Author: cruisingrunner

August 28 – September 7, 2014

After completing chores and fixing the port saildrive, we finally got out of Neiafu again and headed to anchorage #16 on 28 Aug. Anchorage #16 is at the island of Vaka’eitu near “the coral gardens” and Lape Island, and we went there with Lady Carolina and True Blue V. Who else? We stayed a couple of days and then moved to the island of Nuku, which is a small island just off the larger Kapa Island south of Port Maurelle. Technically, it’s anchorage #8, but we didn’t exactly drop where the guidebook says. This is a great spot; one of our favorites. On 1 September we were joined by some other kid boats, and we all navigated through the reef over to anchorage #30 at Kenutu Island. There we celebrated Joel’s 10th birthday with a big beach bash. After a couple days everyone left, but we stayed a little longer to enjoy some solitude. On 6 June we went back to Nuku island to hook back up with all the kid boats, but then the next day we went back to Neiafu to get ready for Papa and Nana to visit! Our adventures with them will have to wait until the next Chapter.

Originally posted on August 26, 2014, by cruisingrunner

Yesterday was a busy day. I made a total of 4 trips into town (about a half mile round trip) for various reasons plus a 3-mile run, plus a hike up to the top of Mt. Palau. My crew was lukewarm at best about hiking with me, in fact Alex even used schoolwork as a reason NOT to go. After just a little bit of cajoling, though, Brenden agreed to go with me, and we ended up having some great one on one time, even if the highlight for him was the soft serve ice cream cone I bought him once we were back in town. The hike was not strenuous and mostly it was filled with Brenden’s endless questions about anything and everything and lots of photo taking of piggies. We just never get tired of the piggies.

On our way back into town we found ourselves in the midst of the after-school kid crowd. Kids were everywhere as they made their way walking home from school. They were all laughing, pushing each other, and even giving each other piggie back rides. There was constant chattering, and one small kid was even singing. Brenden was mostly silent, only talking to say hi to the kids as they passed us or we passed them. And then he made the astute and somewhat solemn observation that the kids here are acting just like the kids at home. He said, “It’s been sooo long.” He was visibly melancholy, and I knew he was missing his friends and his life back at home. He shook it off quickly, especially since he got that ice cream cone I previously mentioned. He also had a great evening with other kids here in the harbor and even made some new friends as well. But that twinge of homesickness was real when he had it, even if fleeting.

I had a bit of nostalgia for my past life myself last night, although it manifested itself in a more positive way than Brenden’s. The weather has been pretty cool here the last few days, so while getting ready to head out to dinner with a few friends, I actually had to pull out a duffle bag that’s been stowed for I don’t know how long in order to find a light jacket. It was my gray Lucy jacket that I bought myself for my 40th birthday. I wore jeans, a long sleeve shirt, and that Lucy jacket out to dinner, and it felt just like I was heading out to dinner back at home. I’m pretty sure I haven’t worn jeans since I was in California last October. It’s been too hot, for one thing, but also jeans don’t make good boat clothes because they take so long to dry if they get wet. It was a great evening, although the cuisine here in Tonga isn’t quite the caliber we could always find in Southern California.

Homsickness. We all get it from time to time. Well, except Tim. I’m not sure he ever misses home, with the exception of high pressure hot water showers.

-D.

August 23-25, 2014

Anchorage #2 is just up the channel from Neiafu, but it was a nice getaway from the “hustle and bustle of the big city.”  We actually had a bit of a tough time finding a place to drop the anchor amongst the mooring balls and with the steep bottom, but eventually we settled in.  Our first morning there I was greeted by a pod of whales while I was drinking my coffee.  I have no idea why they were so far in the harbor, but I enjoyed the show, nonetheless.  I was glad when they started making their way back to the harbor entrance while it was still early, so maybe they could get away before the whale watching tour operators started for business.

We found out that the station to fill up propane is very nearby, and we were able to tie the dinghy up to a dock in front of a rental house that was currently vacant.  So, filling propane was quite easy.  Although, to be accurate, it was butane, not propane.  Since we arrived in the pacific it’s been butane rather than propane, the main difference being that the butane is at a lower pressure, and it seems like the oven doesn’t get quite as hot, but that’s a subjective observation.  I’ve never measured it.

The highlight of this anchor spot (well, other than the whales) was taking the dinghy up the causeway between the main island of ‘Uta Vava’u and Pangaimotu at low tide.  We were able to walk over the road out to the other side and explore along the reef.  We met a man named Paul who has built a house in the causeway, and we got a rambunctious welcome from his four dogs.  He let us park our dinghy near his house, and the boys enjoyed playing with the dogs.  The next day when Lady Carolina joined us, we made another shore excursion and walked to the small village of Toula and climbed down to Veimumuni Cave with a freshwater pool in it.  The water looked quite stagnant, but there were people swimming in it.  We all passed but enjoyed another day of exploring the reef at low tide.

Also near anchorage #2 in the middle of the harbor is the wreck of the copra ship Clan MacWilliam, which caught fire and sank in 1927.  It lies in about 30m of water, and Tim didn’t dive on it this time, but stay tuned, because he will.  Without tanks.

August 22, 2014

If you enter the Vava’u island group from the north, most likely you will enter around the southwest end of the main island of ‘Uta Vava’u.  Somewhat of a channel is formed between that island and the smaller islands of Hunga, Nuapapu, and Kapa, which lay to the south.  In the middle of that channel are some very small, uninhabited islands, more like large rocks really.  Once while staying at Port Maurelle, we took a day dinghy trip out to the one called Tu’ungasika for some of the best snorkeling we had seen so far in Tonga.  It was a long dinghy ride, but conditions were calm, so it was comfortable.  We went to the north side of the island first where there was great snorkeling, although a lot of what there was to see was deep.  I had been working on holding my breath longer and diving down, so I was enjoying practicing and seeing a lot of bigger fish.  I think this may have been the first day I wore a weight belt.  There were also rocks to climb up, so of course the boys had fun climbing up and jumping off.  Later, we dinghied around to the east side of the island to explore some caves.  I was basically the dinghy babysitter, since there was nowhere to anchor, while Tim and the boys poked around in every hole and crevice they could find. It was good boy fun, and they really enjoyed themselves.  Overall, it was one of our most enjoyable family snorkel days so far.

Way back during our early days in Mexico, we had some issues with the starboard engine, or more specifically, with the interface between the engine and the sail drive.  Well, the issue went back even earlier than that.  I think the very first time we noticed strange behavior was when we had just taken possession of Exodus and were travelling between San Diego and Marina del Rey via Catalina Island.  At the time, we were under motor, and I noticed our speed had dropped considerably.  Then Tim noticed that the trail behind us showed that the starboard engine wasn’t giving as much thrust as the port, and we shut it down.  When we started it again, it seemed to be fine.  After that, every once in a while, it wouldn’t engage when it should, especially in reverse.  By the time we made it to Puerto Escondio, it rarely, if ever worked, and Tim was able to fix it with some help from a guy on shore.

Now we were in Tonga, and we started noticing similar behavior with the port engine.  Tim and Steve spent the better part of a full day working on it.  At one point they realized they didn’t have a tool they needed, so they went to shore, but no luck.  So, they decided to go over to a mega-yacht and ask for help. They ended up talking to the head engineer, and he invited them on board, and he was indeed able to help them.  But the funny part was that he made them sign an NDA (non-disclosure agreement).  We are familiar with these from work, when you are working with another company and have to sign that you won’t give away any of their secrets (oversimplification, but you get the idea).  So, I guess they saw lots of cool stuff on this mega-yacht, but they couldn’t tell us about any of it.

A couple days later we met Theo and Wanda on s/v Et Voila, a Lagoon 450 (think Exodus, but HUGE), and we heard they were having the same problem.  Since Tim had just gone through the process, he was able to help Theo with his and get it done in just a couple hours.  It was a great thing to realize that after a year and a half we’ve finally crossed the threshold of giving back to the cruising community.

Neiafu is the administrative capital of Vava’u and made for a very nice home base during our entire stay.  It’s by far the biggest town in Vava’u, but it’s much smaller and less industrial than other capitals we’ve been to like Papeete or Pago Pago.  The capital of all of Tonga, Nuku’alofa, is more like these places.  Neiafu is more on the scale of say, Atuona, where we cleared into the Marquesas, but not as pretty or well groomed.  More than anything it reminded us of some of the towns in Mexico in terms of quality of infrastructure, friendliness of people (rather varied), and most of all the fact that there is a huge expat community here that serves the annual cruisers in transit.  Tonga is a much easier place to immigrate to than, say, French Polynesia, and it shows.  I wrote a post for my cruising runner blog called “In the Buffer Zone,” which explains this, and I’ve included that below.

In the harbor near Neiafu there were a couple of places to anchor for free, but they were at a much greater distance to the dinghy docks than the myriad of mooring balls that litter the harbor.  So, usually, when we arrived in Neiafu we’d pick up a mooring ball and pay the 10-15 pa’anga (Tongan currency) per night.  The convenience made it worth it.  Every morning we listened to the daily VHF net to hear what was going on and get a taste of the local politics among the expats there.  By far my favorite part of the net, possibly the only reason I kept listening day after day, was the market report by Primrose.  Primrose is a local Tongan guy who drives a taxi, and I don’t know his full story, but he seems pretty plugged in to the cruising community, and his market report has nothing to do with the stock market.  It has to do with the local daily produce and craft market.  I can still hear his voice telling us, “It’s a lovely market this morning, beautiful tomatoes coming up, lovely carrots at the market this morning…”  It seemed like things changed very seldom at the market and everything was always “lovely” and “beautiful” and “coming up” but I loved it.

Near Neiafu there is a nice hike about a couple miles long up to the top of Mt. Talau, which is the highest peak in Vava’u at about 450 ft.  I actually went twice, once on my own but when I got to the top I realized I had picked the wrong time of day for photos over the harbor.  So, I recruited Brenden to go with me a second time, and we made a very nice mother/son day of it.  I let him carry my smaller camera, so we have a photo record of the day from Brenden’s perspective, which includes a lot more photos of pigs, chickens, and spiders than mine did.

Link to Brenden’s photo album: https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.569550663151223.1073741955.288817647891194&type=3

One of our favorite memories of Neiafu was our pub crawl with Lady Carolina.  We left all four boys on one of the boats, I can’t remember which one, and we headed to shore to hit as many bars/restaurants as we could.  This turned out to be not very many.  We started at the marina wine bar, which actually had decent food and wasn’t too expensive, but calling itself a “wine bar” is a bit of a stretch.  Their wine selection was one red and one white, so yeah, not much of a wine bar.  It was an outdoor setting, but other than that it really was your typical bar, with pool tables and darts and a group of guys with tattoos that always seem to be there at the same table every time you go.  Next up was the Bounty Bar, which is somewhat of a new establishment, and we enjoyed a few appetizer snacks in addition to our drinks.  They had a pretty decent selection of rum, nothing great, but more than we had seen anywhere else.  So, Steve orders a rum, I can’t remember the exact kind, but it’s one that he had bought back in Mexico that wasn’t even all that great, but OK.  The girl said she’d have to ask, and then the owner came out and said he wouldn’t open the bottle because it was really expensive.  OK, so why have it setting out then?  It turns out Steve was the first to ever order it.  I guess the guy bought it when the cast/crew of Survivor was there, but for some reason he never recouped his costs and now he was bitter about the whole thing, and he was taking it out on Steve.  I ended up just ordering a rum punch which was heavy on punch and light on rum.  The atmosphere was much nicer at Bounty Bar than at Marina Wine Bar, but the owner was a bit of an ass.  However, I should point out that we were all in the mood to have a bit of fun with it, not get all bent out of shape over it.  For dinner and nice wine, we hit the Spanish Tapas restaurant located on the main road heading back to the anchorage.  We thought this place was really good, but later we heard from other cruisers that it really isn’t, so we aren’t sure if we were just a little loopy by then or if it was the other cruisers who were loopy.  We intended to hit the Mango and Aquarium cafes to round out the night, but it was after 9:00 by this point, and they were actually closed.  What are we, back in El Segundo?  It was a great night with great friends, and we got to sample a little bit of Neiafu’s hoppin’ nightlife.

This turned out to be one of our most frequented anchorages.  It had a remote feel to it, but also had pretty close proximity to Neiafu, so it made a good first stop when leaving Neiafu and a good last stop when making our way back to Neiafu.  It was a narrow bay with steep sides and had a nice beach at its head.  It was a great bay for paddleboarding and solo snorkeling along the coral around the edges.  Swallows cave and Mariners Cave are not too far, so it’s a great staging place for those activities.  But by far, for me, the highlight was the trail, which went all around Kapa Island.  It was steep in places, and the footing was precarious in places, and there were huge spiders in places, but it was about the best running I found in Tonga that wasn’t running along a road or doing laps on a beach.