Category Archives: Uncategorized

Tuesday 2/10/2013 20:00

28 44.166 S 178 35.107 E

http://maps.google.com/?z=7&t=k&q=loc:28%2044.166S%20178%2035.107E

Posting by Dennis:

Well today has been another eventful day. It started out last night with a big squall with wind just under forty knots and the wind has been blowing in the upper twenties ever since. That would not be so bad but the wind is coming dead out of the direction we have to go. So we are tacking and with that much wind and seas that are now over fifteen feet our progress is slow. It is kind of discouraging when you have been sailing for six days and it says you still have ten to go, the same number of days as when you left. The grib files are way off but what else is new. Rosemary has been seasick since we left and throws up anything that she tries to eat. So she is basically on the water diet and even that does not stay down. Then this afternoon the propane ran out so I set out to change the tanks over which is really fun as you roll twenty five degrees side to side, and as I was doing that I thought “gee this tank feels really light” and sure enough the tank was empty. So now we have no more cooking for the rest of the trip. You would think that not having to cook would make Barb happy but it doesn’t seem that way. So we will be eating right out of the can. Cold green beans, yum yum. Tonight’s gourmet treat was soup that was half done before the propane ran out. The beans were a little crunchy. We just got another grib file and it is saying that the wind is going to let up by morning we shall see.

Monday 09:00 30/9/2013

26 27.194 S 178 34.342 E

http://maps.google.com/?z=7&t=k&q=loc:26%2027.174S%20178%2034.342E

Posting by Dennis:

Here we motor on our way across to New Zealand. We have now motored for over sixty hours and we still have six hundred miles to go. This is a huge relief for Barb since she has heard such horror stories about this crossing. It is also why we are motoring more then we normally would. Most of the time we would just be content making two knots and just enjoying being out here. Being a couple hundred miles from any shore is the best. There is nothing like it. You look out at the vastness and you see nothing but the gentle rolling swells in the distance and when you are on top of a large swell you can see what looks like forever as the earth curves off in the distance.

We caught a Dorado the first day out so have had a couple meals of fish so far. We have crossed the 180 degrees longitude so now we are on the eastern side of the globe. It is really pretty uneventful we are just plugging along. Barb will be flying home as soon as we get to New Zealand and I will be flying home sometime in the middle of November. I have the usual boat work to get started on. The list is not three pages long like in Chile but it is a good two pages. Most of the things are small so it is not going to be too bad.

Tuesday 9/17/2013 21:20

20 16.626 S 174 48.206 W

http://maps.google.com/?z=7&t=k&q=loc:20%2016.626S%20174%2048.206W

Nomuka Iki, Tonga

Posting by Dennis:

The sail here was a nice leisurely one, doing four to five knot with the wind on the beam. It was a zig zag course as we wove are way amount the many reefs and islands. This would have been a very hairy trip before GPS. The reefs are everywhere. The whales are everywhere too. I saw two breaching in the distance. That is truly an amazing sight. I am sure they just come up from the bottom and let their speed catapult them into the air where they roll and fall onto their side. Another whale swam right under the boat as we sailed along. Once we were anchored we saw a couple take their dingy from shore and go out and swim with the whale. It is something that you need to do if the whales wish to come and play. Often they do not let you get very close and keep ‘you’ at a distance. So it is all up to them whether we get to swim with them or not.All Barb got to do this time around is snorkel with sea turtles. I am sure someday we will get to experience swimming with the whales.

In the morning we went into town and walked around. We saw many women working with their palm bows as they got them ready to weave. This is a very long process, they first cut the bows off the tree then strip the individual ‘leaves’ off and tie them into small bundles. The bundles are tied to lines between some upright sticks dug into the shallow sea. The bundles soak in the sea water for a week or more. Every day they go out and untangle the leaves and move them around. When ready they bring the bundles in and hang them to dry. The leaves are ripped into very straight strips which they can then weave into elaborate mats, baskets, and skirts.

All the kids that we meet are so curious about us. They stare at us and slowly get closer and closer as we sit under a tree. It becomes a game for them to see who is daring enough to get close.

We were hoping to get some bread while we were in town but nothing seemed to open and we later found out that it was a holiday because it was the princess birthday.

Wednesday 9/18/2013 9:00

21 08.275 S 175 10.981 W

http://maps.google.com/?z=7&t=k&q=loc:21%2008.275S%20175%2010.981W

Posting by Barb:

We arrived in the town Nuku’Alofa in Tongatapu early in the morning. This would be our last stop in Tonga before heading to New Zealand. We knew that we would have to hang out here until we had the weather window required to do the 10 day sail to New Zealand as per the grib weather files and Bob McDavitt’s weekly report. It turned out we only had to stay in Nuku’Alofa for a week. I found the town to be dirty and littered with garbage. The people were generally nice but not the same as in the more remote places. Locals of Tongatapu probably see more tourists and cruisers and their interest in us was more geared to the dollar they could earn versus genuine interest to welcome us and share their deeply respected customs and traditions. There was a great market with plenty of local fruit and vegetables but the grocery store was small and barely stocked. There were many restaurants and bars and the food was good and relatively inexpensive. We ate at a local restaurant the Bullfish a couple of times and enjoyed the local beer during Happy Hour and ate a very good meal of grilled fish. The hamburgers were not so great. We enjoyed the banter with the waitress that we had each time we ate there and we agreed to attend the service of her church, the Wesley church, much to her delight as she gave us the directions to get there. Dennis made the 2 mile trek to the church but Beth or Suly as she called herself never showed. We later understood that it was the ‘Tonga Way’ as kindly described by the locals. The ‘Tonga Way’ is you may show up you may not, you may be on time you may not, but either way people don’t sweat it and go with the flow. The service was all in Tongan and very formal, unlike the service in Rarotonga, Cook Islands, where kids could get up and roam around. The singing was beautiful until a Tongan lady sat next to us just as the service was beginning and 10 minutes after the pre-service singing had started. It was all I could do to keep from laughing as we experienced her energetic, shrill, over the top loud singing. I had to pray hard to keep a straight face as I watched Dennis try to look around me to see who was doing the unabashed , joyful singing Dennis. We realized after that we had seated ourselves in the middle of the choir and maybe that is why all the kids in the front pews were looking at us so strangely and I thought it was simply because we looked different. I enjoyed the service and I could sense the Tongan’s strong spirituality and commitment to their beliefs.

We made one road trip on a local bus to the North end of the Island to see the flying foxes (bats with fox like faces) clinging to the causarina trees. Dennis of course took hundreds of pictures, one of which we will post in our photo album and blog.

We also visited a neat surfing, beach resort as Rosemary has always had an interest in learning how to surf.

While med tied to the Tongatapu harbor we met a very nice family that live in a Catamaran, Mares Fatola, which they sailed all the way from Switzerland. We had Mario, Esther and little Laura (8 years old and a delightful, happy child) over to share and evening meal. Laura spent an afternoon with me going through our collection of kids movies to sort through which ones she wanted to watch or borrow. She watched snippets of movies sitting cozily in the nav station. I so much enjoyed her total engrossment in the movies  and every now and then she would look at me, during possible scary parts of the movie, with her big beautiful eyes to ask for reassurance that everything would be ok. It made me reflect on my moments with my kids when they were little.

We replenished our food supply, gasoline and diesel and on September the 25th we started our trek to New Zealand. I left a little sad about leaving the beautiful South Pacific, apprehensive about the 10 day sail to New Zealand that generally, historically offers at least one gusty storm on the way. Of course Dennis is not worried and if he is not worried then I will be ok.

Sunday 9/15/2013 17:30

19 56.621 S 174 43.081 W

http://maps.google.com/?z=7&t=k&q=loc:19%2056.621S%20174%2043.081W

Posting by Dennis:

We got to this anchorage just after lunch so we had time to dinghy around a little before it got dark. Barb and I explored a couple of the little islands that make up part of the reef.

One of them was sticking no more than three feet above the water at high tide. It was a neat place to wonder around and look for shells and just watch the ocean roll in and out among the coral formations. We would have stopped at a little village on Matuga Island but being it was Sunday and we were only dressed in swimming suits and tee shirts we thought it wouldn’t be a good idea. The people here are very religious and no work is done on Sundays. The men here wear long black skirts with white shirts, ties and suit coats, as well as a woven palm skirt over that. A lot of the men wear these skirts every day, not just on Sundays. The woman wear long skirts and hats on Sundays and during the week most of them still wear the long skirts.

On Monday the three of us jumped in the dinghy and ran out to an old Korean ship wreck and went snorkeling. The water is getting much cooler as we are heading south. Admittedly it is not nearly as cold as Lake Superior on a warm day but you do get cold after you swim in it a while. Besides I am getting soft in my old age. Anyway the coral is wonderful to look at. You do not see a lot of big fish hanging around like in the Tuamotus but I think that is because the reefs are fished pretty heavily by the locals. I saw a few parrot fish but they were pretty little, at least I saw nothing that I thought was big enough to spear. After lunch Barb and I decided to take a walk into town. The ‘little one’, as I call Rosemary, had a headache and stayed on the boat to lie down. As Barb and I walked toward town a young girl came over and asked if we would like some papayas, we said sure and she walked with us to town and told us about the different buildings and homes as we walked past them. When we got to her home, where she lived with her mother, father and two younger brothers, she told us to go and sit on the porch and wait for her. In a few minutes she came out with three papayas and a big hand of bananas, all of which she had just picked. Then she went to the window and grabbed something off the window sill. She told us to follow her as we took a small trail that lead back to the road. Once we were out of sight of her house she shared with us a bread roll that she had snuck out of the house. It was bread dough rolled out then had jelly spread over it then rolled up and baked. It was a very tasty treat. When we got back to the wharf we asked her what she would like in return. We wanted to give her something, a gift to her. Barb finally got out of her that she would really like perfume, well that is something that we just don’t have. But they all like perfume here and the strong stuff, nothing at all subtle. Some of them smell as though they bathe in the stuff. She did say she liked to read and a book would be good. So we went to the boat and found some lotion, Oreo cookies, and a book. When we took it back she was so very grateful. The people are generally happy and very appreciative of anything you give them.

Friday 9/13/2013 19:00

19 50.979 S 174 24.904 W

http://maps.google.com/?z=7&t=k&q=loc:19%2050.979S%20174%2024.904W

Posting by Dennis:

This is an amazingly beautiful spot. It is a gentle bay with a wide white sand beach. It is a very easy place to get into and you could easily make your way in in the dark. You place your anchor in about twenty feet of water on a clean sand bottom with great holding. One boat that does charters went in anchored within a hundred feet from shore. It remains deep all the way in. This is not a place that you will probably be alone because it is so very nice. When we were there, there were seven boats scattered around the bay.

During the day we hiked the beaches until it got to hot and we felt well cooked. I was limited in the amount I could hike because I had cut my foot when a sharp lime stone punctured through my sneaker and my foot while hiking in Niue. So I spent my time hiding under the trees trying to stay out of the sun. I even spent one afternoon on the boat while Barb and the ‘little one’ , Rosemary, went hiking and snorkeling.