(Sylvia)
We are in New Zealand but will be posting some catch-up info about our journey from French Poly to New Zealand. We've already done posts on Legs 1, 2 and 3.
Moving West:
Leg 1 Raiatea, French Polynesia to Palmerston, Cook Is. (Sept 23-28), 675 nm
Leg 2 To Beveridge Reef (Oct 5-7), 288 nm
Leg 3 to Niue (Oct 8-9), 142 nm
Leg 4 To Vava'u, N. Tonga (Oct 12-14) 245 nm
Leg 5 To Nuku'alofa, S. Tonga (Oct 31-Nov 1) 168 nm
Leg 6 To Minerva Reef (Nov 7-8) 258 nm
Leg 7 To Opua, New Zealand, (Nov 10-14) 787 nm
Total 2563 nm
Leg 4 - Niue to Northern Tonga - The Vava'u Group:
The first day of our trip from Niue to Vava'u Tonga was a bit squally, but we did get a beautiful double rainbow to admire. If you recall we left Niue along with several other boats including HILMA (heading north), ONDULAR and Y2K, (heading to Tonga).
We expected the next day (day #2) to be quite calm but then the following day (day #3) the weather was predicted to go downhill and we hoped to reach the protected anchorage in the Vava'u group of Tonga before then.
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| Sometimes (rarely it seems) the Pacific Ocean is actually pacific. |
Day #2 (above) was flat calm in our part of the world. Our friends on HILMA had headed north toward the Marshall Islands and were in completely opposite weather. They ended up losing their rudder in some high winds and big seas. HILMA youtube: "Nightmare" episode. (Long episode so you might want to go to "settings" and select a faster speed for watching.) Luckily, after 4 days, they managed to limp into Majuro safe and sound. Just goes to show you how important the weather (winds and sea state) is to us sailors. Credit to them for tenacity and enduring 7 breakages on their temp-makeshift e-rudder!
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| We approach the pass into the Vava'u group just after sunrise, heading for the town of Neiafu. It's overcast but we've managed to beat the big winds and heavy rain. |
We tied up at the concrete customs dock to check into the Kingdom of Tonga. This was the first place where a customs agent tried to hit us up for goods and a tip. Both requests were met with feigned shock and a polite "I don't think so." It was a bit of a challenge to arrive and especially to depart this dock because of the current and wind angle but we managed to do it without damaging CINNABAR and with a little help from people on shore.
Leg 4 Trip Totals:
Distance sailed = 245 nm (Niue to N. Tonga)
Duration = 43.2 hrs
Avg speed = 5.6 kts (low due to arriving early and stalling for daylight)
Motored = 15.8 hrs
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| Cinnabar tied up at the concrete customs dock. (Looks deceivingly nice at high tide, but underneath the concrete overhang are black-dirty tires and rusty metal wharf plates, all of which want to mark and crunch boat hulls) |
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| The very protected mooring field in Neiafu harbor. Cinnabar is at the far end which is where we typically prefer to be. |
TONGA: The Kingdom of Tonga is a Polynesian country which is a constitutionalized monarchy (as of 2010) rather than a traditional absolute kingdom. It is an archipelago of 169 islands (36 inhabited) that stretches 500 miles north to south. The country has never relinquished its sovereignty to any foreign power.
Tonga became known in the West as the "Friendly Islands" because of the congenial reception that Captain Cook received on his first visit. He happened to arrive during an annual celebration and, according to writer William Mariner (teenage English sailor adopted into a Tongan family for 4 years) the chiefs were actually planning to kill Cook but couldn't agree upon a plan.
Exploring:
It's always fun when arriving in a new place to explore the markets. We were happy to see that the outdoor market in Neiafu had a good selection of fresh fruits and vegetables.
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| Mostly everything is locally grown. The market even had lots of fresh herbs. |
We noticed as we walked through the town, as we did most days, that there were many more pigs walking around free than there were dogs.
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| A very common sight in every yard in Neiafu. |
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| These two young construction workers (and rugby players, obviously) helped Tom carry his jug back to the Mango Cafe where we docked the dinghy. They wouldn't take money but they let us treat them to a soda. |
We used the Mango Cafe as our office since it had the best wifi in town. It also had a daily happy hour, good food, and an international fishing tournament.
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| Italians Max (Y2K), Rafaela and Giovanni (OBIWAN) and Alex (Y2K) using wifi at the Mango. Rafaela and Giovanni met us at the concrete dock when we arrived and helped us with our lines. |
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| The daily 5:30 PM fish tournament weigh-in coincided with Happy Hour at the Mango (impressive Yellowfin Tuna) |
There was some excitement in town during our visit. Rugby is Tonga's national sport and the entire nation was gearing up for the upcoming finals between Tonga and Australia. Everybody was wearing red (Tonga's national color) and parades through the town were a daily occurrence.
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| Mate Ma'a Tonga!! It means "Die for Tonga!" and everyone was singing and chanting this from morning until late into the night. |
Of course we had to join the fun so we went to the Refuge, a sports bar across the street from the Mango Cafe to watch the game. Unbelievably, we ran into our friend Harold from San Francisco who was there to help deliver a boat to NZ. Harold and Tom had once done a boat delivery from So Cal to San Francisco.
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| What a fun surprise to run into a friend from SF (Sylvia and Harold served on the Pac Cup Board of Directors). |
It was a fun night and the Aussies handily beat the Tongans 34-16, but I don't think there is any nation as faithful to their team as the Kingdom of Tonga. The match was held in Auckland, NZ but the crowd was an absolute sea of red shirts and Tongan flags. Even when their team was down by 20 points at halftime the Tongan fans were singing hymns and songs in harmony. It was stunning.
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| All dressed up for church. |
We'd heard that similar to French Polynesia, the Tongan church services included some incredible singing, so a group of us got all dressed up and went to the nearby catholic church for mass. The locals dressed in a combination and contemporary and traditional garb and arrived by the truck-fulls to attend mass.
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| I loved how these traditionally dressed women (wearing the straw or cloth woven kiekie) were taking selfies. |
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| Mick (ONDULAR) and Tom had quite a conversation with this adorable little girl. |
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| Piling in to head home. |
One of the funnest things about our lifestyle is getting to meet people from all over the world. I have been talking to Joe and Michele aboard a boat called PEREGRINE over the HF radio since we crossed the Pacific Ocean in April of 2016, but we had never met them. Walking through Neiafu one day I stopped to chat with a couple who had a bag of laundry to ask them where they'd had it done. Turns out it was Joe and Michele and we got to finally meet them face to face.
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| By now you know the four in front, with Michele and Joe from PEREGRINE in the back. Enjoying tapas and wine at the local Basque restaurant. |
After a couple of weeks of wind and rain the bad weather was about to end and all the boats were in conversations with each other about who was going where. Y2K was going to stay in the Vava'u and Ha'apai groups of Tonga to enjoy the country some more. PEREGRINE was heading to Fiji for cyclone season. ONDULAR was going to New Caledonia on their way home to Australia. We had to meet crew in southern Tonga so would leave Vava'u and head directly south. And a big group of boats was planning to sail straight from Vava'u to New Zealand.
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| The group planning to head straight to NZ all fueled up at the concrete dock. |
Shortly after this group left for NZ we said goodbye to our friends and sailed out of Neiafu harbor. Sadly, due to the weather, we did not see any of the famed charter/cruising grounds of the Vavau Group (long ago we had a catamaran charter trip booked for here but had to cancel due to illness in our group).
Leg 5 - Northern to Southern Tonga - Nuku'alofa, Tongatapu:
As we left the Vava'u group and turned south we were unhappy to discover that the winds were right on the nose. At least the winds were light and the seas weren't too lumpy. Boats can't sail directly upwind so we had to make the decision to either tack back and forth or just motor into the wind. We didn't want to be tacking for 2 days so we chose to motor-sail overnight to expediently get to Nuku'alofa.
Regrettably, we had to bypass the entire Tonga Middle Island Group, the Ha'apai's, due to time constraints. They are remote, have great diving, kiting, and beaches.
Enroute, we saw and passed withing 12 nm of a volcano and strange newborn island of Hunga-Tonga. Article link here: New Tonga Island
Naturally since it was now very close to the time our crew would join us, the handle on our head (bathroom) broke. The door would not remain closed. Tom removed the handle, took it apart, and we could see that the two little springs which hold the latch shut had weakened and broken. We didn't have replacement springs so he carefully re-joined the broken springs with our smallest size of seizing wire and inserted ball point pen springs (too wimpy to use by themselves) inside to keep them aligned. This successfully temporarily repaired the latch. (And the repair held throughout our passages to New Zealand.)
Also, during the routine daily rig inspection, Tom noticed that the sealant around the chainplates had become worn out enough to open some gaps around these essential strongpoints. Since these hold up the mast and things only get worse with salt water leakage, Tom was able to perform a temporary clean out and reseal/repair. The proper way to remedy this requires a marina or boatyard, so we added it to the list of refit items for NZ.
Twenty-nine fairly uneventful hours after starting we pulled into Tongatapu at an anchorage near the main town of Nuku'alofa.
We'd heard about Pangaimotu Island anchorage, home of Big Mama's Yacht Club which was yachtie-friendly and popular, but had been decimated by Cyclone Gita in February of 2018. There were quite a few boats in the anchorage so we motored around until we found our spot, dropped the anchor near our friends Liam and Annie (catamaran GONE WITH THE WIND), and went in to check out Big Mama's.
Leg 5 Trip Totals:
Distance sailed = 168 nm (N. Tonga to S. Tonga)
Duration = 29.3 hrs
Avg speed = 5.7 kts (low due to motoring straight upwind)
Motored = 29.3 hrs
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| There were many wrecked boats in the bay due to cyclone Gina, but this wasn't one of them. It's been a BMYC landmark for quite some time. |
We were glad to see that even though Big Mama's patio and large dinghy dock had been destroyed they had managed to build a temporary dinghy dock and get the bar and restaurant back in working order.
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| The interim dinghy/ferry dock has to get pulled to/from shore due to the daily tidal changes. First they dock the ferry, lift the motors, and then pull the entire floating dock to the beach. |
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| Big Mama's ferry made several trips a day to and from the city of Nuku'alofa. |
We were told that we'd arrived just in time. There was going to be a huge end-of-season and birthday party and feast in two nights and all the locals and yachties would attend.
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| The band started early to get the guests warmed up. |
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| The table was groaning with food, much of it prepared in the traditional umu fire pit such as this succulent pig. |
The Tongans love to dance and the dancing started out with traditional moves but got crazier as the night went on.
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| One of the band members couldn't help himself so he jumped in and started dancing. Big Mama is in the background egging everyone on. |
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| The band - musicians by night... |
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| ...policemen by day. |
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| Happy at the party, but she was holding her head the next morning. |
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| Big Mama's Yacht Club as seen from the ferry. |
By the way, above is what Big Mama's looks like now, below is what it looked like after cyclone Gita. Kind of gives you an idea of how hard they have worked to get Big Mama's up and running again. Prior to the cyclone the yacht club had a huge outdoor patio and long dinghy/ferry dock that went way out into the water.
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| photo from Big Mama's GoFundMe page. |
Partying and feasting were fun but our crew was due to arrive in two days and we had lots to do so we spent our time preparing for the trip.
The day of the crew's arrival we dinghied in to shore and took the ferry from Pangaimotu island into Nuku'alofa. We had hired a taxi for Tom to meet the group at the airport while I spent time in town doing some final grocery shopping. They arrived on time and with no problems. In fact, a fellow yachtie was trying to track down his lost luggage from his trip back from the states and our crew found it for him at the airport!
The taxi driver was a great guy and he drove us to our favorite place in town, the local Fishing Club which was private but they welcomed us.
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| Judy, Torben, Phil and Sylvia enjoying a cold beer at the Nuku'alofa Fishing Club, members only except for guests. |
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| Taking the ferry back to Pangaimotu Island |
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| Kennan from TIMOGEN was thrilled to get lost luggage and his new starter motor. Now he could continue his journey to New Zealand. Thanks CINNABAR crew! |
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| The ferry driver was kind enough to deliver people and luggage directly to CINNABAR instead of making us do numerous dinghy trips back and forth. |
The crew were able to enjoy just a couple of days in Tonga. Tom and Torben had been checking the weather for days and they both agreed that a departure in 2 days looked ideal. We did final preparations on CINNABAR, planning to leave at the same time as our friends Liam and Annie on GONE WITH THE WIND.
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| The last thing to get put away was the dinghy. Thanks Phil, Torben and Judy for helping. No more going to shore because we're outta here! |
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| Our last Tongan anchorage. Note that Gone With The Wind is in the midst of a cloud of smoke from a bonfire on the island. That's why we're far away. Early tomorrow we depart! |
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| We've weighed anchor using our headsets so we can communicate without shouting. We'll put on our PFDs (Personal Flotation Devices) and tethers and head out the pass. Looks like a great day. Next stop Minerva Reef! (photo by Judy) |
Photo Album: The Kingdom of Tonga
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