Position: 18 degrees, 41 minutes south; 174 degrees, 07 minutes west.

Ann and Lisa went out for a kayak

We sailed west in the Vava’u Group today and now we’re anchored at one of the western-most islands; the island of Hunga. After leaving Vaka’eitu, we went through the reef between Lape Island and Langito’o. Pretty narrow. We were carefully watching the color of the water change on either side of us signifying shallow water/reef. The pass looked to be about 30 yards wide. Once through, we turned right (west), set the genoa for a broad reach and ran with the SE wind down to Hunga. Step one in getting to where we’re anchored is going between the south end of Hunga and a reef/awash rocks about ¼ mile offshore. Sounds like a long way, but a little nerve-wracking to see white water on both sides of Charisma. I prefer the deep blue water all around. Once through that area, we hardened up and sailed north for about a mile along the west side of the island. After about ½ mile you can see a very narrow cut. If you blink you’ll miss it. Once you see it you almost wish you’d missed it because it is little more than a 30 yard break in the cliff and there’s a rock sticking out of the water right in the pass that you leave to port, making the actual entrance much narrower. Compound that with the reef on the inside that narrows even further and at its deepest part at high tide showed 11 feet on our depthsounder. OOH, shades of Aitutaki. Fortunately though we made it through with nothing but some minor psychic damage to my nervous system. I was very aware of the bottom of Charisma’s keel since I started the morning scrubbing it.

John and Lisa on Orcinius (who accompanied us to Hunga-we are the only two boats here) were nice enough to loan an extra BCD (scuba gear), regulator and tank, so I could spend the morning underwater scrubbing Charisma’s bottom (just for the record, I think she liked it). Rumor has it that New Zealand will require boats that have “stuff” on their bottom to haul and power-wash the bottom. They are very concerned about bio-security. It’s all rumor, but makes sense and in any case, it’s never a bad idea to keep the bottom clean as it adds to boatspeed. Anyway, armed with scrub-brush and a metal scraper I bled the air out of the BCD and descended all of six feet to get to the bottom of the boat. The paint is still working pretty well, so there’s mostly only some slime to brush off, but it’s 37 feet long and six feet deep, so a lot of area to work. I also knocked barnacles off a few spots, cleaned the propeller and put a new zinc on the propshaft. The old one had been used up and fell off a few weeks ago. No way I could have done all that with just a mask and snorkel so a big thanks to John and Lisa for the scuba gear.

Back to Hunga. This looks to be a volcanic crater that has filled in. There’s one entrance and except for a small reef area in the south, the rest of this little bay is a round rim about 200 feet high. The bay is about ½ mile by ¾ mile and since it’s isolated from the ocean, it’s very calm in here. A nice change from the roly poly anchorages we have been in since Mexico. Once we anchored and got settled, Lisa and Ann wanted to go snorkeling. John also did the bottom of his catamaran, so he was as tired as I, but actually this area is so beautiful we had to go. Into our dinghies we went and motored back through the pass (which still felt very small even in the dinghies) and out into the ocean. The wind is SE and the shore is West, so it was pretty protected other than some ocean surge. We went out the pass, a little south and dropped a little grapnel anchor about 40 yards off the cliffs in 15 feet of very pretty blue water. Gear on, tumble over the side backwards and we were immediately rewarded with some beautiful views of pinnacles of coral and lots of varied fish. It was kind of like swimming through a small version of the Grand Canyon. A delightful afternoon swim.

Back to Charisma and after all the exertion today; It’s hammock time! So that’s where I’ve been this last hour. Ann’s working on getting ready to have Orcinius over for a “trading party” tonight. She came up with the great idea that now that we’re all winding down the season and are close to the last long voyage, this one to New Zealand, we don’t need to have a lot of extra ships stores when we get there. In fact, they confiscate a lot of stuff-again, in the name of bio-security (mostly) so you don’t want to end up with things like tinned meat/fish, nuts of any kind, veggies, fruit and we’re looking into what else. So Ann has been actively trading with other cruisers. We’ve already traded ½ pound of walnuts which we have extra of for four rolls of toilet paper which is expensive here and we are getting short. We gave Orcinius some extra coffee and a few other things and they in turn have promised shaving cream (which I’m running out of) and some other stuff.

There you go-the free market is alive and well in Tonga!