Tavea Island, Fiji

We are anchored just north of Tavea Island in The Great Sea Reef off the north coast of Vanua Levu. We have had an eventful few days. We left Palmlea farms last Saturday and went to Kia Island about 15 miles to the north. We mostly motored through narrow passages in the reef in good visibility and light air and anchored up in the southwest corner close to one of the four small villages on the island in the company of Stuart and Sheila on Imagine.
We went ashore with Kava to present for sevusevu and we were well received by the villagers of whom there are 97 and about 300 on the whole island. We did the sevusevu and drank some kava which to my view tastes loke old socks and will never be a substitute for beer.
The locals drank it all with the comment "good grog" but they may say that to everybody. We did a tour of the village and went to church with villagers the following morning and had a visit from the church ladies and some of the kids for tea on the boat on Suday afternoon.
We were going to visit the school on Monday morning but at 0200H the wind piped up to 25 kts from the SE making the anchorage most unpleasant and unsafe soat 0600H we left for Vanua Levu and a high end resort called Nukubati. The 2 hour jaunt to Kia turned into a 8 hour day with strong headwinds and poor visibility navigating the reefs. We got into inside passage without too much trouble but could not get to Nukubati and the wind strengh rose to 40 kts with gusts to 50 kts. Fortunately, there was no significant sea running and we returned to Palmlea where we knew it was safe to anchor.
We spent the night there and took off again this morning as the weather seemed to have cleared. We went westward again to try to get into Nukubati but were again met with winds of 30+ kts and I was not happy with entering the anchorage so we pressed on for another 20 miles and we are currently safelt anchored in 10 meters of sand. There is appently a village on the island but it's still blowing quite hard and i don't think wewill go ashore. Tomorrw we will leave for the westernmost tip of Vanua Levu and then on to Viti Levu.
Photos of Kia to follow.