Tuesday 12th July
We had planned on stopping off at Mantaray Bay on our way up the Yasawa’s, but plans quickly change when on a sailboat.
We enjoyed a lovely sail up, and arrived just in time to drop anchor and get settled before lunch. However, there were two other boats in the bay, one of them which was quite large, maybe 70′, was right in the middle of the anchorage, the majority of the bay is over 100′ deep, and the only places to anchor (unless you have 500′ of chain) are in a fairly limited area; larger boats usually anchor further out leaving the shallower anchorage for smaller boats, This big ugly boat had anchored smack in the middle of the bay, leaving little to no room for any other boats. Daisy only has 300′ of chain, so we really can’t anchor safely in more than 65-70′.
Over the last 11 years of coming here, we’ve managed to anchor in Manta ray Bay many times, sometimes with around 4 or 5 other boats, but we’ve all anchored with consideration for one another.
The boat anchored in the center of the bay was one of the ugliest boats I’ve ever seen, aside from its vile colour, which was a really bright, dreadful shade of aquamarine,(I didn’t know aquamarine could be such a distasteful colour) it had such a wide stern it almost looked like a catamaran, but the front had a huge bowsprit, it appeared as if whoever built the boat couldn’t make up their minds as to what type of boat they were building, it was as though they had cut a catamaran and a monohull in half and then stuck them together, it truly was a monstrosity, of course there’s probably an official name for such a boat, its just not something I’m familiar with, Bob would know, but then if I ask him he will want to know why I asked, and then tell me not to write this.
Over the past 20 plus years of sailing, I’ve found sailors to be the warmest, friendliest and most helpful people, and Bob and I have made some really lovely friends among the cruising community, but as with all things, there’s always one bad egg!
Bob motored slowly around the bay in search of a safe place to anchor, and decided to drop just past the stern of the ugly boat, planning to drop around 200′ of chain, so we would both have plenty of swing room, but just as we were attempting to anchor the guy on the ugly boat came out and started shouting at us, I waved and smiled, not realizing at first that he was basically telling us to f**k off. Bob tried to explain what we were doing, but the guy on the ugly boat just continued to shout at us, waving his arm and storming around like a crazy person, marching up and down his decks telling us to go anchor somewhere else, as if we had so many other options! I couldn’t help laughing at him, (he looked like a deranged Fred Flintstone, all fat and farts), OH one thing I forgot to mention, he was French!!!
Now I love the French, I have some wonderful French friends, but recognizing that all nations have their share of misfits, this nasty, bad-tempered Frenchman was absolutely one of them, he was a horrid little man with a really bad attitude. I was at the front of the boat with the anchor while Bob was back in the cockpit, so I called back, “can we please go somewhere else, I’m not staying here next to that”.
So we upped anchor and set off, as it turned out we only went around the head, where Bob located another anchorage next to the lovely Paradise Cove Resort. We had never used this anchorage before, even though it is a charted anchorage, it was in the pass between two islands, with a beautiful view across to Waya. It turned out to be a lovely peaceful, flat anchorage with no nasty neighbors; we will use it again when we come back to this island.