Our walk into town at Ha'afeva. Actually, this IS town.

We ran across this woman preparing pandanas leaves for weaving into floormats

Still at Ha’afeva. We walked into the village today, which was a very pleasant ¾ mile through a narrow jungle road. Once at the village we found one person who traded us some really nice mangoes for a bag of walnuts (and a bag of balloons for his daughter). A little further down the road we saw a nice garden and started talking to the man who was tending it. Pete was his Anglicized name. We asked if he had some papayas and bananas. He walked over to his papaya tree and pulled three nice ones down and gave them to us, but said that he would have to go further to his plantation to get some bananas. He suggested he would trade a stalk of bananas for some flares. Since we have plenty of the latter, we readily agreed. He said to meet him on the wharf at 1800. I had my doubts the time of the meeting would be very exact, this being Tonga, but agreed. So, we went back to Charisma and I dug out some flares to have ready for our meeting.

In the meantime, we went for a snorkel and did some clean up around the boat. Also, we scored a large, frozen corned beef on the last island. We’re cooking it as we speak, and it’s looking good. It’s a perfect accompaniment to all our root veggies that we always have since they keep well. So, tonight it’s corned beef, cabbage (from at least two weeks ago), potatoes (from at least a month ago), an onion and carrot. Yum! Then, sandwiches tomorrow.

So, back to our story. Yes, we now have no bananas. We waited, then we poured ourselves a Charisma. Still we couldn’t see Pete at the wharf (we’re anchored about 150 yards off). Longer, longer, and finally it’s dark. We couldn’t see Pete even if he did show up.

So, no bananas, but I’m keeping the flares out as I have a feeling we’ll see him standing on the wharf in the morning.

Position: 19 degrees, 56 minutes south; 174 degrees, 43 minutes west

Sailed about 20 miles today. The only problem was, where we wanted to go was directly upwind the whole way. Since sailboats can’t sail directly into the wind, we ended up having to zig zag or “beat” the whole way. Thus 20 miles ends up being more like 30 miles by the time you take all the back and forth in account. In this case against 20 knot wind and four foot seas. Not bad, but not Charisma’s favorite point of sail. But we’re not complaining, just glad to have got here at Ha’afeva before dark. It looks like a promising place. Nice sand, lots of reefs and we hear there’s lobster in them thar reefs.

Last night was not so fun. First off it rained all night so we had to close the hatches. It gets humid and sticky without the air flow, so that made the night uncomfortable enough, but the kicker was our anchorage. Since it was all rocks, every time the wind shifted the chain would grab a rock and threaten to tear off the bow. It got frightening at one point as we were “short-chained”, meaning and anchor chain had no give to it. It went straight from the bowsprit down and wrapped on a rock. When a wind gust hit and/or a swell rolled through the little bay we were in Charisma would make a terrible noise which was the anchor snagging on the rock and then the boat would shudder and slam. I was very close to attaching a float to the bitter end of the chain (the last bit – 6 inches- of the anchor chain), letting it all out and spending the night hove to offshore. It got that bad. Fortunately just before I was getting ready to do that, it calmed down a bit. I decided to give it one more chance and laid back down (around 0300) and promptly fell asleep since the noise and the slamming stopped. I still was having nightmares about getting the anchor back on the boat given all the noise, slamming, grinding and such, but at least I was now getting some sleep!

Come daybreak we got up (Charisma, The Rose and Orcinius) and got ready to haul anchor. The night before we agreed that although we were going different directions, we would haul at the same time in case one or more boats needed someone to dive on the anchor to free it up. So, at 0800 we three started hauling anchor to see who might be stuck and need assistance. Fortunately, the float I put on Charisma’s anchor chain the day before did its job and kept the chain from jamming on a rock, so our anchor actually came up without too much trouble. Orcinius John and The Rose John both had to dive their chains to untangle them. Each donned tanks and took care of things quickly so we were all out of there in about an hour.

Once out, The Rose headed north, we headed east and Orcinius headed south. We’ll hope to catch up with them in a week, but for now, we’re looking to explore some of the middle kingdom, so-to-speak, of this Tongan archipelago and will be spending at least the next few days just exploring some of the islands.

But tonight, after enjoying shimmering stars and a perfect half moon right above us, we are looking forward to a solid night’s sleep. Sweet dreams.

Position: 19 degrees, 44 minutes south; 175 degrees, 06 minutes west

Here's the GPS on Tofua. Note the lake in the middle which was the volcano caldera. Also note that the GPS is slightly off showing us "inland" a bit. This is why we don't trust the GPS at night for precision nav

Sunset at anchor, Tofua

Mutiny on HMS Bounty that is. A few people know that Tonga is the place where Captain Bligh was relieved forcibly of his command. Fewer folks know that this island, Tofua, is the exact location. This spot is a good 30 miles away from the main island group, and importantly-upwind. Bligh had no choice but to head west with the wind.

In our case, we headed west with the wind yesterday, enjoying a wonderful 8 hour downwind trip in beautiful weather. Most of the way was fairly easy, but this is a tricky area and in the middle of nowhere you can find a breaking reef- so you have to stay alert. We saw three such reefs not associated with an island. In 500 feet of water, suddenly the bottom comes up and there’s a reef a hundred yards long. Then back to 500 or more depth.

Trolling the whole way, we caught a small tuna that I threw back, got a huge hit that stripped off a bunch of line before throwing the hook that I never had time to set and we caught a very large mahi. So delicious fresh fish was had for dinner. I’m just as happy the one that threw the hook got away as the ferociousness in which the line was screaming out predicted quite a battle.

So, why did we come here so far off the track? Blame it on our friends on Orcinius and The Rose. John and Lisa and the other John and Pat respectively decided it would be cool to sail out here and climb the mountain (it’s actually a volcano and still active) and then down into the cone to a fresh water lake that is said to be there. Adventure did someone say? We’re in!

We’ve only been partly successful with the original plan. We got here. We found an anchorage even though most of the island has very steep, almost sheer sides. The anchorage is rocky so we’ll see how “good” it is when we pull anchors tomorrow-we may have to dive them to untangle them from the rocks. Where we missed the original plan was in not being able to get ashore. The waves are breaking pretty hard and it looks sketchy to get a dinghy safely in. Turns out the way the “guides” do it when they take people is drop them by boat off a little bay north of us and they have to swim in while one of the guides stays in the boat. We would have been able to swim ashore and we might have been able to anchor in the little bay if conditions had been right, but there’s a NE wind and coming right into the bay complete with sizable swells. Not safe.

But, on the “unexpected delight” scale, the trip has been amazing. For one, we’re the only boats here, so it’s very remote and quiet. Next up was a wonderful dive this morning. Once we realized we couldn’t make it ashore, we decided to dive. The anchorage is very colorful rock with coral and some nice fish. The biggest upside though has been a family of whales that seem to live in this area, fattening up their calf and getting ready to make their migration north. They have been a delight culminating (so far) with a half hour show this morning right off the sterns of our boats. Mother, calf and what looked like a adolescent frolicked, slapping tails and doing barrel rolls right before our eyes. At the same time a larger whale was breaching ¼ mile away out by the point. Definitely a stunning show. If they come back, we all have our snorkel gear laid out and are going to swim out and say; “hello” as they are pretty friendly and curious. They did a “drive by” last night, following us back to the boat from Orcinius where we had dinner. We could hear them slap their flippers and breathe right behind the boat. I was afraid one would get tangled in the dinghy-they were that close.

So this day closes with dessert on Orcinius. Berry pie and apple pie and Farkel. A good time was had by all.

Position: 19 degrees, 44 minutes south; 175 degrees 06 minutes west

At Tofua. 33 mile sail today to get to this island which is waaaay off the track. More tomorrow, we’re too tired to post more for now.

See you later.

So, JHam posed a couple questions and I meant to answer them, but forgot, hence this addendum to the day.

First off, yes Jerry, the Barracuda had really, really big teeth. In fact, I thought it was a Wahoo until I got him up on the gaff and he smiled at me. It was really more an evil looking sneer. Barracudas have long, sharp, teeth. This guy’s teeth were like the big, bad, wolf. They were almost two inches long, needle shaped/sharp and unlike most fish, the jaw was very solid bone (instead of cartiledge). “All the better to bite you with” was his message. I wouldn’t come near him with anything but needle-nose pliers.

On to the the Flux Gate compass. We did want to point out the sometimes insidious nature of high tech to all the future cruisers out there. We have found some folks who don’t even know that they have a flux gate compass on board. Anyone who has an autopilot or a radar with GPS overlay has one whether they know it or not. In our case, the simple act of removing a couple cans of powdered milk threw it hopelessly out of whack.

The good news: this morning we recalibrated it and now it’s solid. We have also designated a three foot space around it to be used only for storing clothes. 😉 Recalibration was fairly easy. You press the designated buttons while doing 360 degree circles. The instructions specify circling at less than 3 knots and no faster than 90 degrees/half minute. Took two and a half turns and the thing “found” its happy place. Now it’s spot on.

Lessons learned and fortunately not the hard way.

Position: 19 degrees 50 minutes south; 174 degrees, 24 minutes west @ Uoleva Island

Anchored at Uoleva

Another amazing island. We anchored here this morning. Had a nice two hour sail south from Lifuka in about 16 knots of wind. It’s always a little sketchy sailing in these waters as there are uncharted reefs, but in the right weather (i.e. pretty good sun/light) you can see the change in water color and avoid the ones that want to bump the bottom of the boat.

Once anchored in nice, soft sand, we went ashore to a beautiful sand beach. Funny how Tonga comes closest to the image we have of the “South Pacific” than does most of French Poly. Back there are coral beaches. Here the beaches are fine sand that you can walk on with bare feet, which we did today for about a mile. This island is all beach and coconut trees. Then we went for a snorkel.

Another day, another island, another snorkel. You may be getting tired of hearing about it, but we’re not getting tired of living it. This is amazing!

Our International hang out (actually it's the only cafe in Lifuka)

The "Bad Ferry" giving the brush off to one of the other boats that didn't move out of the way

Still in Lifuka.

Some days have unexpected encounters that help us appreciate how small the sailing world can be. Today we went into Pangai on the island of Lifuka to officially check into the Ha’apai Group. Check in was very simple. Hand over your check out form from Vava ‘u. That’s all. When we check out we will get it back. Simplicity is good.

We ventured to the only internet café on the island, Mariner’s Café, for lunch and a peek at the internet. While there we noticed the skipper of a Brazilian boat that we have seen in several anchorages and wondered if the name, Santa Paz, had a fun play on the name. Boldness wins again. We introduced ourselves and asked the burning question. And yes it does have a fun play on the name. Literally it means sweet peace. But in slang it means life is great! Lucas and his wife and two daughters are living the sweet life! We exchanged cards only to admire each other’s cards and found that Lucas’ wife was also in advertising and also had a great art department design theirs. I love the small world.

As we returned to our dinghy we continued our bold “let’s meet those we haven’t met” and introduced ourselves to a boat often heard on the VHF with Santa Paz, Aquamante from Holland. We have seen/heard Aquamante as far back as Niue when our paths first crossed. Today we have new Dutch friends, Vries and Daphne.

Other than that international excitement we avoided two bad ferries, one that left Lifuka and one that came into Lifuka, while enjoying a quiet sunset on Charisma. I mention the bad ferry because the port captain actually called out to the anchorage and told us all that we should all move to make room for the ferries. Few other instructions were provided. Having had personal bad ferry experiences we raised our anchor and moved 50 yards closer to shore and into water too shallow for ferries to play in. As it turns out we had been well clear of their exit routes but we were happy to comply.

Several other boats that didn’t move experienced the “Bad Ferry Brush-off”. We’ll sleep better tonight. They won’t. Unless they move.

Position: 19 degrees, 47 minutes south; 174 degrees, 21 minutes west

I thought this was a Wahoo....

...until I saw these teeth.

We had a great overnight sail from the Vava’u Group to the Ha’apai Group. All in Tonga, but Vava’u is the northern set of islands and Ha’apai is the central set. We’re now comfortably anchored in a little bay in Lifuka cooking dinner. Oh, what’s for dinner you ask? We caught a nice barracuda in about 300 feet of water just a few miles off the island group. At first I thought it was a wahoo, but once I gaffed him and pulled him up, I realized those big (huge actually) teeth could belong to only one fish; the barracuda.

Some barracuda harbor ciguatera, so we hailed some local fishermen who came over to look at our catch and they said, “No problem”. They were also very impressed with the size. This is the biggest barracuda I’ve ever seen. About 4 feet long. Even once he was dead, I still used pliers to pull the hook out of his mouth given the set of teeth in there. We’re cooking fillets in chipotle, black bean, corn and butter sauce, all wrapped in foil and baked.

OK, dinner is over and I can say- It. Was. Delicious! Wow, I didn’t know a fish that looks like a barracuda could be so delicious. Hopefully our lips won’t start to go numb and our feet fall off, or whatever the symptoms of ciguatera are. For what it’s worth, we’ve read that only Atlantic barracuda have ciguatera.

Anyway, last night’s sail was delightful. A nice 15 knot breeze on the beam, stars and shooting stars galore. We each got a couple hours of sleep, so we’re not completely trashed today, although right now (at 2100) we’re starting to fade.

A last note on last night’s sail. We staged out of an island that was close to the western side of Vava’u, but we still had to navigate through a couple reefs, miss some rocks and an island that is about 10 mile outside the main group of islands. We had to navigate all that in the dark, since we left at 2300 (or that was the plan anyway). Just before it was time to go, I realized that I hadn’t checked the radar or confirmed that the GPS was accurate in the island group we were staging out of. Dumb! So I fired up the radar expecting to just get confirmation that all was right in the universe. Not. Turns out we had stored some canned powdered milk near the flux-gate compass and gave some away to friends during the day. Oops. The tins were magnetic enough that they influenced the compass. That was fine because we did a magnetic deviation calibration a couple weeks ago. The problem now was that we disturbed the magnetic field by giving away/using some of the tins. The flux-gate compass was flummoxed and so were we. The radar which relies on this digital compass flipped out and was at least 30 degrees off of reality. So, I was left with a disagreement between the radar and GPS. No bueno. I was ready to cancel the night time departure when I realized we had a solid radar hit on a charted object-a lighthouse. So I calibrated the radar on the lighthouse and now we had a picture of what was really out there-and it aligned with the GPS. OK, trip back on. I still have to recalibrate the whole thing now that we’ve moved all the tins, but at least it worked long enough for us to use it for reef avoidance. Yay! Lesson learned? No more metallic objects within 3 feet of the flux-gate compass. Duh.

Back in the States, you watch Stupid Pet Tricks. Out here we have Bob’s Stupid Tonga Tricks.

Anchored at Ovalau

We had this island all to ourselves

Such a beautiful spot

Later on Ladybug and Black Dog showed up and we had sundowners on Charisma

We’re still anchored at Ovalau Island. But today, only one other boat was here and they didn’t go ashore, so we had the island to ourselves. We went ashore at low tide and walked halfway around until we couldn’t go any further without swimming! The sand was very fine and felt good between our toes after so much coral sand that is much coarser. One of the benefits of your own private island is there are no footprints in the sand. But wait! There were! Closer examination revealed they belonged to a goat family-looked like a large male, a female and a couple of baby goats including a very tiny one. I had visions of myself stealthily moving through the jungle with a bandana tied around my head to absorb the sweat, gripping a large knife in my teeth while parting the foliage with my sharpened stake. Ann just wanted to see the cute little goats.

So there we were; Rambo and Heidi. We decided to compromise and just hunt for sea shells.

After our island excursion it was back to Charisma for lunch and a nap (actually Ann did some sewing on the mainsail where a couple of seams had rubbed the thread off) in anticipation of our leaving tonight around 2300 for Ha’apai. More specifically we’re going to the island of Ha’apana in the Ha’api group. It’s about 63 miles from where we’re anchored and we’d like to get there early in the day for a change. We’ve been making too many landfalls at the last possible minute of sunlight. Not safe in an area like this.

OK, now that I think of it, I actually did something useful today besides nap. I made four new lures for fishing. They are very nice looking, but there’s one flaw-the biggest line we have is 100lb test and for the handline we really should be using 300# test. You can’t find it here so we have, what we have. I put a new bungee cord on the line so hopefully that will absorb the shock and we will catch something instead of losing the lure. They say the fish (like a 100 lb Tuna) hit at something like 60 miles/hour so you can see that the lures need to be tough! Well, like I said-they look really good.

Pray to the Tuna god, we need some sushi.

Position: 18 degrees, 45 minutes south; 174 degrees, 04 minutes west

It is Sunday here so I had the enjoyment of attending mass at St. Joseph’s church this morning. Most of the mass was in Tongan but joyful prayer in the form of song is universal. These people sing a cappella with many different voices blending in prayer. It is just beautiful. Add to the musical atmosphere, the fun of people-watching and I am totally entertained. The Tongan people really dress up for church. Most of them dress in black with the traditional woven wrap. Both men and women. They must be melting in the heat. And the children seem comfortable with everyone in a very packed church. These toddlers wander from pew to pew with their faces lighting up as they recognize another friend. Hugs and smiles and off to the next pew. Very entertaining. Then, under a brilliant sun-filled sky we slipped our mooring lines in Neiafu and started the journey south to the next island group in Tonga – the Ha’apai. We had nice 10-15 knot winds that carried us down the somewhat familiar waterways toward our last anchorage in the Vava’u Group.

We are anchored at Ovalau and have found the perfect South Pacific sandy beach! We dropped our anchor in 40 feet of clear water and dinghied ashore with our snorkel gear. But snorkeling had to wait because we found soft, warm sand. The beaches in the South Pacific look perfect from the boat but when you go ashore you can hardly walk on them in bare feet. Too much coral. But not today. Soft sand on a deserted island with sea shells to be found!

We did don our snorkel gear and caught up with our friends on Lady Bug for a beautiful snorkel through meadows of coral. Seriously, these coral formations looked like bouquets of flowers. Just lovely. And we were surprised at the number of new fish we found. I think we are going back for more tomorrow.

Back on Charisma we showered off and ended our day with cocktails with both the crew from Lady Bug and the crew from Black Dog – a very cool boat named after a beloved dog. Another lovely day in paradise!