KINGDOM OF TONGA: Our first South Pacific Island cruising destination
ARRIVING IN NUKUALOFA – TONGA
After 9 days at sea, including leaving NZ in a storm of 35-55kn winds, we made our way safely into the calm waters of Tonga anchoring at “Big Mama’s” across the channel from the capital of Nukualofa.
We had two very unique experiences while here: attending the King’s Cathedral service and chancing upon a regional gathering of representatives from all of the islands of Tonga, the music was magnificent! A full brass orchestra and every voice raised in multilevel harmony- an absolutely breathtaking spiritual moment to behold.
Secondly, we attended an extravagant festival, “Miss Tonga” a week long event to pick the cross-dressing diva. These “ladies” are remarkably gorgeous!
KELEFISIA
AHH! This is exactly what we had in mind when we signed the dotted lines and started out on this sailing adventure – only took us 6 mos to get here! Kelefesia is a true paradise – Raynad is bobbing gently in the slight ocean swells while anchored in absolutely crystal clear, turquoise waters surrounded by coral reefs, rumbling surf, and yet safely nestled in next to the quintessential tropical island, nearly deserted with white sands, palm trees and even some artistically sculpted bluffs. Truly amazingly beautiful:)
Fortunately a “shepherd” already anchored at the island came out in his dingy to help us safely navigate through the reefs and coral into this small bay. It’s an incredibly treacherous approach which is not charted at all and the one guide book with directions was absolutely wrong in that the writer leads you right over a huge coral head! All of this island group is only basically charted, so we must only travel in good light and favorable weather conditions
Immediately after dropping the anchor, John and I both went over the side to snorkel around, not just to look at the fish, but also to check the anchor and location of the boat. We have a very impressive and huge tower of coral about 35 feet off our stern! No joke- this tower literally comes up out of the sands for about 50 feet – it’s a little disconcerting to be so close, but we are safe and the anchor is well dug-in to the sand. We’ll stay here for 2-3 nights as long as the weather stays settled before heading further north to other islands. It’s really magical to swim around the coral, kayak and beachcomb.
Our friends have a third inflatable kayak which is now “mine” to play with and take care of as long as we cruise together- isn’t that great!?!? They caught a mahi-mahi on our way into Kelefesia yesterday which they shared for dinner last night and lunch today-mmmm, excellent. I’ll reciprocate with a dinner on our boat of NZ steaks – not as good as fresh fish, but nothing to apologize for. We eat and drink well on this cruise, at least while the supplies last.
Uonukuhihifo
Funky names here, but Uonukuhihifo just about outdoes them all! We decided that it’s more like “Uno Kow hihi..” because much to our surprise we arrived at this uninhabited island to find one black cow on the beach!?!? Very weird…upon further investigation and several attempts to circumnavigate both islands which are connected by a sand spit, we now realize that it’s actually 5 cows: a bull, mother and calf and two other females AND there is at least one pig. 
The pig, “Wilburette” actually sort of came out of the jungle and tried to be friendly, I think that she wanted our footsteps to disturb the sand and help her find crabs or whatever to consume. It was obvious that she has some piglets stashed away somewhere. Anyway, John got several pictures of the cows and we had a wonderful morning exploring around the beaches and reefs. We are the only people here – just us, the cows and pig, plus a flock of gorgeous little terns.
We’ve decided to have our happy hour on the beach and watch the sunset over the volcano, Kao, which is still active and occasionally spits out some steam. Should be a nice change from the cockpit views.
Namuka Iki:
After a stormy and unsettled night at Kelefesia, winds up above 25knots in this “fair weather” anchorage and towering coral head just off our stern and coral reefs breaking around our little boat, kept us both up much of the night periodically re-checking the anchor and basically imagining the worst in the darkness of night, we navigated our way back into deeper water and had a fast and fun sail up to Namuka. Now with the anchor safely embedded in the expansive sandy bottom and no coral nearby to worry us, we are enjoying a relaxing afternoon–happy hour started at 2pm!! Just to be sure, I donned my mask and snorkel to check out the anchor and surrounding reefs. Lots of lovely fish and interesting coral, but nothing too close:)
Our friends Michael and Suzanne caught a lovely 15lb tuna on the trip up, so it’s sashimi and BBQ fish on their boat to continue the cocktail/dinner hour(s).
Tomorrow, we make a short trip over to Uiha and Tatafa where we’re hoping to catch a Sunday morning service and hear more of their music. It’s supposed to calm down, so maybe we’ll get to do some more kayaking and maybe even a drift dive/snorkel through the pass.
VAVAU
Well at last we made it into Vavau, but oh my what a trip it was!! We lifted anchor in Unoleva about 10am after having given the kids in the neighboring boat about 200 liters of our super water and waving them good-bye as they set out toward New Zealand. We left with winds at 15-20 knots which was the prediction for the entire area, but as we sailed onwards they just kept increasing with average speeds of 25-30knots and gusts of up to 42 – once we hit the open seas, they too kicked in with high, rolling and sharp waves. Good ole SV Raynad held the water well and I was much relieved to be sailing in this wonderfully built boat:) With such strong winds, even with a reef in the main and only the staysail out we averaged 7.2 knots of speed and almost literally blasted our way up to the entrance to Vavau arriving at about 10:30pm, Because it was already very dark, no moon due to thick clouds, and still 30+ knot winds, we all decided it was safest not to try and navigate the narrow channels of the islands but to heave-to and stay offshore until the first light. Our sailing buddies were comfortable enough to get 7 hours of sleep as their boat bobbed around, but John and I split 2hr watches throughout the night to watch for other marine traffic and to keep an eye on exactly where the boat was traveling to (even hove-to she moved at 1-1.5 miles per hour.) We made our way into the protected bays of the Vavau group with the sunrise. Needless to say we are relieved to have safely arrived and John and I are both pretty tired – it’ll be an early night for us.
The Vavau group is quite different from the Ha’Apai group. Large bluffs rise about 500ft straight out of the water and look a bit like flat top mountains with bushy trees and lots of palm trees towering through. The waterways are very deep, so we don’t have the coral heads to worry about so much here. We are on a mooring line in the harbor of Neiafu, the capital city of the Vavau Island group. On our first visit to town we tried to check on times for church services tomorrow (none found – we’ll just have to guess,)booked some scuba diving for Monday, and bought some fresh fruit (including one that looked like a large custard fruit, but had larger seeds and was bit tart – after removing the seeds I blended it with milk, sugar and vanilla to make a smoothie and it was really pretty good! Of course I also bought another watermelon (yumm), two bags of limes and a case of beer.
The young folks whom we had over for drinks the night before we all left Unoleva pretty much decimated our beer supply. They were very grateful though and lots of fun to socialize with for the evening – it was quite lively and filled with laughter. They REALLY liked the hats made by John’s Mum (Betty).
The two girls wore theirs constantly and the last thing they shouted as their boat moved away was a big Thank You for the hats. I’m sure they will be most appreciated as they head south toward NZ where they are in the heart of winter. At least they are all good sailors in a good strong, yet fast boat and the captain Will, is really a very responsible and knowledgeable guy. He actually got his British Yacht Masters certificate at age 17 and had competed in the Fastnet races since he was 14. He and John really got along well and he spent a fair amount of time on our boat swapping computer programs/software and loading some great movies onto my laptop. I finally was able to do a washing this afternoon and wouldn’t you know it…just after they were all pegged out on the lifelines, it started to rain!I’m just hoping enough sun will come out afterwards – last washing they same thing happened and our entire forward cabin looked like a Chinese laundry!?!? It’s been so muggy and damp, we haven’t been able to get things to dry.
John and I went diving today and it was wonderful. The coral is quite beautiful and on one of the dives we swam through a coral fan forest, a magical experience of yellow coral fans wafting in the currents of the waters and we swam through valleys between them. There were alot of corals that we hadn’t seen before and it was very colorful unlike many areas in other parts of the world where the coral is dying and bleached. We also saw some sharks, tuna, razor fish and many others unique fish that we hadn’t seen before.
We actually had thought last night that the dive would be canceled due to some super high winds blasting through the bay where we are moored. They measured as blasts up to 40 kn and pretty steady at 20-30, about 3 boats broke their moorings and several had to move and re-anchor closer to the head of the bay. John and I were up several times re-checking our own lines until oddly about midnight everything went spookily quiet. We awoke this morning to a lovely sunrise and calm waters, so the dive was a go. It’s kicked up again, but so far not as extreme.