Passage to Tonga

August 5-8, 2014

We departed from Pago Pago, American Samoa around 8am on August 5th, and we were happy to be leaving, for sure.  If you don’t know why, check out my previous essay, which details all of our adventures in Pago Pago.  Anyway, I don’t have much written in our logbook about this passage to Tonga other than we caught a Dorado (aka Mahi Mahi). However, this passage lives on in my memory as one of our worst one without any specific recollection as to why.  The few log entries show that we had windspeeds between 17 and 24 kts at an apparent wind angle forward of the beam the whole way.  Yuck.  We were heavily reefed the whole time because there were many nighttime squalls. 

Although Tonga is on the East side of the dateline (180 deg longitude), it has elected to be in a time zone as if it were on the other side in order to be consistent with New Zealand and Fiji.  So, we lost a day on this passage, and it turns out that the day we lost was my sister’s birthday.  Sorry Danna.

The sun was rising when we arrived in the wind shadow of the largest island of Vava’u it was like heaven.  The seas flattened and the wind calmed.  We made VHF radio contact with two other boats we knew who expressed the same relief of coming into the calm.  As we made our way inside the island group we listened to the VHF cruisers net, which was helpful, because they were able to tell us exactly where we needed to go to clear in. Apparently Tongan officials aren’t monitoring the radio too often.  We arrived, all checked in and ready to explore, on the afternoon of 8 August.