First Impressions of Tonga

6 August 2006 - Sunday
Some "weird" items: we lost a day in our lives per the calendar as we crossed the international date line and went from Thursday to Saturday with no Friday, they drive on the "wrong" side of the street here and the cars have steering wheels on the "right or wrong" side,

We were so happy to near the coast of Vava'U, Tonga three days ago as we were exhausted from the passage which was by far more tiring and harder to deal with for only two weeks than the four week passage from Mexico to the Marquesas. The strong, constant winds on the beam and the swells made just walking down below extremely hazardous and cooking a nightmare so it was mostly soup and other very easy meals. The funny thing was that squalls often meant only a small increase in wind speed then a dramatic lull for about 30 minutes of no wind, then it would pick back up. To make up for the difficulties, we saw humpback whales nearby MD as we closed in on Vava'U just at daylight. Very kewl!

We anchored the first night at a small bay on the north side of the island to rest and sort the boat out before check-in the next morning. This is illegal and greatly frowned upon but we were worried about being conscious enough to pick our way in to the harbor as tired as we were. The island presented a 500 ft green wooded cliff the whole north side - very pretty. The anchorage was 65 ft deep but the water was so clear we could see the chain laying on the bottom - then - the whales came. Two adult moms with a baby each. The babies were playing around mom of course. Even if you did not see the whales blow, they were close enough you could hear their spout and then find them. The first ones were about two hundred yards and got closer to within 100 yds as we lay at anchor. That night one more of them came between us and the shore and blew. It was too dark to see distinctly but you could see the blow itself and of course it was very loud reflected off the cliff and within 30 yds. Way kewl!! Also, the anchorage was dead calm with just a tiny swell. We slept like babes.

The next morning it was off around the island to Neiafu harbor to check in to the country. The short 10 nm passage was like being in the San Juan Islands in Washington again - lots of islands of various sizes all jumbled together in a regular maze of passages. You have to be VERY careful in your navigating to not get lost. Our GPS's also had us on land instead of water - so visual navigating was a must. The charts were made in the 1890's. Gorgeous scenery though. It is a cruising and charter boat mecca here and we understand why - all the islands with over 40 anchorages within 3 hours sail.

The Neiafu harbor has a slightly tricky, narrow pass going in although it is large inside. Of course, a whale was directly in our way on the way to the pass but he/she went on. There was another whale, or the same one, in the harbor 30 minutes later and it stayed for a couple of hours with even folks on shore coming down to the shore or in buildings looking on and yelling. Cindy jumped out of her skin when we were going about 30 yds from the main wharf and the whale sounded between us and the wharf and blew. We could only see the back of the whale and that was as big as our boat with the stubby "humpback" fin sticking out. The back is a very smooth, slick looking skin - dark grey. Absolutely kewl!!!

Checking in was no fun. The wharf is for big ships and another sailboat came out of nowhere to beat us to the one spot on the corner without the enormous ship-type fenders sticking out ready to mash in your deck stanchions. The wharf itself is four feet higher than our deck so you can't just hop off to secure dock lines. We got help from a fellow named John (more about him later) and managed to dock after doing doughnuts in the harbor for an hour. The officials by the way did not show up for the other boat until then and they wanted us to tie up to the big ship dock. We only got a couple of marks on our boat but it was hairy and Cindy was nervous.

Then the first of 3 officials came on board - immigration (Lofi), quarantine (George), and customs (Samson). Public Health (Fino) was a no show. Since they made us wait an hour and a half, it was now lunch time and we had to pay "overtime" fees. We offered cookies and cokes and they proceeded to eat two bags of cookies (their lunch we guessed) and two cokes each. George went below with Cindy while I dealt with forms with Lofi in the cockpit. Lots of forms. George asked about what we were carrying as far as alcohol and then asked Cindy for a gift of a bottle of rum three times saying it was for a weekend party. She ignored him and talked about other things. George also helped himself to a bag of cookies sitting there in addition to the ones we gave them in the cockpit. With paperwork done, John asked to come on board and proceeded to give us the hard sell for carvings, Tongan feasts at his house, tours of the island, courtesy flags sewn by his daughter and other things. Nothing wrong with that except that the sell was very HARD and never stopped. I caved in and bought a fish hook necklace and a flag. He asked for some line for the flag and took an entire roll of small line, then asked if we had any spare binoculars for his brother the fisherman. We told him no and then begged off to go anchor in the harbor which we did. We have heard that other officials are better and many have had no problem. Our customs guy Samson was a gentleman although he packed away the cookies.

We picked up a mooring in the bay, got the dink down and went in to town. It is obviously much poorer here than in French Polynesia and touristy somewhat like a Mexican town, but not as bad. There are three banks with ATM's (good) but the grocery stores are small and poorly stocked. The hardware stores look good though. The local market is full of local carvings, baskets and whatnots - pretty good quality, not terribly expensive. Cheaper than John's fish hook though. Lots of veggies - green tomatoes and many, many varieties of roots - taro, yams, hearts of palm and things we cannot even imagine what they are. Most of the women wear the traditional Tongan outfit which is a long "lava lava" wraparound skirt over which is tied a woven palm short skirt that doesn't seem to want to stay on so they are always fussing with it. And, they all wear black which is way hot in this climate. You see lots of black outfits here - shirts and lava lavas. Many of the men wear the male version of lava lava too - they have pockets on them.

The Tongans seem friendly though but coarser than the French Polynesians. Some will ignore you walking by on the street, others have a big hello. BTW - they speak English here!!!! Major bonus after all the French. They mostly speak Tongan to each other but all speak English. There are several restaurants/bars here catering to tourists and to locals. Some of the locals were obviously using the bar more than the restaurant and drinking seems to be a problem with some of the riffraff. And, this definitely is cruiser central. The harbor has close to 70 yachts inside, most on moorings (15 pangas/day - about $10US). Mermaids (home of the Vava'U Yacht Club) has a dinghy dock and lost of yachties. The band there played until after 2AM the night we came in which we could hear very well being close by on our mooring.

We have met three boats here that we have talked to on the radio before that are each completing their trips around the world. Two are Australian boats and one is Turkish. S/V Yol is skippered by Levent and his lovely and charming wife Ayca (eye-sha). Wonderful people, full of life. They have to go back to Turkey, sell the boat and go back to work. I spent several hours trying to help S/V Shine fix their Autohelm autopilot to no avail. I think it is the computer which will have to be replaced (it is obsolete of course and cannot be fixed). Autopilots are one of the most essential pieces of gear. They have to sail 500nm to Fiji to get a reasonably priced replacement, steering all by hand, with weather changing every third day - it may be nasty - and will be absolutely exhausting. That makes seven boats who have lost their autopilots that we know of which is why I have talked about it so much. Don't leave home without spares!!!! Shine has spare everything (display control units, compass, rudder follower and a hydraulic pump and a linear drive) all except the computer which is what is broken.

Last night we went to a Tongan "feast" at an anchorage called Barnacle Beach an hour from the harbor. We took MD over and finally got the hook set after three times in the coral. We dinghied to the feast beach (used our dinghy wheels to get up the beach) and joined several other boats for a sit down traditional meal. There was a roasted in the ground small suckling pig, yams, taro, raw fish in coconut milk, some other kind of raw fish with spicy peppers, smoked octopus, some kind of cooked taro clumps with sweet sauce, watermelon, papaya and other goodies. We had a blast. We dinked back to MD in the dark around to the next anchorage and woke up this morning at 5AM to the church bells which must be just onshore from where we are anchored. Very loud church bells. Rung for a very long time. Rung again at 6AM. I am now writing this blog at 6:30AM. It is still very dark outside. Very religious people here. They like bells and church on Sunday. Lots of bells. No working, no restaurants, no bars, no swimming, no fishing, no nothing but church and bells. Tongans are deeply religious in several faiths and each island has its own church or churches. Lots of Catholics but also Mormon, Protestant and Seventh Day Adventists. We may even go to church today with the folks who did the feast last night. We were all invited and I think several of the boats will go.

This is long enough. I expect more bells shortly so I will stay up. I need to fix our solar panel charger today. It quit this week and is a very useful item. I can't be seen working though - it really is taboo on Sunday to do work of any kind - seriously. Nobody cuts the grass on Sunday here. Just listen to bells.

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