The adventures of Joe and Cindy on the high seas from Anacortes, WA, to Mexico, and then to the South Pacific 2004 - 2008
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posted by Joe and Cindy @ 3:31 PM
Friday 25 Sept 2006 Hi all. I have not done an update since we first got
to Tonga. Cindy has left to go back to Denver for almost three months (yeah
and yuck at the same time) and I have managed to stay busy here but not
getting a lot done. I have been trying to arrange getting myself back to
Anacortes, WA, to deal with our local storage unit and visit friends. Cindy
will join me there for a short visit before heading back to Denver which I
will miss this time. The trip to Anacortes will be something of a whirlwind
trip so apologies if I we are not able to visit with all of our friends in
the states.
Right now I will be in Anacortes from the 20th to the 27th of Sept and
staying with our good friends Terry and Diane. I have not even had a chance
to notify everyone we hope to see but will be sending out emails today if I
can. I also will try to put some new photos on this morning.
NOTE on Position Reporting: Our SSB radio is necessary to send updated
position reports to Yotreps and Winlink. I think Winlink is the link on our
blog. The smoke came out of our radio though this last week and I cannot
send reports. Maggie Drum is still at Neiafu harbor at Vava'U in the
northern Tongan island group. The position reporting systems will not show
anything but reports from the last 10 days and it has been longer than that
for us. Because I can ONLY send reports by radio, not by internet, we will
not have a Position Report until we get the radio fixed or replaced. I am
working on this but that is not easy from a third world country. More in
future blog updates.
The weather here has been untypical for this time of year - very cool, rainy
and cloudy, actually chilly at night and even during the day when it is
cloudy. It reminds me of spring weather in Seattle, not the tropical South
Pacific. I use a blanket at night on the boat. We do have the occasional
sunny day but that has been unusual.
I moved Maggie Drum on to a long term mooring ball and I get free internet
from the Aquarium Cafe with it so a lot of my entertainment will be on the
internet. I am also arranging travel to the states online and researching
boat parts. I also reserved us moorage in New Zealand in Nov/Dec after
Cindy gets back and we can head off for there.
This is such a small place here. You have to go to multiple grocery stores
to find even basic foods. The island now has flour, some cheese and
potatoes after being out for two weeks. I found Coca Cola (one of my
addictions) at the Chinese grocery. I bought a case. I had a wet burrito
at Tonga Bob's yesterday made with homemade enchilada sauce (good and spicy)
and fresh cilantro. I meant to ask them if they grow the cilantro here but
forgot.
Last week I took a super kart trip with a guided group here. We went on
little back roads and 4WD tracks through plantations, farms and fields and
some roads. We ended up on the north side of the island on top of a 500'
sheer cliff down to the ocean. Humpback whales were blowing in the far
distance. Pretty kewl! The trip in the karts hurt the back and kidneys of
us old farts but may be even the younger guys. Some of the karts are
doubles but I had a single and had a blast, especially when we got to a red
dirt open spot where we could tear up the dust and do donuts and spin outs.
They do fine you if you flip the kart so I did not push it too much. One
kart lost a nut holding one of the front struts and they repaired it with a
cotter ring and some wire ties. We had to make one detour in a small
village around a funeral as the karts are pretty noisy and not respectful of
the dead.
The local hotel had movie night with beers/pop if you wanted but I did not
enjoy "Munich" by Steven Spielberg too much - too violent and senseless. I
am meeting more and more expats here and learning about Tonga and a little
of the language. "Malo" is thank you and "malo eleilei" is the greeting
which literally means thank you for being here or something like that. I am
also meeting up with old cruiser friends who are arriving from French
Polynesia and the Cook Islands. We skipped the Cooks to get here so Cindy
could get back to Denver, and also because most of them had some scary
problems possible. Turns out that several boats have had problems,
especially at Suvarrow (sp?), Nuie, Palmerston, Beveridge and Rarotonga - or
basically all of them. All caused by weather. Several boats broke their
anchor tackle in Suvarrow and at least one ended up on the rocks there.
I am hassling with Immigration here to let me get back in the country after
leaving to go back to the US, and also to get Cindy back in. They require a
one way ticket back to the US when you arrive but of course we will be
leaving by boat at the end and they don't have a normal procedure for this
and we will not buy a $900 ticket just to throw away. Bureaucracy!!!
I will look after some friends boat while they go off to New Zealand for a
couple of weeks and then they will look after Maggie Drum. I had to tell
Customs and Immigration who would look after her. I also have helped a
couple of boats troubleshoot problems butg have been ignoring our own.
Except that I sucked up a jellyfish in the toilet intake line and had to
deal with that. The intake water smelled pretty bad for several days as the
jellyfish rotted in the hose or thru valve. I had to pump slowly to get it to work but it
is fine now.
I will try to upload some pics now.
posted by Joe and Cindy @ 3:01 PM
Sunday 13 August 2006
Well, Vava'U is a backwater even to the Kingdom of Tonga and the capitol at Nukalofa on Tongatapu. The rusty old, listing to port badly, freighter that comes here once a week just came in and hopefully it brought the potatoes, onions, cheese and flour that it did not have room for last week. The bakery here is out of flour so no bread. No potatoes for fish and chips so you get fried breadfruit chips (not bad really but not as good as potatoes). The stores here are some of the worse we have seen anyway but you can get the basics. This is definitely a rural society on the fringes.
The big news this week (other than Cindy leaving me) is that a new island is forming southwest of here and has produced a huge pumice field of floating pumice rock that is over 18 miles long drifting around. This volcano was active several years ago and then went dormant and then sunk under water. It is now sticking out of the water and spewing ash and pumice out by the thousands of cubic yards. Geology in real time. It is close enough to Vava'U that some cruisers from here saw it happening last week. People going to Fiji now have to worry about navigating around this flowing mess (two feet thick) which could strip off all your gelcoat or paint off your hull in no time and definitely slow you down or even trap you. Something new everyday.
Well, Cindy left this week to go back to Denver. She left on Thursday here (Wednesday in Denver). I went with her to the airport and the two flights coming in were way late (on Tonga time). I left after watching the ancient DC-3 pull in (the flight before Cindy's) and had to take the bus that was leaving or not be able to get a ride back to town. I got a second-hand message from a friend that Cindy made it to LAX but have not heard more other than her flight was canceled out of here and she had to take the DC-3 out in stead. This DC-3 is WWII vintage (1944) which makes it over 60 years old. The pilots were older than that I think. Cindy had to fly to Tongatapu International Airport, then to Fiji, then to LA, then Denver. But of course, the terrorist deal in London meant she was flying in to a mess at the airports so I am waiting to get the whole story later.
Neiafu here on Vava'U is a small town with a lot of expats (foreigners who have settled here). Pete "the Meat" is one of them. From New Zealand and an ex-cruiser, he married a Tongan gal named Happy and they started a hotel/resort on one of the outlying islands. That was too hard so they came to Neiafu and Pete now imports meat and potatoes direct from New Zealand since the grocery stores here don't do a good job. He does have to rely on the old freighter just like everyone so sometimes he is out of things too. He is an interesting fellow that I will get to know better. His wife owns the property we went to last night on a small island south of here. There was a "Full Moon Party" (several days after the full moon) that was a complete blast. Must have been 150 people, mostly cruisers who took their boats down and anchored out, plus several on a shuttle landing craft that I rode on - including many local Tongans. Boy, do some of the Tongans like to over indulge. They seem to be happy when inebriated, but wild. I met several new people and talked to others I already knew from before. The setting was absolutely gorgeous with the sea on both sides of a narrow spit of land with mowed grass and tents set up for the food, beer and music. The landing craft just pulled up to the beach and you had to walk off on to the water just like MacArthur in the Phillipines during WWII.
Any of you who take Cruising World magazine or can get it at the library, there is an interesting article in the May 2006 edition about the expats that have settled here, including Pete the Meat. They survived Cyclone Waka in 2001 that blew up to 160kts before the wind gauges all blew off. No boats were lost but they drug huge storm moorings a quarter mile across the bay here. Must have been scary.
BTW - we have seen pigs all over the islands before, but nothing like here in Neiafu. They are everywhere, running around loose on yards, across streets, around the hospital - everywhere - and lots of them. Big ones, little ones, all kinds. You don't see as many chickens but like everywhere you hear the roosters at night and all day.
We each got 31 day visas upon checking in here. I will need to renew mine by early next month for a couple of months more. I hope to fly out to Washington to meet Cindy and see old friends and take care of business in late September so may get an automatic new visa when I come back. We'll see. It seems to be easy to settle down here if you can start a business or provide a skill that is needed here. Several of the expats have been trying to get us to consider it but right now our plan is to still go to NZ in November.
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posted by Joe and Cindy @ 1:25 AM
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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posted by Joe and Cindy @ 9:46 PM
The GPS says it is 1366nm to our destination - Tonga. And at 4 knots that will take a while. We just left Bora Bora about 3 hours ago and the wind is light and behind us, our next to worst point of sail, only going dead upwind being worst than that. It is swelly too so the sails are flapping a bit and we are headed directly for the only clouds and rain in the entire area - great. It was fun for the most part in Bora Bora but we are happy to be off with a good weather window for the next several days, despite this ugly squall ahead of us.
I will write a longer update on Bora Bora tomorrow and send that off. There is a lot to tell about BB - hula dancing, rain, illness, new friends, etc. - tomorrow.
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posted by Joe and Cindy @ 5:09 AM
We bought S/V Maggie Drum (1978 Whitby 42)in 1999 as novice sailors in Anacortes WA. Joe worked in a boatyard from 2000-2004 while Cindy supported this hobby of love. We refit MD from stem to stern, basically replacing all sails and systems except the engine. We learned to sail her in the San Juans and Canadian waters. Our shakedown cruise was two months around Vancouver Island May-June 2004. We set out from Anacortes for San Diego and points between in Sept 2004, our first on cruise out of sight of land. We went with the 2004 Baja Ha-Ha rally from San Diego October 31st for Mexico with two stops before Cabo San Lucas where we checked in to Mexico. Our first blog post here was in March 2005. Wow - what a ride it has been! Recommended for all. We sold MD after our second visit to New Zealand. She is still cruising in Australia by the Woodhead family near Brisbane, Australia. We put 15,000 nautical miles under her keel, with thousands more before us and thousands to go.
