pass through to another bay which should have 4m depth so after we anchored Jonny went to check it out in the dinghy. As he was in the dinghy another yacht went through the pass so we knew it was deep enough.
We were unsure about going through the pass as the bay on the other side wasn't protected from the wind if it swung back round to trade winds so decided to stay where we were.
We went snorkeling from the dinghy – tying the dinghy to us and dragging it behind us. The coral was amazing – the best coral we have seen since Bonaire.
When we got back to Newt the swell had got worse so we decided to move through the pass. The other anchorage was flat calm and we found a good sandy patch to anchor in.
We invited Andy (Calysta) over for dinner and had a good evening. After Fiji we wont see Andy again until he comes to visit us in Sydney!