Gday to one and all from the Kingdom of Tonga.  What a place!!!!  We have been here a few days since arriving from Niue after one of the best and fastest 3 days sail for a while with strong southerly winds all the way.  We arrived in the island group of Vavau on the 17th (we crossed the international date line so the 15th became the 17th……. we we ever get that day back? ;) ) and met up with some old friends who dragged us to a local feast and a few days kitesurfing and evenings of 'rum stock management' before the winds we had from the crossing died down.  Now we are moored off the village of Neiafu doing some TLC on the yacht and our bodies (…. which is proving difficult as there are many boats here we know who do not wish us to rest our livers….. ) and sorting out the next month… as there have been some changed to our grand plan.

Our original plan was to sail to Fiji and put the yacht in a marina for the cyclone season there.  Unfortunately we are not the only yacht wanting to do this so all the cyclone friendly marinas and mooring are full so we had to look elsware.  Hello Tonga!!  The village here has recently (the last few years) installed several cyclone strength moorings and are now available at a very good price…. so we have decided to leave the yacht here.  For the immediate future we plan to cruise around the Tongas Islands until early December when we will put old lass to bed and fly home to Australia for christmas. 

So….. now we have no more big passages we have some more time in hand to do some lazy sailing and beach investigation of the area…. can't wait.  Lets see how that goes shall we… ;)

Until then…….. Matt, Didi and Aldo…….