We are holed up in Hunga, Anchorage #13
We planned to head south Sunday night for the Hapa’i group of the Tongan islands. If we left at midnight, we would get there about 9 the next morning – perfect for searching for coral heads with the sun behind us. When we got up at midnight to leave, however, there was no moon, the wind was howling and it was raining. Who in their right minds would hoist their anchor and sail away on a night like that? We have already checked out of the Vava’u Group of islands – cleared customs and immigration, so we can’t go back to town. We have to lie low until the weather clears.
It has been blowing and raining for 3 days now. Jim has the art of rain-catching down to a science. He has pvc pipe and hoses running every which way on our boat, and today he plugged up the drain holes all along the side and back of the boat, and siphoned the water into buckets. The hoses are going directly into our water tanks. Today, we were able to fill both 60-gallon water tanks, plus two 20-liter water containers, plus I washed and double-rinsed about 4 buckets of laundry, all with fresh, clean rain water. Molly and Jessie donned bathing suits and scrubbed our dinghy and deck. Where to hang all that clean laundry, now, is the big question. There is no where to dry it! Parts of our boat look like a terminally-ill patient with an IV drip, but it is sure nice to have fresh rain water in our tanks.
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The rain and wind kept a’comin’ and a’comin’, so we tucked our collective tails between our faded-tan legs and came back to the harbor in Neiafu. We confessed to Mr. Immigration that we hadn’t left, after all, and could we please stay a few more days? I’m sure this will cost us money. When we tried to leave before, we checked out on a Friday, and said we were leaving on Saturday, and the customs man charged us $44 p’anga for overtime, since we were leaving on a weekend. Not that he was going to come to the harbor and wave us goodbye; he simply needed to charge us because we were taking some sort of action on a weekend day. There is an interesting article about Tonga in the November issue of National Geographic. It was enlightening to read about the bureaucracy and the monarchy of the Kingdom of Tonga.
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Okay, this is serious. No more pussy-footing around. We are leaving in the morning - Saturday. We have checked out, again, and have bought the last of the fresh vegetables from the market. I have made beef stew, red beans and rice, and oatmeal raisin cookies. We have stowed the dinghy, battened down the hatches, and have received way too much weather information. We are just going to GO. We can’t stop at the Ha’apai Group now – we need to get ourselves to New Zealand before another bad weather pattern hits us.
We’re going, we’re going, we’re out of the harbor, we are motoring…
…And, we’ve stopped. We motored for 70 miles, and there was this beautiful island, right at the northern tip of the Ha’apai group. It looked so inviting, and we didn’t want to waste more fuel, so we stopped for the night. It might be the last white sand beach we see for a while (does New Zealand have those?), and we were tired of the engine noise. We had a nice beach walk, picked up more shells (as if we need more shells), and had a nice dinner. Jim caught a tuna today – can’t get a much fresher dinner than that.
We are really going to leave today (Sunday). The winds are very light, but we hear that they are better about 200 miles south of us. There is a group of 8-10 boats who are all traveling to New Zealand the same time we are. We have started an informal net on the single side-band so we can report our positions and weather. Those who are ahead of us say that the winds are picking up. No excuses now… ~Jeanna