Leaving Vavau soon

Salsa af Stavsnas
Ellinor Ristoff Staffan Ehde
Sat 26 Oct 2013 01:19
Yesterday we started with a morning swim in the christal clear water, had breakfast and sailed into town.
There we had some business to do and lunch at Tropicana was a success. Fish and chips!
After that Anders and I took off for checking out from Vavau. Even if you are sailing within Tonga the authoroties want you to check in and out of the different island groups.We started with Ministry of Infrastructure, then to customs and finally imigration. And as there where lines or they where closed for lunch it took all afternoon.
Ellinor took care of the fruit and vegetables supply at the market.
We decided to stay over night since we where so late and had pizza at Aquarium. A delightful place where we met Almacantar and Tuatara.
Tuatara is finishing their 22 years of sailing, and they have the same friend on board for the last leg that they had on their first leg leaving New Zealand!
This morning it took us a while to get ready and now we are anchored at Pt Laurelle waiting for dawn.
The length of the sail is not suitable to make during the day, since we have about 12 hours to go. Not smart to reach a very coral intensive island group with bad charting at night.
So if everything works out we will arrive tomorrow morning.
Right now the kids, Anders and Ellinor are in the small village to ask how they grow their things. In school they have something called the farmers year and Ellinor had an idea of making the same but from the tropics.
I'm on board with a flue and feel quite down. But as unbeliavable as it might sound I have a circus performance in front of me!
On our neighbour boat, that has a black striped flagg with small black stars (we have never seen them before), there is a woman practicing "rope balley" .
You have probably seen them in a circus, they have a thick rope hanging down from the ceiling, the artists can sort of roll themselves around the rope moving upwards, then they tangle themselves in different positions and you wonder when they will fall down or how they can keep track on the where the rope is around their legs etc....