Haapai group
Salamander
Tue 19 Oct 2010 07:47
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We spent three days anchored at Haana and having
arrived from the north, we we surprised to suddenly see a large volcano to the
north west. Looking at the chart there is a mention of a reported island height
1995m, position unknown! How we managed to sail past without seeing it is very
scary and shows how dangerous and difficult navigation is here. The coral heads
and rocks just appear in deep water. Our chart has an area of 398m depth
abutting one of 2m. One yacht unfortunately hit a reef and sank while we were
here.
Haapai is everything we thought Vavau would
be.
The locals live a gentle rural lifestyle. They tend the fields, the afternoons are spent weaving and the
people are quiet and friendly.
  The coral is stunning with plenty of reef life and
apart from the first at Haana we have had the anchorages to
ourselves.
  Overdosed on Alice in Wonderland coral -
fab. It was a bit of a shock after months of trade winds
to find that winds here come with something other than an easterly element. We
have had northerlies and westerlies as well, but have managed to use them for
enjoyable day sailing..
The locals took Murray spear fishing, which they do
at night with a hand spear. Murray realised that following a fisherman who is
trailing a string bearing several pierced fish, lobster and crab is not a good
thing when a shark turns up.
The feast Auka and Sasimimi provided for the
yachties was fabulous, but our anchorage filled up with 5 other boats, so
needless to say we left as soon as we could to go to another anchorage by
oursleves.
 At our next anchorage, all we could hear above
water was squealing sea birds and whale blowholes. Below water the whales
squeaked and grunted.
For 2 days we whale watched for 4-5 hours a day as
we anchored in the territory of a pod of humpback whales, with a baby that
looked to be new-born.
 They can be messy eaters.
  If you don't like spiders, look away now! These pop
up over several islands in Tonga
 An absolutely fabulous time - we wished we had
planned for longer in this archipelago, sadly, it was time to
leave.
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