Position: 18 degrees, 26 minutes south; 172 degrees, 38 minutes west

Today was a stunningly beautiful day. All blue with patches of whitecaps. It was hard to take your eyes off the scenery.

We had good conditions. The wind and waves eased a bit and we took out a reef going down to just one, and let the jib all the way out-while still on the pole. We’re basically going straight downwind directly toward the Vava’u Group, Tonga. Tonga. All I ever knew of Tonga was what I saw in National Geographic! Pinch me, we’re going to be there tomorrow. The islands of Tonga are described as some of the most beautiful anywhere in the world. Hmm, after where we’ve been this should be interesting to see. I was just skimming one of the guidebooks that John from Orcinius downloaded and kindly gave a copy to us-and it claims there are something like 90 islands here with only a handful being populated. Sounds like we’re in for some interesting exploring.

We’re basically staying in this area for a month or so until late October when the weather too make the passage to New Zealand opens up. Most boat insurance policies state you have to be out of the cyclone zone in the South Pacific by early November and ours is no different. New Zealand is one of the places out of the cyclone belt and we’ll look to go there from November through April or so and then when the cyclone season is over we can move up North and visit Fiji and maybe Micronesia. We plan to fly home for the holidays in the meantime and then back to NZ to do some land touring before hauling out Charisma for bottom paint and other miscellaneous boatwork.

It’s now evening of our second day and the wind has dropped to 10 knots. The waves are down to about a meter. We’re just making 4 ½ to 5 knots. We have about 70 miles to go, so hope the conditions hold. If they do, we should be in the town of Neafu where you clear into the country, by mid-afternoon.

A final thought: we cross the international dateline somewhere along the way, so we either lose or gain a day, I’m not sure which-and our time zone goes from -11 hours zulu to +13 hours zulu. So-we’ll be thoroughly confused by the time we get in so I’ll just say Happy Birthday Mom (whose birthday is on the 19th). I’ll call when we get in to wish you happy birthday in person, but I’m not sure which day that will be LOL. (Looks like we arrive Tonga on the 19th – Happy Birthday, and then the next day in the United States it is the 19th – Happy Birthday again! But we don’t think you gain an extra year in age!)