Big Mama’s Yacht Club ran a shuttle over to Nuku’alofa about 3 or 4 times a day. It is about a 20-minute ride and costs 5 pa’anga round trip. After we took our dinghy over the first day and bashed back upwind, I resolved to take Big Mama’s shuttle every other time I needed to go to town. It was much easier and much more comfortable. Almost every day I would catch the first shuttle of the day, 8:30-ish and then go for a run and/or go shopping. Most mornings I would get to the dock at about 8:20 and then wait until 8:45 or 9:00 for the shuttle to leave, because let’s face it, we’re in Tonga and schedules aren’t exactly meaningful. However, one morning it actually left early, about 8:25, leaving a few people behind as they were tying up their dinghies. So, most of the time it was late, but you couldn’t always count on it being late.
I almost always caught the first shuttle back to Big Mama’s, about 11:30. There was rarely another cruiser on that one, since most people who shuttled into Nuku’alofa stayed until the afternoon. So, if I wasn’t alone, I shared the shuttle with either well-to-do Tongans or international tourists, mostly from New Zealand, heading out to Pangaimotu for the day. You could tell they were well-to-do Tongans because they were well groomed and manicured. I can’t tell you how many times I told our cruising story and pointed out which boat was Exodus as we shuttled through the Big Mama anchorage.
One of the reasons I went to town every day may be self-evident: to get in a good run on a good surface, without having to circumnavigate a small island multiple times. But the other reason was to provision for our passage to New Zealand. When doing a small reprovision, I tend to take the approach of whiddling away at it. One backpack full at a time, I slowly filled Exodus’s lockers. I enjoy a leisurely pace, both in shopping and stowing everything on board. In contrast, when we do a big reprovision, it’s all hands-on deck and all four of us try to knock it out in one shot.
Gresham Family Exodus 