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CAPTAIN’S LOG                     August 21 to September 30, 2014

The Kingdom of Tonga          Vava’U – Ha’Apia – Tongatapu   

Samoa to Vava’U: Our 320 mile trip down to Tonga from Samoa was a rough ride, with swells from the east in the 8-10 foot range.  ARGO handles high seas very well, our stabilizers keep her from rolling or yawing very much, but the constant pitching and movement was unpleasant.   It was a beam sea, and some of the swells were so large that we rolled to starboard as they began to pass under us, then leveled at the crest, and then rolled to port and slid down the back side of the wave sideways as it passed under us.  Of course we didn’t leave Samoa without a weather forecast, but it was dead wrong.   Unfortunately a trough had formed and it was blowing around 30 knots for the whole voyage.   No one felt well during the trip, and I got a good dose of sea sickness to boot.  It’s passages like this that make us think fondly of spending our time in a plush hotel in Provence!

Arrival at Neiafu:  We arrived at the town of Neiafu on the Island of Vava’U at 0700 and tied to the custom’s dock.  Before our lines were secured, the immigration, health and customs agents were on the dock and ready for business.   After filling out the customary forms and paying about $100 in various fees, we went ashore.   It wasn’t long before we had arranged telephone service, bought fresh vegetables from the farmers’ market near the dock, and made a short walk down Main Street to see what Neiafu was all about.  What we found was a rag-tag collection of a few stores, three banks, a Western Union office, several bars, restaurants, churches, and souvenir shops.  Neiafu is a waypoint for boaters who are either going south to Tongatapu and New Zealand, or westward to Fiji.   The harbor is very large, clear blue, and deep.  It can accommodate any size ship that can make it past the narrow channel in the reef at its entrance.  When we arrived, there were about thirty boats on mooring balls in the harbor.  At anchor in the western end of the harbor was Paul Allen’s 225 ft. yacht Meduse, one of several he owns.  Along the waterfront were a selection of bars and restaurants, however the Aquarium Restaurant seemed to be the gathering spot for most of the boaters.  Mike, its American owner, was a congenial fellow who gladly provided information about the island and help with anything anyone needed. 

Late in the morning we moved to an anchorage just west of town and anchored in 95 feet of water near Meduse.   Rumor had it that some big shot like Bill Gates was coming, but no one showed up while we were there.  Not to be outdone, we had our own personage to welcome aboard at Neiafu.  Just as we dropped anchor, Mike from the Aquarium called on the VHF to tell us that our intrepid friend Reid Sherard had arrived and was at his dockside restaurant waiting for us to pick him up.  Reid had flown 36 hours from Los Angeles to Auckland, then to Nuku’alofa, and finally on to Neiafu.  He actually arrived a day ahead of schedule.   With him were two bottles of vodka and three printer cartridges (which are unique to the U.S.).  It was great to see our old friend. 

Meanwhile back on Argo, Tyler was diligently washing the sea salt off and readying her for company.   Giving Argo a bath is a lot of work and takes an entire day. We are very lucky to have Tyler onboard; Tyler takes a great deal of pride in his work and makes this yacht shine like no other!  He is a great asset to us!

The weather in Vava’U was in some ways a welcome relief from the searing heat and high humidity we had experienced since leaving Jamaica six months ago.  For the first time we didn’t need air conditioning.   The Tongans told us that it was unseasonable cold:  the temperature was consistently about 77⁰, humidity in the high 60’s, and the sea water temperature was 78⁰.  Despite this perfect combination of factors, the wind blew at 20 mph for days making the water a little too rough and cloudy to enjoy water sports or riding about in the dingy.  This is springtime in this part of the world and transitional weather patterns brought more clouds and wind than usual.  We were disappointed that Reid didn’t have better conditions given the long trip he made to get here.

We found Neiafu to be a very pleasant place with friendly people who were helpful and kind.  Many boating friends that we had met along the way were also there, so we spent a few enjoyable evenings catching up and hearing about their experiences.   Altogether we spent eighteen days at anchor diving, touring the island, talking with friends, whale snorkeling, going to church, feasting, and enjoying all that is. 

The Kingdom of Tonga: The Vava’U Group is the northern most archipelago of the Kingdom of Tonga.  The Kingdom is made up of three island groups: Vava’U to the north, Ha’Apia, in the center lying 60 miles south of Vava’U, and Tongatapu, the third archipelago that lies 60 miles south of Ha’Apia and is home to the kingdom’s capital city, Nuku’alofa.  Altogether the three groups stretch about 160 miles from north to south along the Tonga Ridge, which is formed by the meeting of the Australian and Pacific Plates in the South Pacific Ocean.  Tonga is thought to be moving eastward at 25 cm per year and is gradually sinking into the ocean.

Unlike all the other islands of Polynesia, The Kingdom of Tonga has never been colonized by Westerners.  Tonga is governed by a king who enjoys all the regalia that goes with a monarchy: e.g., nobles, royal lands, money minted with the king’s image on it, royal tombs, a palace, and of course, ownership of the key money making enterprises.  Originally the three island groups were each governed by a Tu’iTonga, a man/god chief.  The Tu’iTonga on Ha’Apia with the help of the Wesleyan Methodists and the British Navy, attacked the Tu’iTonga on Tongatapu and in the twenty year war overthrew him and established a kingdom modeled on the British monarchy.  The chiefs who supported him were made nobles and the Methodist Church and the British were granted special rights.  The king named himself George I (all kings are named George and today we have George VI).  He proclaimed that all land was owned by God and given to him by God for safe keeping.  Of course he took the prime and largest cuts for himself, his cronies, and the Wesleyan Methodists.  Even today all land in Tonga is owned by the king, but some time ago the king granted title to eight acre parcels to individual Tongan males.  Woman may not own land.   

The country has a constitution established in the mid 1800’s.   Until 2006 the king was more or less an absolute monarch and ruled a nation of about 103,000 people.  There were riots and the burning of buildings in 2006 as Tongans demanded greater democratization of the government, but it isn’t clear that anything of substance has changed, although it now has a parliament. 

There are estimated to be about 70,000 Tongans living abroad who send money back to their families in Tonga and this constitutes the largest source of foreign revenue for the country.  About 70,000 people live in the capital of Nukualofa, about 15,000 live on Vava’U, and the balance live on other islands.  Land can only be titled to Tongans, however “squatter’s rights” comes into play when a person moves onto land that no one is paying attention to and resides there for ten years or more.  The original owner loses title.  A Tongan must appear in person on his land at least once every ten years and chase any squatters off or risk losing it.  If a “palangi” (a white person) wishes to acquire property, it can only be leased from a Tongan or noble and leases must be approved by parliament and the king.  Leases are easily obtained and the lessee will eventually get a copy of the lease with the king’s signature and the royal seal in wax at the bottom.  Leases can extend up to fifty years.

As in Samoa, families are large (average ten children) and those members that are ambitious are encouraged to migrate abroad and send money home.  By and large I don’t think Tongans are a very motivated lot, although they are very friendly.   The country is very poor and the brighter people head for Australia, New Zealand or the U.S. if they can get a visa, which is increasingly had to come by.  Most countries feel that they have enough islander immigrants, particularly as some Tongans abroad have been pushed into crime to meet the financial demands of their families at home.  Title to land is devised on a primo-genitor basis, so if you are not the first born male you might as well leave for greener pastures.   Of course at least one lucky soul is obligated to stay home and take care of mom, dad, grandma, and keep an eye on the family’s property.   Despite their obvious poverty, few beg or go hungry.  Tongans take care of each other and are deeply committed to their family.  Tongans seem to be proud people; they have their islands, their heritage, and their religions.  They also have a Western Union office in almost every village of any size, and its sign is the only one in good repair. Aside from having children, they raise pigs and chickens (raise is too strong a verb as they just let them run about and grab one for dinner as needed), cultivate small gardens of taro, kava, bananas, carrots and whatever else will grow.  Most of the land I saw under cultivation was done by human labor: no beasts of burden or tractors.  Driving around the whole island I saw four tractors and one horse.  Undoubtedly there are a few more, but most land is cultivated on small plots on a human scale.  All this is supplemented by fish the men catch. 

The climate here is more temperate than all the other islands we have visited, and for the first time we have seen fruits and vegetables that we are more accustomed to seeing at home.   Each village has at least one church, and Sunday is an observed day of rest, religion, family and feast.  Their school system has managed to teach the English language to almost everyone over the last twenty five years.  The government provides primary school, and the religious sects, particularly Moorman and Wesleyan Methodist, provide secondary schools, although you have to belong to the church and tithe in order to send your children to the church’s school.  Driving around the countryside, you can see large noble estates, but most parcels are about eight acres in size and cultivated by a family for subsistence.  The churches in Tonga are shamefully medieval in the power and wealth the clergy wields, and in the way people are forced to give money to them.  The Mormons seem to be very aggressive and have built a facility at virtually every cross road.  Homes are very basic except for those of the local church ministers or government officials. Large houses (the size of a typical American suburban home) are either owned by nobles or church ministers.  The villages are not kept up as they are in the other parts of Polynesia, and on the smaller islands of the Ha’Apia Group cyclone damage from last summer’s storms is considerable.

Vava’U Group:   Coming into Vava’U was very different than the other islands we had visited during the last six months.  The island is not volcanic.  It is a coral island rising abruptly about 300 feet from the ocean’s surface to a flat plain that is covered in dense jungle.  From the sea, the islands look like huge stone monoliths with dramatic cliffs; beaches are present only where the cliffs give way to a little bay or indentations in the rock.  The water is crystal clear, and the bays and passages between the islands are deep sapphire blue and the islands colorful.  Here, in the shelter of the islands and the warm waters of the Mid-Pacific Ocean, Humpback Whales come to give birth and breed each year.

Whales:  Vava’U is most well-known for “swimming with whales”.  There are two or three outfitters who are licensed to take tourist on “whale dives”.   A dive is actually a surface snorkel and is an all day ordeal in which eight or so snorkelers accompany a guide, four at a time into the water to swim next to a cow and calf (usually).  Males are difficult to swim with because they are on the move and are often breaching or pushing each other around in an effort to attract the attention of a female (what’s new?).  Would-be swimmers wear wet suits and ride around for hours in the open boat until an appropriate female and calf are spotted.  Then the boat stops a hundred yards or so from the mother, and if she doesn’t swim off, four snorkelers at a time quietly enter the water with a guide and swim over to within fifteen or twenty feet of the whale.   Females with newborns often rest for part of the day so as to let the little one nurse and safely play.  As you swim toward the leviathan you can see how big these creatures are; 100 plus tons suspended just at the water’s surface with the majority of their body hanging perhaps 100 or more feet below.  You first see their giant black backs with a prominent spine, as you look downward you see the spine lead to the tail a hundred feet or so below in the blue water.  The black upper body changes to a white underside with huge folds in its skin.  The breathing hole is at the water’s surface and is about one third of the length of the body and behind the head.  Forward of the breathing hole the head rests suspended in fifteen or so feet of water and is a strange, but familiar shape.  The eyes are on the side of the head well back of its huge jaw line that is covered in barnacle like growths.  The little calf swims about its mother turning and twisting as it goes, and then pausing for refreshment if desired.  Calves drink about 50 gallons of a yogurt type mother’s milk each day and grow rapidly.  The adjective “little” really doesn’t apply as they can be thousands of pounds within weeks.  During our dives we were within ten or fifteen feet of these huge, beautiful animals.  On one of our dives we spent perhaps a half an hour within feet of a mother and calf.  The baby came so close to us and was so frisky I thought it might injure us, not knowing its own youthful strength.  After all the divers returned to the boat and were drying off, we watched the mother and baby at the surface of the water.  I saw the mother’s tale flukes rise high in the air, an indication of a deep dive.  I assumed she was leaving.  We were only a hundred yards or so from her.  A moment or two later she erupted straight up out of the sea, turning her immense body laterally over in the air, and then crashed down yards from our boat. It was awesome…spell binding…breathtaking…like nothing we had ever seen or imagined.  It was as though she was offering us one last glimpse into her world.  After a few moments to collect our wits, we departed thankful for the experience and emotionally closer to our origins in the natural world.  

The whale’s world underwater in Vava’U is silent, tranquil, warm and slow moving.  Occasionally you can hear the whales sing.  Sometimes you can see the males breaching, or pushing each other about in a contest of strength, or, more aggressively, slamming each other with their giant heads in an attempt to prove dominance.  For them this is not play, but the vital, essential business of life.  It’s also no place to snorkel!

We have posted videos and pictures of our whale dives on www.tischtravels.com

Feasts:  Like Samoans, Tongans love a feast.  Aside from their private Sunday family gatherings, entrepreneurs offer feasts to tourists several days a week at different locations around the islands.  We decided to go to one on Sunday at the En’toi Botanical Garden.  The proprietors picked us up in their rickety old, filthy van and drove across the island through the little villages with the shiny new Moorman facilities to their sea side establishment.  The owner, Halima (?), was celebrating his 69^th birthday that day, so the feast was preceded by a speech in which he recalled growing up in the village and not knowing anything about the outside world, not even that it was round.  He thanked providence for his good fortune to become the Assistant Secretary of Agriculture during his career, for his wonderful children, and apologized to his wife Lucy for being less than a perfect husband.  With that, the feast was underway and one by one the eager guests proceeded to the buffet and began selecting from a variety of Tongan dishes including suckling pig, curried fish, poultry, taro, bread fruit, curried vegetables, and other dishes.  After the feast, I looked about and saw several pictures of Halima during his career meeting Pope John Paul in Rome in the company of other Tongan dignitaries including HRH the King.  He told me that he had actually met the Pope twice, and many other dignitaries from around the world as well.  Not bad for a country not bigger than a small town in mid-America!

Our 25^th Wedding Anniversary:  We celebrated our 25^th wedding anniversary here in Tonga.  Rebecca found a nice resort established a few years ago by a sail boating couple from Switzerland who were apparently ready for life on the hard.  Normally they are booked several weeks in advance, but somehow Rebecca got us in.  Kathryn had called them from NYC to try to arrange a surprise, like a bottle of champagne or a local musician to play for us, but nothing like that was available in Tonga.  We moved ARGO to an anchorage off shore and dingied in for a lovely dinner complete with a table cloth and a beautiful flower centerpiece.  Rebecca’s dish was quite interesting: a whole red snapper split down the back from head to tail and baked.  It was very artistic as it looked like a large, pink, spiral ribbon.  It was delicious.

Diving the Ship Wreck:  Just west of our anchorage at Neiafu was a wreck that sunk about twenty years ago in 125 feet of water.  This ship apparently had caught on fire and the captain and engineer stayed aboard to try and save her. Both died when she sank.  Wrecks are common in this part of the world. In Nuku’alofa we counted nine wrecks in the harbor.  In the third world maintenance is not a valued practice on anything much less a ship, and cyclones sweep thru these parts every year.  Many ships drag their anchor during big storms and wind up on a reef and break apart.  Compounding matters, often the crews are made up of local men and when a cyclone arrives, they abandon their ship to take care of their families. 

Tyler and I dove the wreck on a sunny morning.  I had never done that sort of diving before; it was a little spooky, given that at two people lost their lives.  The water wasn’t very clear, but we could see her lying broken on the bottom.  She was known as the Clan McClellan, a relatively large ship of a few hundred feet.  We explored the decks above 100ft in depth, seeing her railing and mast and thinking of the hopes that she carried with her and the tragedy of her demise.  

Going to Church in Neiafu: Religion is the center of community life in Polynesia, much like it is in the American south.  Here there is practically a church on every corner.   One Sunday we decided to go to church and see what a service in Neiafu was all about.  The church we visited was a Catholic Church.  It was built on the most prominent hill in the town and from the front looked like something you might find in Italy.  The façade was Italianate in design, very ornate with painted pictures of Christ on the bell tower.  It was built on a hill that required climbing about twenty five steps to reach the entrance, and the climb made the church all the more imposing.   Behind the facade was a more modest structure, sort of a pole barn with a white metal roof.  Inside were pews and a couple of statues and shrines, very typical of a modest Catholic church.  The service began when the choir started to sing, and that was something to behold and the real reason for our visit.  The choir constituted at least a quarter of the people in the church, but the quality of their singing was second to none.  They were terrific.  A procession then began when the priest, proceeded by a small retinue of elders and officiates, made their way down the aisle to the altar.  The church was packed and people were standing outside.    Men wore traditional Lava-lavas with a ta’ovala skirt wrapped around their waist.  The ta’ovala is a grass cloth traditional garb woven from mulberry tree bark as in the Samoan tapa making process that I wrote about in my Samoan blog.  The women were, of course, dressed in their finest, and they too wore a sort of grass skirt over their western dress, but much lacier and also made of tapa. Going to the church was a wonderful cultural experience for us. 

A Drive-about:  One of our friends, Adam Paskowitz Captain of Spirit of Adventure, mentioned that he had taken a dune buggy/go-cart tour on the back roads of Vava’U.   Rebecca and I thought it might be fun so we arranged for a tour.  The little company was run by a family of ex-pats trying to eke out a living in Neiafu.  We arrived at the appointed hour and we met our guide Joshua.  Joshua had grown up in New Zealand but had a Tongan father.  His father owned some property in town including a distillery of sorts, and at his death it became Joshua’s.   So Joshua came back to Tonga to claim his birthright. Things weren’t going all that well for him, but he knew the island well and spoke impeccable English, so off we went.

We should have known better as the cart was a death trap. I could hardly get into the thing, but anyway we rode over hill and dale, past the ubiquitous Moorman Church and basketball court, past the cemeteries with their huge quilts memorializing a recently deceased person, past the little hand tilled fields of taro, eventually finding the cow path Joshua was looking for.  This path took us several miles off the beaten track—through the dense jungle, past little subsistence farms to some of the most beautifully natural and unspoiled sights we have seen. One such place was a gorgeous cliff overlooking the sea.  The cliff had been eroded in a most unusual way by centuries of the relentless pounding of the sea.  About fifty feet above the sea was a huge circular hole about twenty feet in diameter in the cliff’s outcropping. On the prominence above it roosted hundreds of fox bats – fruit eating bats about a foot long that hung in the branches on the trees above.   

Ha’Apia Group: The Ha’Apia Group lies about 65 miles south of Vava’U.   We left our anchorage early in the morning and enjoyed a lovely cruise, one of the best we have experienced down to Ha’Apia.  It was a bright sunny day with calm seas and whales breaching along the way.  Our trip took about eight hours and we arrived at Haano Island.  Approaching these island takes great care and should only be done when the sunlight allows one to see all the coral heads and reefs.  We cautiously entered the anchorage with all hands focused on any signs of danger.  We were all very surprised by the geology of these islands compared to Vava’U; Ha’Apia Islands are flat sand atolls rising no more than five feet above the sea’s surface and covered in jungle and shrubs.   As I mentioned, surrounding the islands are extensive coral reefs, which makes them unpopular with boaters.  When we arrived we were the lone boat on the island.    After a pleasant and restful night at anchor, we went ashore the next morning to reconnoiter the little village of Haano.  Once ashore, we quickly appreciated that it had been terribly damaged by a cyclone the previous season.  As we walked through the little village, we saw men rebuilding a water tower, and some of the people whose homes were destroyed living in tents.  It was a very poor area in the best of times, but now it was devastated.  After walking about and greeting the people we met, we decided to move along to the next island of Lifuka and the capital pf Ha’Apia, Pangai Village.  

Tyler’s 30^th birthday:  We thought that Piangai would have a little more to offer, and since it was Tyler’s 30^th birthday we wanted to find a town with a suitable celebratory establishment.  We picked our way through the coral heads and reefs and anchored a mile or so offshore.  Our friends Jeff and Sherry on Grasshopper showed up in the anchorage shortly after we arrived to help celebrate, and we all went into Pangai Village.  The village itself was also heavily damaged by last January’s cyclone and people were living in very dilapidated circumstances.  The town seemed all but abandoned.  Dogs roamed the streets everywhere, which made us feel uneasy, particularly if they were to form packs.  As on other Polynesian islands, these dogs are a very sturdy breed and look to be part pit-bull.  On one street ten or fifteen of these dogs formed a pack and took off after a pig.  They nipped at it and badgered it.  Finally as they became more brazen and aggressive the pig must have sensed that the game could turn lethal at any moment, and with that, turned tail and outran the dogs in making its escape.  As we walked further along the only human activity we saw was centered on little food markets run by Chinese proprietors.  Older Tongans distrust the Chinese grocers because they sell alcohol to the young men, who in turn get drunk, rowdy, and fight.  As we turned the corner toward the Mariner’s Café, we heard a commotion and saw a serious fist fight erupt between two young men who had obviously been drinking.  We wanted to get away from the fight and the men who were hanging around watching, so we hurried on to the café only to find it closed.  A few minutes later the loser of the fight staggered by with the aid of an inebriated friend, his head bleeding profusely from a gash administered by his opponent with a wrench.  As soon as the little crowd disbursed, we headed back to Argo where Rebecca made a wonderful birthday dinner complete with filet minion, mashed potatoes, corn, and a fruit pie for dessert with candles for Tyler.  

The next day we moved south about thirty miles to the island of Haafava.  This island has a protected lagoon, like the Tuamotus. We entered the lagoon over a very narrow channel in the reef and anchored near the small dock the islanders use to bring in supplies.  The lagoon’s bottom was littered with coral heads and rocks, so Tyler stood lookout on the bow pulpit and we picked our way around until he found a patch of sand and we dropped anchor.  After settling down we found the area absolutely beautiful, but the wind was up and made for a rolling anchorage.  Tyler and Rebecca went for a swim and we all took the dingy for a spin later in the afternoon.  The view from Argo was absolutely beautiful.  We were surrounded by other islands and, more closely in, coral reefs.  The ocean swells were crashing on the reefs, and off in the distance we could see the silhouette of the only active volcano in Tonga, which made for a spectacular vista. 

As beautiful as it was, it was time to continue south toward Tongatapu and prepare for our passage to New Zealand.  Our wonderful friends Melanie and Curtis Hoff were meeting us in Nukualofa.  They planned on joining us for the final passage to New Zealand and the conclusion of our great adventure.  

Tongatapu Group: These are the main islands of the Kingdom of Tonga and site of its capitol Nuku’alofa.  The city is on the south side of a very large bay that is open to the north.  There are many reefs, coral heads and islands scattered about, but so far the charts have been accurate and we haven’t bumped into anything.  We anchored a little over a mile from the city’s docks and inner harbor, which are in a shambles and littered with sunken wrecks.  Several abandon, rusting Japanese fishing vessels are tied to a dock and bear witness to Tonga’s naval prowess; they confiscated the ships because the Japanese violated Tongan territorial waters.   We anchored off Pangiamotu Island at Big Mama’s Yacht Club.  Out front is a sunken bow of a large ship that went down here in a cyclone about twenty years ago. It acts as an artificial reef and attracts a lot of colorful fish.  People come out to see the fish, enjoy the beautiful beach and swim in the crystal clear water.  Mama is a very large lady, sort of like Aunt Jemima.  She owns the tikka bar here, which looks inviting, but the food is horrible.  At this end of the bay I counted nine partially sunken ships. 

To get to the city we took our tender about a mile and a half across the bay to the inner harbor, and then the inner-inner harbor or boat basin.  Instead of a proper, safe floating dock, they have taken scrapes of old wood and hobbled things together to build a walkway and floated it on old oil barrels.  It is rickety and wobbly.  The planks are unevenly spaced so that one could easily trip and fall through a space into the filthy water, or, if you get off center as Rebecca did, one end of a plank could give way; she nearly fell in.  Once the dock is negotiated the main road to town is near at hand, and the town center is about a fifteen minute walk.  Along the paved road are venders selling fruits and vegetables, taro, watermelons and fire wood; hundreds of neatly stacked piles of cut wood for cooking fires are stacked next to the road.  This is in contrast to optical fiber cable being installed along one of the main streets downtown.   

Like the harbor, Nukualofa suffers from aesthetic deprivation.  It is shabby and without many of the staples of everyday life that we had hoped to find here.  They have a very fine farmer’s market with all sorts of things we haven’t seen on other islands, like lettuce.  I was looking around for a Tonga cap, and asked the local cap embroiderer where I could find one or if he could make one for me? He looked at me as though I were nuts.  Who wants a Tonga hat?  All their caps have American or other foreign sports’ team logos on them.  ­­­­­­­Here, people identify with the west.

The next day we took a tour of the island.  I have put pictures of these sights on www.tischtravels.com. The first stop was the Royal Palace (19^th century Victorian style summer home), then the Royal Tombs (it looks like a normal Tongan cemetery, where the soil is mounded over the body, but large stone statues of the deceased kings in European military garb stand over the graves). There were several beautiful coastal sites to see including blow holes and natural arches, and finally the Ha’amonga Trilithon, which is an ancient stone arch similar in some ways to Stone Hedge, which marked the ceremonial center where the Tu’iTonga presided.  Every village has at least one Moorman school, basketball court and meeting hall, and maybe a Catholic and or Wesleyan Methodist Church.   There are also the odd Seventh Day Adventist and Jehovah’s Witnesses’ meeting halls as well.   In Tonga the haves live well, the rest are serfs.

Leaving Tonga:  Our friends Melanie and Curtis Hoff joined us in Nuku’alofa for the ride south to New Zealand.  It was very symbolic in the sense that they came down to Stuart, Florida and waved good-bye to us from the bridge as we left America, and now they were joining us on our final leg of the journey to New Zealand.   Because the trip to New Zealand is long and fraught with the possibility of difficult seas, we offered them the chance to just meet us in Auckland, but they wanted to come along and we were very happy to have them. The Hoffs are boaters who have cruised the U.S. East Coast extensively, so we all studied the weather files and decided unanimously to leave as soon as possible after fueling Wednesday at noon.  Our passage involved threading the needle between three potential storms that were expected to form while we were at sea.  A low was due to make its way across our course bringing with it very high winds and high seas (13ft.), but if we left Tonga on Wednesday afternoon we felt there was a good chance that we could get south of it.  Tonga offers us the possibility of buying tax free fuel if we buy it on the way out, so Wednesday morning we hooved to a crumbling cement dock at the harbor (after helping an itinerate boater move to a mooring) and arranged to take on fuel.  To get the tax free permit we had to check out of the country with customs, which meant checking out with immigration (whose office was across town), then to the Harbor Master’s office to pay port charges (a real rip off at about $200 USD for a week at anchor), then to the Total Petroleum facility with $14,000 in Tongan cash.  My pockets were bulging with money, but that is the only way they do business.  To get the Tongan money, we had to go to the bank on Monday and convert our dollars.  Lucky for us, in Tonga you can convert without charge up to $10,000 Tongan per person.  So Rebecca and I each took USD’s and converted it so that we had enough to pay Total.  The tax free fuel price was the equivalent of $3.90 per gallon, which wasn’t too bad (they sell it in liters and we bought about 8,000 liters).

The fuel truck was due at noon, but arrived about an hour late (it’s on Tongan Time), and it took about an hour to fuel; in the end Argo was full!   We left Nuku’alofa on the incoming tide at about 14:30 on September 24 bound for Auckland, New Zealand and the end of our voyage. 

Our next Captain’s Log describes our experience with a Force Ten Gale on our way to Auckland.

CAPTAIN’S LOG   September 21-29, 2014

Encountering a Force Ten Gale

At Sea in South Pacific off the coast of New Zealand: Leaving Tongatapu required negotiating the channel between the reefs and Eau Island to the east.  The channel was boiling with an inrushing tidal current the severity of which we hadn’t seen since cruising Desolation Sound in British Columbia in 2011.  Once outside the channel we could see the waves crashing on shore and the blow holes spouting huge mists of water in the air.  After about an hour we reached the open sea and the real show began; the largest swells I have ever seen and only imagined came rolling toward us.  They were somewhere around 20ft high on a moment of 12sec.   They were massive mountains of water rolling at 30 mph under our keel.  It was truly a spectacular, awesome, spellbinding sight!  Argo was first lifted up by the waves, then she rolled over the top and came running down the backside.  It really looked like a somewhat smaller version of the waves shown in the movie The Perfect Storm.  Despite the size of the swells, our travel over them was pleasant due to their long moment.  Swells of that size are both things of beauty and amazement, and at the same time, terrifying.  As we moved along, the seas subsided to a more normal state; we had twenty knots of wind and 8 -12 ft. seas on the forward port quarter for the balance of the day.  We all took meclizine to combat sea sickness and as a result we were all sleepy, but not sick.  I slept like a baby as Tyler stood the night watch.  My crew mates, however, reported not sleeping so well that first night.

The next day things began to calm down and by the second full day our passage was very pleasant.  We downloaded a weather file from the satellite and confirmed that we were on track to avoid the worst of the storms that lay ahead.  The current in this part of the ocean can be as high as 2 knots on our nose.  It must be because of the upwelling of cold water from the Tongan Trench, which is one of the deepest parts of the ocean at 32,000 feet deep.  We ramped up our RPMs to 1500 to try and maintain a speed of at least 8 knots, but often we would barely make 7 knots.  We tried to maintain as much speed as possible to sneak past the rough weather emerging to our south; occasionally we made over 9 knots when the current slacked off.  During the third, fourth, and fifth day the ocean was like a lake, but our weather files showed the potential for rough seas as we approached New Zealand.  We made plans to alter our course for the northern port of Opua if things turned sour.  Meanwhile Rebecca and Melanie were cooking up some fantastic meals in the galley.  Before we made landfall in New Zealand, we had to eat all our meat and vegetables or the kiwis would confiscate it. 

Force Ten Gale:  Around 11:00 on September 29, with only 60 miles to go to Great Barrier Island, the radar picked up the image of a storm ahead.  The seas were calm, the barometer was 1014, and the wind was only 10 knots.  The forecasts had been very accurate during our passage and we were updating them four times a day via satellite.  We anticipated seas of 10-12 ft., which is no big deal for Argo; as it turned out, the actual weather we confronted was twice that forecast.  I put a picture of the weather chart on www.tischtravels.com so you can see what we wound up facing.  By 12:00 the seas had changed direction and were building as expected, and the wind was nearly 20 knots.  By 14:00 the wind was about 45 knots +/-, and the seas continued to build.  By 15:00 the winds were sustained over 45 knots and mostly in the 50 to 60 knot range, with top winds at 63.3 knots.  Seas became tremendous at 20 to 30 feet at 8 to 12 seconds.  They were huge, steep; mountains of water stair stepped by the ferocious wind, rolling toward us at 30 mph, sucking the water up from beneath and leaving in their wake a deep and treacherous valley.  The wind roared in a frightening howl, the ocean was a tumultuous, angry caldron.  I tried to position Argo to quarter the waves.  Suddenly a massive rogue wave slammed over our bow into the pilothouse windows.   My adrenaline shot up.  By now the wind was over 60 knots and I began to contemplate an emergency scenario.  At this point everyone was in the pilothouse helping me evaluate options; lucky for us Curtis Hoff has a PhD in marine engineering and many years of boating experience.   His council was very helpful.  I asked Tyler to call the Coast Guard and report our position; ultimately we reported to Maritime Radio Great Barrier Island every hour until we reached safe waters nine hours later.  In the meantime I focused on sea keeping issues; guiding Argo in a direction and speed that prevented her from being broadsided by one of those giant waves, or falling into a trough and pitch-polling.  From the pilot house we could see the giants coming our way; at first we could look up to the waves’ crest above our roof line.  It seemed as though they were going to crash into us, but then we would roll to starboard, be lifted to the top, see the combing crest and watch the crest flow under us.  We would then fall off the back of the wave, roll modestly to our port side and slide down into the trough.  Argo performed perfectly.  After a half hour or so we became concerned that by quartering the waves on our bow we were inextricably moving into the storm.  By this time we had been in the storm about 5 hours.  We hoped the wind would subside and the storm would blow out to sea, but instead it was intensifying.  We had to turn around and try to approximate a course toward land.  We discussed the pros and cons of coming about in these dangerous seas, but in the end I decided to take the risk. Turning is perhaps the most dangerous maneuver a captain can execute in a storm of this severity, but we had to do it.  The sun was setting and we didn’t want to lose the light.  We looked for a softening of the waves and found a moment in which to bring her about and put her stern to the waves.  Although we were afraid she might be breached over the stern or take a wave broadside, that never happened.  In fact, after the turn, Argo road the seas more comfortably than before.  We stayed on this course for about an hour.  By now it was 1900 and we had been in the storm for 6 hours, but we were much more confident in Argo and our ability to survive and ride out the storm.  At this point I decide we had to return to our original course, which would take us to the outer fringes of the storm and eventually to Auckland, but this required another turnabout.   After executing the turn, we were finally on course for Auckland again.  Argo was riding relatively well given the circumstances.  The sun had set, it was pitch black outside and the wind was screeching; we had five hours to go!  An hour or so later Tyler reported that the sea water pump for the hydraulic system had stopped functioning.  Without this pump the hydraulic system would soon overheat, we would lose our stabilizers, and we would be in serious, perhaps catastrophic danger.  Once again I had to turn Argo stern-to and position her so that we could turn off the stabilizers before they closed down due to overheating.  I found that Argo was most stable in this position.  So we turned on our spot light, determined the exact wave direction, waited for the right moment and initiated the turn with wide open throttle.  She made the turn between waves quickly and we found a very stable position for her to assume.  Tyler sprang into action:  he removed the strainer and the cover plate to the impeller: everything was OK.  Then he took the input hose off the heat exchanger thinking that perhaps it sucked in some air and became air locked; again everything seemed OK.  So we turned the system back on and, thank God, it worked.  At this point we needed to turn Argo back into the waves and resume our course toward Great Barrier Island and safe anchorage still five hours away.  Now it was pitch dark on the ocean.  We were in the middle of this terrible storm and waves were coming at us.   Argo road the waves perfectly, up and down, up and down.  Once in a while a rogue wave would slam us near the stern and spin us off course, but Argo took the pounding and we moved relentlessly toward safe harbor.  Every hour we called Maritime Radio to report our position and to obtain permission to anchor before checking into customs.  Finally, five hours later at 01:30, we made Great Barrier Island and Katherine’s Bay.  With the storm raging around us, we dropped our anchor, had a drink, and fell into bed.

The next morning we got underway at 08:45 and headed for Auckland, 55 miles away.  Winds in the protected channel and Auckland harbor were still in the 30 mph range.  We hove to the customs dock at 16:22, cleared-in in an hour, and tied up at our final destination, Viaduct Harbor Marina, at 18:00.  After 14,000 miles of travel and 8 months underway, we didn’t put so much as a scratch on this fantastic yacht!  All of us are in awe of this boat.  She took those huge seas with grace, and could take even more. 

We were well prepared for the storm; we conduct engine room checks every hour during normal conditions and on the half hour during high seas (which permitted us to always discover problems before that became emergencies), we had installed storm plates on our large salon windows, we knew from experience how to deal with the problems and conditions we faced, everything was tied down and properly stowed.  Nothing was broken.  No one was hurt. The outside of Argo and all of equipment was undamaged and in perfect condition.  It took a day or two for us to calm down, but we are all better seaman as a result of the experience.  However, we do not want to experience it again!   

Regarding the storm: it continued to rage for several days and intensified into a cyclone.