We have had a wonderful time in Tonga since our last update, exploring more of the Vava'u group, doing quite a bit of diving (including Lucy's first proper wreck dive) and also linking up with lots of cruising friends who caught up with us during our extended stay. Importantly we also managed to properly fix our leaky anchor locker problem that led to the slightly raised level of excitement during our last ocean passage. This turned out to be a straightforward but nasty grinding and  fibre-glassing job and I have to confess I got some professional assistance to get it done properly. 

 

For those of you who were beginning to worry that we had actually decided to settle in Tonga you will be pleased to hear that we have finally managed to drag ourselves away.  We are currently sitting at anchor in North Minerva Reef, in the middle of nowhere 790 miles north-east of the top of New Zealand. We arrived yesterday afternoon having been pushing quite hard to get in to the shelter of the reef before a nasty looking weather front arrived.  Having covered the 425 miles in under two and a half days we managed to beat the weather here by about two hours which was cutting it a bit fine. It has been blowing 30 knots plus since last night (although the sun is still shining) and it is rather surreal sitting here in the middle of an ocean surrounded by a ring of coral less than three miles across. There is no land at all, just a reef that barely breaks the surface at low tide. What makes it even stranger is that not far to the east of here is one of the deepest bits of ocean on the planet. Horizon Deep in the Tonga Trench is 10.8km deep. That is deep enough to put Everest in the hole and still leave 2 km of water over the top of it, which gives you some kind of idea of the size of lump that we are sitting on top of.  Despite the wind, the waters inside the reef are quite calm and we are very comfortable.... although I don't think we will be going for an exploratory walk on the reef-top (looking for lobster!) until the surf dies down a bit.

 

We will now wait here for the weather to give us our best chance of a comfortable trip down to New Zealand. Looking south from here is a bit like looking across a busy three lane highway with a series of highs, lows, troughs and fronts thundering past at differing speeds from west to east.  It is quite hard to pick a good window in the weather to try to give us a smooth passage without getting run down by the nasty bits of one of these.  We have very good access to weather faxes, grib files and forecasts but for this trip we are also in touch by e-mail with a guy at the NZ met office who will try help give us the nod as to when to set off (and more importantly when not to set off!). 

 

Meanwhile we will sit here watching the waves thundering onto the reef and eating our way through all our supplies.  The NZ customs are very particular about letting  foodstuffs into the country (fruit, vegetables, plant products, eggs, meat and animal products may all be confiscated) so the plan is to have as little as possible on arrival without actually running out on the way there!  Seeing as we really have no idea whether we will be here for one day or a couple of weeks it is quite a tricky game to play. The biggest dilemma at the moment is that we have 30 fresh eggs on board and we can't decide whether we should have eggs every morning until they run out or have the biggest pile of scrambled eggs ever as we approach the coast of North Island!

 

 We will let you know when we set off.