August 5 – 28, 2014
We left Pago Pago on the morning of 5 August and had a three-day passage to Vava’u, which is an island group in The Kingdom of Tonga, and a popular charter cruising destination. Overall, we spent a wonderful month and a half in Vava’u, and this essay will only cover the first half of that, because there is just so much to say. We cleared in at the port of Neiafu and stayed for about four days, until our friends from back home, Yi and Johnny, came for a visit. Once they arrived, we headed out the channel and around the corner to a popular anchorage called Port Maurelle (aka Fangakima, aka Anchorage #7) on Kapa Island. This was a good home base for some snorkeling and whale watching excursions and it also has access to a decent running trail around the island. After a couple days there we sailed to the outside of the island group to the lagoon formed by Hunga and Fofoa Islands. The entrance to the lagoon was very narrow, and once through we tried to anchor on the southeast side of the lagoon off of a nice beach, but we were unsuccessful in finding a spot with suitable depth, so we ended up anchoring on the southwest side of the lagoon off of Fofoa Island. On the north side of the lagoon is Hunga Village and a resort with moorings (where Anchorage #13 is located), but we didn’t venture up that way. Our next stop was more towards the western end of the island group to Tapana Island (aka Anchorage #11) for our first Tongan Feast. Then we went down to ‘Euakafa Island (aka Anchorage #32), where we hiked to the tomb of a Tongan Princess. By this time, Yi and Johnny’s visit was coming to a close, and we spent one last night at Port Maurelle before heading back to Neiafu for them to catch their flight. Before we got sucked into shopping and internet in Neiafu, we turned right around and headed back to Port Maurelle, and once again used it as a home base for some snorkeling excursions. Eventually, we needed to go back to Neiafu for provisioning, completing a couple boat projects, and going on a pub crawl. We took a timeout from “city life” and moved down to the south end of the channel at Anchorage #2, near the town of Toula. Finally, we were ready to head back out to the islands and we departed Neiafu for anchorage #16 and the coral gardens on 28 August.
The rest of our Vava’u adventures, including a visit from Papa and Nana, will be covered in the next essay or two.
Gresham Family Exodus 