Gresham Family Exodus

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.

October 30, 2014

Our day sail from Ha’apai to Tongatapu covered roughly 45 miles, so we got an early start, weighing anchor at roughly 7am. This sail was some of the best sailing we had ever done. If every passage was like this I might actually start to like sailing! We sailed on a beam reach with light winds (10-15 knots) and more importantly, totally flat seas. Those of you who enjoy sailing inside Long Beach or San Diego Harbors, I totally get it now. There’s absolutely nothing like zipping along on a flat sea.

At about 10am we had a fish on the line, and when I headed up into the wind in order to slow Exodus down, I went too far, so I started the port engine to avoid irons. I used to beat myself up over stuff like this and if we got into irons, we’d get out without starting an engine, but with lines in the water it’s a real pain when you wrap one of the props, so now I will start an engine to avoid the hassle. Unfortunately, we lost the fish, but this disappointment was averted when later in the day we landed a 4 ft Dorado (Mahi Mahi).

Overall, we made excellent time. We were having safe arrival cocktails in the cockpit by 3:30, and we were on shore at Big Mama’s Yacht Club for burgers, beer, internet, and friends by 5:00.

We had a glorious day sail from Kelefesia in the Ha’apai group down to the island group of Tongatapu, which is the southern-most island group in Tonga and also where the capital city of Nuku’alofa is located. We arrived at Big Mama’s Yacht Club on the small island of Pangaimotu on a Thursday, and our plan was to clear out of Tonga the following Thursday at the latest because our visas would expire on that Saturday. We met that goal of being ready to leave, but the weather smacked us down and reminded us that we will leave when mother nature says it’s time. We ended up staying 16 days at Big Mama’s, reanchoring twice: once to move in closer to get out of the wind so Tim could go up the mast and once after returning from the fuel dock. We finally left Tonga on Saturday, 15 November, with an entire fleet of southbound boats. After a two-day passage we spent three absolutely magical days at Minerva Reef before embarking on the dreaded passage to New Zealand. That passage turned out to be one of our easiest, and we pulled onto the quarantine dock in Opua just before midnight on Wednesday, 26 November.

This was easily our favorite spot in Ha’apai. It is the southernmost island in Ha’apai, which made it a great launching point for heading down to Tongatapu. The island was uninhabited, however there were definite signs that people spend time there including small, corrugated tin shelters and lots of trash on the side of the small island opposite from the anchorage (not visible from out boat). The passage from Nomuka was quite a bash, but it was well worth it. It’s the only island in Ha’apai with any sort of elevation to it, so it was strikingly beautiful even if only for the contrast with the rest of the island group. There is a limestone cliff overlooking the anchorage, and a long sandspit that is just barely covered at high tide. This sandspit turned out to be a huge highlight for the boys because it was, “the best skim boarding ever!”

Tim and Jack went lobstering on the reef at night, but unfortunately there weren’t any to be found. However, they did have a successful day spearfishing and came back with a couple pompanos. They are interesting looking fish, but to be honest, they weren’t very tasty. We celebrated Jack’s 29th birthday with some brownies and an epic game of resistance. Our last day there we had a full day of sunshine for the first time in I don’t know how long, and I gave the boys a full day off from school in order to skim board. Our next stop would be the big city of Nuku’alofa, and although we were looking forward to internet and fresh vegetables, we were sort of sad because leaving Ha’apai would represent the winding down of our season cruising in the tropics and we turned our focus to preparing for the passage to New Zealand.