by Judy Handley | Oct 31, 2006 | Sailing Logs Year 1, Tonga, Tongatapu |
Day 378, Year 1: Halloween in Paradise
Date: Tuesday, October 31, 2006
Weather: Beautiful Weather Continues
Location: Nuku’alofa, Tongatapu Group, Tonga
Happy Halloween! I had no idea that anyone here in Tonga would be Halloween aware, but late this afternoon when we went into a local bar, we found carved pumpkins, orange and black crepe paper trimmings, and other Halloween decorations. We were certainly a bit surprised, but we think this acknowledgement of Halloween was only in this bar since it is frequented by many Kiwis and Aussies in the area. Evidently Great Britain and Australia have adopted Halloween, and it has worked itself into the culture here.
We spent our early morning helping new boats come in and med moor to the quay. Zafarse is now next to us, and White Swan and Cheers are just down the way. After helping them get settled, we went into town to buy the necessary food and drinks that will take us to New Zealand. We came back to Windbird in the afternoon and then got ready to go back into town to catch our ride to the Tongan Cultural Center for an evening dinner and cultural show. The dinner offered all of the traditional dishes and the show was great. Dancing here is similar to dancing in the Samoas, but the men here do not do the slap dancing and the hand and body movements of the women are much more subtle. We thoroughly enjoyed the evening. When we returned from the Cultural Center, we were dropped off at the Billfish Bar where we had been picked up earlier in the evening. We decided to stay and have a drink, and while we did this we couldn’t help but watch the music video playing. It was in black and white and it was Roy Orbison. Mark said it is pretty bad when the music of your era is only available in black and white!
We got conflicting information on the weather this afternoon. One source says there will not be a window for arriving in New Zealand until after the 20th of November , while another indicates a good arrival time around the middle of the month. We have much research to do and will hopefully have a better idea of what we will be doing by the weekend. In the meantime, we plan to move to Pangaimotu tomorrow and wait for our weather window from there.
by Judy Handley | Oct 30, 2006 | Sailing Logs Year 1, Tonga, Tongatapu |
Day 377, Year 1: New Auto Pilot Arrives—Hurray
Date: Monday, October 30, 2006
Weather: Beautiful Weather Continues
Location: Nuku’alofa, Tongatapu Group, Tonga
It is absolutely beautiful here today. The water here in the harbor is a light aquamarine and as I look out over the seawall, the water is a bright turquoise in every direction as far as I can see. There are little white caps out there and the wind is blowing gently. It is the kind of day that beckons one to sea. As I watched Hanoah leave the harbor and put up the main sail, I wanted to follow. But that will have to wait for another day.
We are absolutely thrilled that our new auto pilot arrived exactly as promised. That’s a first. I think I like the kiwis already. Mark has been working all afternoon installing the new system. He explained to me that installing a new system like this is like playing a really challenging computer game. He loves it. Of course, he just told me that the installation is going well except that the auto pilot has us going north when we are headed south. Oops! I guess he had better keep working on this.
For the technical minded, I will explain what we ordered and received. The part that broke was the drive unit. We burned out the motor by not having all of the settings properly adjusted.. But rather than just replace that, we wanted a whole new system and we wanted to have the old system as a back-up. As I have said in an earlier log, the company in New Zealand was not able to get just a new motor to us this quickly, so we will be going with the new system and no drive unit back-up. What we did receive was a RayMarine Type 2 Linear Drive with a short arm and an S3 Corepack that is the new computer that drives the system, a new compass, and a new rotary-style rudder reference unit. What we could not afford was a unit with a built-in gyro which allows the computer software to intelligently monitor the boat’s movement. Since we didn’t do such a great job of this, I think we need the computer that can do it for us. This can be added later for only an additional $500. Yikes!
We heard from Doug and Sylvie on Windcastle this morning and they have decided to come to Nuku’alofa. We are thrilled. George and Barbara of Gdansk, another boat that we have been with often on this trip, are coming as well. We all travel at about the same speed, so this will give us a core group for the passage to New Zealand. There are so many other boats coming in here right now that I am sure we will have even more company, but it is nice to have a core group with which to plan and check-in as the passage progresses. Bob McDavitt, the weather guru from New Zealand, issued his weekly “BobGram” last night. He had some interesting things to say about this weather, but my favorite is his disclaimer: “Weather is a mix of pattern and chaos. The following ideas come from the patterned world of weather maps, so please fine-tune to your place.” So basically weather people are predicting from patterned models, but the weather out here has more of the chaos than the pattern! Anyway, he did have some information that I found interesting. He explained that all is settling down now in the Southwest Pacific as we move into a quiet phase of the Madden-Julian Oscillation (http://www-das.uwyo.edu/~geerts/cwx/notes/chap12/mjo.html for those of you interested in that much detail.). But the interesting part to me was that if the oscillation repeats then we will have another “burst of tropical activity” (meaning another cyclone) in late November or early December. Of course, another one could be beginning to form right now, so the models might not be right this time. However, I do hope they are as McDavitt’s prediction gives us plenty of time to get to New Zealand. But if we do have another cyclone in this part of the world, the weather people are ready as have the next names on the cyclone list. Those forming east of 160E will be YANI, ZITA and ARTHUR, and those forming west of 160E (near Australia) will be NELSON, ODETTE and PIERRE. McDavitt went on to explain that the cyclone that just ended, XAVIER, formed soon after some near equatorial westerly winds turned up after being tossed out of Asia by the Monsoon. These winds normally arrive around the middle of December, and he is saying that their early arrival is significant. Typical for this sailing season as everything has arrived early and with more of a punch than predicted.
>From what McDavitt said in his weathergram and from our other weather data, it looks like we should be able to leave here on November 4 arriving in Minerva Reef on November 6 just as a very windy period there is ending. We can then head to New Zealand and arrive around November 11 or 12. This misses another front crossing the Northland of New Zealand on November 8 or 9. Of course, all of this changes daily, so this is just the beginning thinking for our passage. We’ll keep you posted on changes, but so far, it is looking good.
Mark just asked me to do a trial with the auto pilot and it looks like he has us headed in the right direction and everything seems to be working beautifully. We are now ready for a sea trial calibration of it which we will do on Wednesday when we move from this harbor over to Pangaimotu. Tomorrow will be provisioning day, AGAIN, and then we will be ready to go when the weather allows.
The other thing I would like to mention today has to do with technology. Last night when we had Roger and Judy from Hanoah over for dinner, Windbird’s dependence on technology became starkly clear. Roger and Judy sail on a 32-foot boat with no refrigeration, no computer, and no SSB radio. They have no outgoing communication with the outside world on their boat. They can receive radio on their short-wave receiver, but they cannot send. Then there is Windbird with three computers and daily postings to a website. Yesterday I was upset that our wireless internet connection on the boat didn’t allow a free-flowing conversation on Skype with our daughter Heather. We wanted to “see” her via her video cam to see how that pregnant little belly of hers is growing. We couldn’t see yesterday, but today we went into the internet café and we did see. She is definitely pregnant! The communication was still not perfect, but I know we are very lucky to even have the opportunity for such communications. Seeing someone while talking to them on a computer was only a dream a few years ago.
by Judy Handley | Oct 29, 2006 | Sailing Logs Year 1, Tonga, Tongatapu |
Day 376, Year 1: New Zealand Frenzy
Date: Sunday, October 29, 2006
Weather: Beautiful Weather Continues
Location: Nuku’alofa, Tongatapu Group, Tonga
A whole new group of boats is readying to leave for New Zealand and cruisers these days can talk of nothing else but passage weather. A low pressure system is getting ready to hit the northern tip of the north island of New Zealand and will cause a little trouble for those planning to arrive tomorrow or maybe even on Tuesday, but then the weather looks very settled until November 6. Unfortunately, even if our auto pilot arrives tomorrow and we got it installed and tested on the same day AND we could be ready to leave here on day after tomorrow, we still wouldn’t make New Zealand before the bad weather on the 6th. We could, however, go as far as Minerva Reef and hang out there to wait for the next window. Some boats left here today and others are leaving tomorrow morning. Our neighbors on Hanoah are coming over for a curry dinner tonight and they plan on leaving tomorrow morning. Surabi, a big catamaran with Barry and Karen on board, left the outer island of Pangaimotu this morning, and I know Henrik and Malla on Scorpio are also planning to leave. The New Zealand boat, Chameleon, with Dave and Patricia aboard, and our friends on Blue Marlin left today. Dave on Chameleon has been our local weather expert here in Tonga, so when he left, everyone figured it was time to go. We have heard from Doug and Sylvie on Windcastle, but they are still in Neiafu and not sure when they are heading south. The boats Ohana Kai and Moorea that we met in Raiatea and Rarotonga are now out at Pangaimotu, so no matter when we leave it looks like we will have a group of people heading our way. Once we get the auto pilot and get it installed, we can be more certain about a time line and figure out with whom we might be traveling. We feel so fortunate to have met so many great cruisers and can look forward to sailing with any number of different groups.
Just as we have made so many friends among cruisers on this voyage, we have also “met” so many wonderful people through our website. Today we got an e-mail from someone named Lavinia Langi-Sefuiva. He is Tongan, but works with Micah Van der Ryn at the Americain Samoa Community College. We didn’t meet him when we were there, but he has evidently been reading our logs since we have been in Tonga. He wrote to let us know that his brother works at the immigration office here. He gave us contact information for his brother and his mother in case we should need help with anything while we are here. We were so very touched that he would write to us to offer this help if needed. He said that reading our logs about Tonga has been making him really happy. Nia, if you are reading this log, we want to thank you for your e-mail and your wonderful Tongan hospitality from afar. Please tell Micah hello and tell him to give hugs and kisses to his wonderful family for us.
One reason Nia wrote is that he feels that we have been very positive about Tonga in our logs. He says that some visitors are not so positive and paint a different picture of Tonga. It is a little bit like American Samoa that way. Many of the cruising guides and articles have given American Samoa a bad reputation which we certainly do not feel it deserves. Of course there are problems there and here, as there are everywhere in the world. These South Pacific countries are undergoing huge change with one foot in the traditional world and another in the modern world. Conflict is inevitable, but the beauty of the people and of their land is not marred by this conflict. All of the cruisers who went to American Samoa say the people there were the friendliest they had met all across the Pacific. And now those of us who find ourselves here in Tonga are finding incredibly friendly, warm people. The taxi driver, Lata, that took us on our tour on Friday is just one example. He came by yesterday morning to see if we needed a ride into town. Actually his timing was perfect, and we did need a ride, but he wouldn’t charge us. Yesterday was the day that his family gave their yearly monetary gift to the church and it is quite a sizable “gift”, and he was in a giving mood. He gives to the church without regret and he feels that because he gives willingly he is doing well in his business. He is certainly not wealthy, but he and his family are happy and have what they need in life. I admire his positive outlook and his willingness to give to others. While we were on the tour, he stopped a truck that was full of watermelons to buy one for us to eat. The guys on the truck gave us all watermelons and would take no money. They same thing happened with pumpkins. At least they call them pumpkins here although they look more like a squash to me. Anyway, we ended up with at least ten pumpkins and two of them made it here to Windbird. Scorpio took a couple and we sent the rest with Lata. The Tongan people are a generous and happy lot and we are enjoying our stay here with them.
On Friday, I didn’t get to talk about everything we did on the tour. I’ll do that here but first I should talk a little about the islands here in Tongatapu. In Vava’u the islands look like the islands in Maine. They rise above the water and the hills are covered with trees. Along the shores, white sand beaches are found everywhere. Here in Tongatapu, the islands are low and flat. You can hardly see them until you are very close. Nuku’alofa is the largest island in this southern group but it is small enough that you can drive all the way around the island making stops at interesting places in about four or five hours. We started our tour at the Royal Palace, a place Mark and I had visited on the previous day. Visitors are not allowed to enter the grounds, but you can take pictures through the fence. It is the biggest “gingerbread house” I have ever seen-white Victorian with elaborate and ornate trimming. Then in the middle of town we again visited the Royal Tombs that Mark and I had seen the day before. These tombs are located in the Mala’ekula and the graves of all Tongan sovereigns and their families have been buried here since 1893.
We then drove east out of town and entered new territory. First we saw the flying foxes or fruit bats of Kolovai. These bats are sacred here and only members of the royal family can hunt them for sport, so there are many of them just hanging in the trees along the main road. We were fascinated by getting to see them up so close. As we drove on through the countryside, we realized that this island is the first we have seen in the South Pacific that is almost totally under cultivation. There are fields everywhere with yams, taro, pumpkins, and watermelons growing in abundance. People work the fields using a very long stick with a small shovel on the end.
Our next stop was the Mapu’a ‘a Vaca Blowholes, also known as Chief’s Whistles. There are literally hundreds of blowholes that stretch along the coast for over three miles. These were absolutely fascinating and there really is no way to describe them accurately. These are going to take a picture to understand.
We were now on the south coast and we drove out to a large coral limestone archway known as Hufangalupe or Pigeon’s Gate. This is a natural bridge where the ocean rushes in through a natural opening into a large pit. The road actually goes over the “bridge”. When we were here we were surrounded by large plantations. We drove on for quite some time through various plantations and then came to the Anahulu Cave. We only had small flashlights and that was really a shame as the inside of this cave was spectacular. We had a watermelon snack stop here and then went on to the Ha’amonga’a Maui Trilithon, known as Maui’s Burden. This looks like the Stonehenge of Tonga. In the 13th century, the 11th Tu’i Tonga, Tu’itau, had three coralline stones each weighing about 40 tons erected as a trilithic gate or archway. Some say the Tu’i Tonga had this built to show his two competitive sons the unity that can exist between people. Others say it was a structure used to determine the seasons.
On our way back to town we stopped to see the Paepae ‘o Tele’a. This is Tonga’s ancient burial ground. This is a pyramid-like structure of huge stones not native to this island. There is much conjecture about where the stones came from, but it must have been some feat to get them here. They are huge. We drove past Captain Cook’s Tongatapu landing site on his final Pacific voyage in 1777 and past the royal estates of Princess Tufumahina and the Crown Prince, now King. We had quite a day on Friday and really enjoyed the tour of the island.
Tonight we had Roger and Judy from Hanoah out of Brunswick, Maine, over for dinner. They leave tomorrow around noon for New Zealand. We have really enjoyed getting to know them and hope that we will see them once we are in New Zealand. They can receive, but cannot transmit on the radio, so we will not be able to keep in touch. I guess they’ll just have to send out good vibes so we can find them there.
We head into town tomorrow to check on the arrival of our auto pilot. Here’s hoping it really does arrive tomorrow so we can be on our way soon.
by Judy Handley | Oct 28, 2006 | Sailing Logs Year 1, Tonga, Tongatapu |
Day 375, Year 1: Taking the Day Off
Date: Saturday, October 28, 2006
Weather: Beautiful Weather Returns to Tonga
Location: Nuku’alofa, Tongatapu Group, Tonga
Today was Saturday here and after listening to the net and finding that Wind Pony, Procyon, and Quantum Leap are safely half way to New Zealand, Mark and I walked to town. I wanted to get some fresh veggies at the market and Mark wanted to see if he could find a new printer to replace the one that we have had that just stopped working. We actually found a Hewlett-Packard just one model down from the one we have, so we bought it. Town is about two miles from where we are docked, so the walk home took a while. We walked by the green where a local group is protesting the current way of governing, wandered down the main street along the water, visited a couple of wood carving galleries, and got back to the boat in early afternoon.
>From that time on, Mark worked on installing the new printer on all of our computers and I took the afternoon off and worked on some projects that have been on the back burner for some time now. Tomorrow I will go back and describe our tour of the island yesterday in more detail. We actually took time to watch another DVD tonight and are ready to turn in.
by Judy Handley | Oct 27, 2006 | Sailing Logs Year 1, Tonga, Tongatapu |
Day 374, Year 1: Tour of the Island
Date: Friday, October 27, 2006
Weather: Convergence Zone Still Hanging Over Tonga
Location: Nuku’alofa, Tongatapu Group, Tonga
The weather here looked dreary this morning, but as the day progressed we could see the clouds begin to lift and the sun shone through. We headed out at 10 am to go on a tour of the island with Lata. Although he doesn’t have a fancy business card and his van looks a little scruffy, he was the first person to offer us a tour. Yesterday at least three other tour drivers stopped to solicit our business as we walked into town. They all had cards and fancier vans. We were entertained by Joe whose t-shirt reads, “Tonga Joe. Don’t go without Joe.” But in the end we decided to stick with Lata and we are glad that we did. He gave us a wonderful tour of the entire island and was a joy to get to know. Another cruising couple was with us, Henrick and Malla of Scorpio from Finland. They were anchored beside us in Apia, but we had never really met them. Today and we had a great time.
We revisited the Royal Palace and the Royals Tombs in Nuku’alofa and then out to Kolovai to see the flying foxes or fruit bats. This was once a sanctuary, but is no longer. Still the bats hangout in trees here. From there we went to Mapu’a ‘a Vaca Blowholes. The coral formations over which the water flows and blows are really quite incredible.
We continued our drive around the island. There are so many things that we saw that I don’t have the energy to include them all tonight. I hope to be able to give a more detailed report tomorrow.
Update on our auto pilot problem: A complete new auto pilot will be sent from New Zealand tomorrow and should arrive here on Monday. Unfortunately, the replacement motor for the old unit is not available, so we will have to leave here with only the new auto pilot. They swear that a new one has never failed in the first year, so hopefully we can make it for the nine or ten days from here.
We had a wonderful lobster dinner at the Seaview Inn tonight to celebrate our 32nd wedding anniversary. Lobster Thermidor and Lobster Provencale were both superb. The past year has been incredible. We have no idea where we will be this time next year year, but we can only hope it is a place as wonderful as Tonga.
by Judy Handley | Oct 26, 2006 | Sailing Logs Year 1, Tonga, Tongatapu |
Day 373, Year 1: Auto Pilot Ordered While Enjoying Nuku’alofa
Date: Thursday, October 26, 2006
Weather: Convergence Zone Hanging Over Tonga
Location: Nuku’alofa, Tongatapu Group, Tonga
First thing this morning we talked to a guy named Tom at Lusty & Blundell in Auckland, New Zealand, and he had the answers to our problem. For only $6,604.21 NZ, he is sending a new auto pilot complete plus a new motor for our old one so we will have our current one fixed as a complete backup if this should happen again. Tom was very helpful and had an e-mail to us immediately with all sorts of trouble-shooting information. It can take anywhere from three to five days to receive the new parts, so sometime late next week we will start looking for that weather window for Minerva Reef and then Opua, New Zealand. Until then, we will continue to enjoy the southern part of Tonga.
Tomorrow is our 32nd wedding anniversary and I think you can guess what our gift to each other will be. If you are thinking that it will be a new auto pilot, you are very perceptive. That will also be Christmas and birthdays for the next twenty years, so that makes future shopping very easy. You know what they say about boats-a hole in the water into which you pour money. Better yet is a t-shirt I bought for Mark at an Annapolis Boat Show-B.O.A.T. or Break Out Another Thousand. The only thing I would change is “Thousand” to “Ten Thousand”. I guess it would then read B.O.A.T.T. Actually we are adjusting to our new expenditure. It is just part of the territory out here. I know of no boat, old or new, that has not had major repair issues. Refrigeration and alternator problems are at the top of the list, and then there seem have been more broken booms and broken boom vangs than we expected. Main sails have blown out, motors have stopped running, transmissions have frozen, boats have broken loose from their anchors and washed onto reefs, and on and on. But we are cruisers and we deal. Sometimes not happily, but we do rebound quickly. Actually we are hoping to go out to dinner tomorrow for our anniversary and to celebrate the fact that the auto pilot broke down now instead of half way to New Zealand. There is a seafood restaurant here called the Seaview and it serves lobster in the following ways: natural, “Seaview”, Thermidor, Provencale, Polynesian, or saffron. Or maybe we won’t go out to dinner. Mark just called up from the cabin to tell me that our wonderful HP 8000 Photosmart printer just bit the dust. We brought it just before we left Boston last fall, along with lots of expensive ink cartridges. Ugh!
We are going to have dinner tonight with our boat neighbor, Hanoah. Roger and Judy are from Maine. When we got home from exploring Nuku’alofa late this after, they called over and invited us for dinner. We first met them in the Galapagos and then saw them again in Fatu Hiva when we arrived in the Marquesas. We haven’t seen them since. Strange to come into a port in the South Pacific and have your neighbors be from a neighboring state back home. There are very few boats from New England out here, so it will be fun to get together and compare our voyages to date.
Nuku’alofa is a city somewhat like Apia in Samoa. We meandered through town, walked by the Royal Tombs, down to the Royal Palace, and found an internet café® Actually, that was the first thing we did so that we could read the e-mail from Tom in New Zealand with the auto pilot. We saw Chuck and Anne on the street which was a surprise. This is a couple who were anchored next to us in Vava’u last week. They were on a Moorings charter boat which usually only sail in the Vava’u Group. Therefore, we didn’t expect to see them here. They had flown in here on their way home and will be leaving tonight, headed to Fiji, and then back to California. More and more we realize what a small world it really is.
It’s time to go to dinner, so I’ll have to write more about Nuku’alofa tomorrow evening. (After the lobster dinner!)
