Gresham Family Exodus

The story of clearing out starts with our need to top up the diesel tanks and jerry cans and our desire to purchase that diesel at the duty free rate. Another boat in the anchorage, I feel bad that I don’t remember which one, did the legwork to find out the logistics of getting duty free fuel. Basically, you had to clear out with customs and get a letter of approval, then you had to order your fuel in advance, then they bring the fuel to the dock by truck and you fill up. Since they kind of expect you to leave after you clear out but you have to order your fuel at least a day in advance, it seems a bit of a disconnect to me, but whatever. I’ve learned not to ask questions I might not like the answer to.

So, the catch with getting the fuel had nothing to do with the government. It was that you had to order an insane amount of fuel from the fuel company to have it delivered by truck to the fuel dock. To get fuel delivered, many boats had to coordinate their order together. Somehow, it worked out for five of us to do it on the same day: Exodus, Ika, Tusitala, Nirvana, and Iguana. It was a little tricky because we aren’t talking about an insignificant amount of money. So, instead of one person fronting the money for everyone or one person collecting money from everyone, our plan was to all do the checkout process together and all go together with our approval letters from customs to place the fuel order.

We all caught the first shuttle from Big Mama’s over to Nuku’alofa, and the first stop was immigration, which was almost all the way to town, conveniently across the street from the bakery. Ika had gotten there first so they were inside, and the rest of us waited outside. I was next up, and I went inside, and a soft spoken man gave me a form to fill out. As I started to fill it out, a thought occurred to me, and I made a suggestion. I told the man that there were several other people outside in line to do the same thing, so maybe he should give them the forms and they can start filling them out while they wait. He didn’t seem to think it was either a good or bad idea, but he humored me and went out and gave them all the forms. Efficiency and timeliness just aren’t on the radar at any beauraucratic office, but even less so in the islands. After I finished filling out the forms he stamped and signed them, and then went to make copies. The nearest photocopier didn’t work, so he stared at it for about 10 minutes before going to find another one about 15 ft away. That one didn’t work either so he stared at that one for what seemed like even longer. He never asked anyone for help and never really tried to fix anything. Finally, he just came back to the desk and started handwriting out a second copy of the form. Seriously. These are times when you just take deep breaths and remember how much you appreciate where you are. And these are also the times when I remember why I’m the one handling this kind of thing and not Tim. He would have even less patience for it. Unfortunately, one boat in our group hit a snag at immigration. Their visas were expired because they thought when they arrived the got 3 months rather than 1 month and never renewed. In the end they were able to pay an additional fee and eventually sort it all out, but it wasn’t without its headaches.

After immigration, we went to an office upstairs from customs to pay our port fees. This was something we had to do in Neiafu as well, but curiously, not in Pangai. Basically, it’s a fee based on your boat’s tonnage. It was at this point that we noticed that the tonnage listed on our coast guard registration is erroneously high. So, at the window when she asked my tonnage I gave her the correct number, not what was listed on our registration paper, counting on that she probably wouldn’t look at the paper anyway. And she didn’t.  Then we went downstairs to the customs office, waited in a room for about 20 minutes, then we finally had our clearance out of Tonga and our approval letter for the duty-free fuel.

The last stop of the day was at the Total Fuel office to place our order for the next day. This was kind of a pain, because we had to tell them exactly how much fuel we wanted. If we overestimated, we had to pay for it anyway. If we underestimated, well, whoever was last to fill up would likely get shorted. And when we asked how they measure the fuel they responded that it’s with stick lowered into the tank. If it’s sounding like I’m setting you up for some drama, well, I wish I could remember one way or the other. Exodus was first to fuel up in the morning, and the only drama for us was that we had to wait about 2.5 hours before the fuel truck every showed up. We filled up and as far as we know we took about what we had ordered, and no one after us ever complained or came after us with pitchforks or anything. It took the better part of a day and a half, but we were officially cleared out of Tonga.

We arrived in Tongatapu on Thursday Oct 30, and our visas were set to expire the following Saturday, just over a week. We intended to be ready to go and clear out on Thursday, so that gave us just under one full week to prep for the passage. We wanted to shoot for Thursday rather than Friday, because we’ve learned from experience you just don’t leave these sorts of things to the last day of the working week. There could be a surprise holiday or a requirement we didn’t know about or anything that might delay us a day, and then our visas would expire adding a whole extra layer of bureaucracy. So, we worked fast and furious to meet that deadline. Tim did a ton of boat work and inspections so that we knew Exodus was ready for the passage too. It wasn’t time yet for an engine oil change, but Tim inspected fluid levels, cleaned raw water intake, checked electrical connections, etc., etc. He also made sure the rigging was good to go, which included hoisting him up the mast to check all the standing rigging, the main sail batten car track, and the VHF antenna that sits atop the mast. Of course, there were other inspections too, like the steering system and the SSB connections and ground plane.

In addition to all the inspections there was also a sail to repair, and for good measure Tim spent a fair amount of time onshore helping our friends from Fluenta repair their sail too. The boys chipped in a bit and cleaned both hulls in between all the play time with the other kid boats. For my part, I shored up all of our provisions, prepared and froze passage meals (so we are well fed our first few days at sea, even if I don’t feel like cooking), handled the paperwork for clearing out of Tonga and clearing into New Zealand, and spent a fair amount of time studying the weather in an effort to pick “the best possible window” for heading to New Zealand. We worked hard and comfortably met our deadline and were ready to clear out Thursday morning, and that includes carving out several evenings for epic games of resistance with Iguana, and our new friends on Tusitala.

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.

October 31, 2014

We had been hearing about the upcoming Big Mama’s Halloween Party on the SSB net all the way down Ha’apai, so when we arrived on 30 October, we realized that we had made it just in time. The previous year for Halloween we were all alone and departing San Felipe for a 2-day passage south. So, it was fun to be with a big group for a big party this year. The boys rummaged around a bit trying to figure out something for a costume, and then one of them came up with the idea to be Thing 1 and Thing 2 of Dr. Seuss fame. We had these brand new plain white T-shirts (thanks Lady Carolina!) and Tim carefully drew the numbers 1 and 2 on each of them and then the boys spiked up their long hair and… voila! Easy Halloween costumes.

Imagine our surprise and excitement when, as we were pulling into the harbor of Tongatapu, we heard some familiar VHF radio traffic, “Port Control, Port Control, Port Control, this is sailing vessel Fluenta, Fluenta over.”

Fluenta, Fluenta, Fluenta!”

These are our friends that we had met very early in our cruising adventure, back in the early days of the Sea of Cortez. We had left Mexico about a month before them, so we had been following their adventures across the south pacific by email. It was so nice to finally catch up in person. The boys had fun running around with Jonathon and Victoria again, well, OK, mostly Brenden, because Alex is a teenager now and teenagers are just boring. Baby Benjamin was so much bigger, but of course, that’s what babies do.

We also met up with another boat we knew from Mexico, and we’ve known them almost as long as we’ve known Fluenta: Steve and Judy on s/v Code Blue. Although they aren’t a “kid boat” we have a special bond with them since they are one of the few boats we spent the hot hot summer with up in the northern Sea of Cortez.

Originally posted on November 1, 2014, by cruisingrunner

After weeks in the remote islands of Ha’apai, we’re now in the capital city of Nuku’alofa enjoying our reunion with internet, restaurants, and fresh fruits and vegetables. I had visions of proper runs along a waterfront trail, but unfortunately, that just isn’t to be. There’s an option to stern tie to the wharf in the inner harbor, which would have been good for my running options, but it’s dirty and loud and practically every cruiser that’s come before us and written anything down about it has strongly advised against it. So, we are anchored with about 20 other cruising boats off of a small island called Pangaimotu, about a mile away from the inner harbor. It’s great out here, there’s a restaurant and yacht club on shore, and we’ve been enjoying burgers and happy hours and even a big halloween/yacht club anniversary/Big Mama’s birthday bash. It’s called “Big Mama’s” Yacht Club after all, so why shouldn’t her birthday be a reason to celebrate. Sadly, there are no roads or decent trails on the small island. Yesterday, I did manage to run around the island at low tide, and the island is so small it took me 5 times around to get in 5 miles.

Our first full day here, we dinghied over to the inner harbor, walked to the customs office to do our domestic check-in, and then walked about a mile to the “city center” where there are restaurants, a big market, a few grocery stores, and of course, the royal palace. We had to make a stop at the Digicell store. Think AT&T store but the wait is even longer, and no one seems to care. While the boys and I were waiting for Tim to complete a purchase for wifi hotspot data, a lady started chatting up Alex. I guess it was pretty obvious that we weren’t from around here. Turns out that she’s Tongan, but she moved to the U.S. when she was 6 years old, and this is the first time she’s been back here. She’s from Hawthorne, right near where we were from, so of course we knew all the same landmarks and shopped at some of the same stores.

Talking to her was interesting for about 1 minute and then I started getting a bit embarrassed. She said more than once that she may be Tongan, but since she grew up in America, she’s more American. OK, fair enough, but it was the way she kept emphasizing it to me, as if she wanted to make sure I didn’t consider her, you know, Tongan, like there would be something bad about that. Then she started going on and on about how different it is here, and, “Oh my god! The men wear skirts!” Keep in mind that we are in a packed store and it’s not like we were in our own insulated bubble, I’m sure everyone could hear. She told me how she had to text here son when she got here to let him know that, “Oh my god! The men wear skirts!” I tried to change the subject and talked a bit about how we’d been in more remote locations and it was so nice to go to the market and buy some fresh produce, but that only got her started about what they DON’T have here. “They don’t even have strawberries and grapes, I really wanted strawberries and grapes, and I asked, but no, they don’t have those here, only apples and oranges.” As far as fruit goes, I guess she didn’t notice the papaya, coconuts, bananas, and mangoes.

Americans get a bad rap for being self-centered, arrogant, and loud, and so far in my cruising experience it’s totally unjustified. Americans don’t stand out at all to me amongst all of the other western cruisers, but this lady had me floored. Perhaps all of the American cruisers we know are simply less American than this Tongan.

-D.

October 31, 2014

Our first morning there, all four of us dinghied the 1.5 miles from the Big Mama anchorage over to Nuku’alofa. It was difficult to find a good place to park the dinghy as the little dock was a bit rickety with rusty bolts and other protruding sharp objects that don’t exactly agree with an inflatable RIB. Finally, we found a spot we were comfortable with, and we started walking in the direction of where we thought the customs office was. After asking for directions once, we found it, about a 10-minute walk in the opposite direction as town from the wharf. Walking back, we were getting a bit hungry, but we didn’t really see anywhere we wanted to eat, so we decided to walk all the way to town. But first, we made a stop at the liquor store near the wharf to take stock of what they had available and what the prices were. From the wharf to town was a little over a mile, and we had lunch at a tourist friendly cafe called “Friends.” It was OK, even if a bit pricey. After that we explored the fresh market and several grocery stores in preparation for the provisioning we would need to do before departing for New Zealand. We took a taxi back to the wharf and then had a very wet, bouncy, upwind dinghy ride back to Big Mama’s. Our taxi driver, like pretty much every Tongan we met in Tongatapu, has been to the U.S. before, and they all like to tell you about what they experienced, what they liked and didn’t like. But mostly it was all positive.