Niuatoputapu to Vavau - Tonga

9th September 2007

We upped early and left the anchorage by 07:45 and had a good but close-hauled sail towards the Vavau group of Tongan islands. The passage was uneventful and good winds overnight kept us on schedule to make landfall in daylight the next day.

10th September 2007

After dawn arrived, we soon spotted the high cliffs of Northern Vavau. The land is predominantly a limestone uprising making steep cliffs with high plateaus and easily navigable deep channels between the arms of the many islands. Further to the South, the islands become lower and coralline and navigation becomes a little trickier.

We headed straight for the main town of Neiafu where we picked up a mooring buoy because the water was took deep near the town.

11th to 14th September 2007

We had a lazy few days hiding from the incessant rain, re-provisioning and doing the odd jobs. We are running out of gas for cooking and we took our empty cylinders the two mile hike by dinghy to the gas station. They could not deal with our style of bottle and we spent many hours trying to buy connectors to convert between New Zealand style and our own Calor Gas style to no avail. I have since worked out that NZ bottles connect directly to the pressure regulators and therefore alternative high pressure connectors cannot be found. Luckily, “Ariel” have a couple of full British bottles aboard and have offered to loan us one until NZ where we will have to buy new bottles.

15th September 2007

We left at lunch time for a 6 mile sail to a deserted anchorage. When we arrived, the bay was full of boats and wee had trouble finding a spot to anchor.

Fliss….

As we motored in we spotted Splinters Apprentice, this surprised us as we thought they had already headed off to another island. They had decided that with the weather being so poor that they would wait it out for a few days but they were leaving today at 4:30pm. The good news was that they were on a mooring buoy and they said that they would call us before they left so that we could have it. We had anchored but Pete wasn’t happy as we were on coral and you could hear the chain rumbling across it.

True to their word they called us to say they were leaving and waited for us to get the anchor up before dumping the buoy. As we approached another boat was getting ready to raise his anchor and snaffle the buoy and said quite begrudgingly “ That’s good timing” I replied “We had a heads up that they were leaving & it’s not what you know it’s who you know!”.

So here we are in a beautiful picturesque bay safe & sound on a mooring buoy.