Another Attoll
Zepher
Chris & Lyn Darch
Tue 21 Oct 2008 16:14
|
19:47.92S
174:21.31W
Hi Folks,
We left the Vav'a group of Tongan Islands
yesterday, we have had a great time there , made lots of new friends and renewed
old aquantences again.
After spending a few hrs weaving our way
through the outer reef chain we were in clear deep water for our overnight
passage south to the Ha'api group of islands some 90 nm away , the wind died so
it was on with the iron head sail, we didn't need to go that fast as we needed
to reach the entrance to the reefs at 09:00 , as it turns out it was 10 o/c the
wind piped up still on the nose , and as we changed course so did the wind
.
We had looked very carefully at the pilots
before leaving as the Tongan bouyage system is not good , when they get washed
away they don't replace them , as we found out on our 6 nm entrance to Lifuka
Island , even the recent pilot books spare buoys had gone and it was up to the
crows nest to spot the reefs , a few fast turns on the paper chart with the hand
compass and the plotter confirmed that we were picking our way through , this
went on for a couple of hrs till we finally got into the anchorage , bite size
chunks out of my pants , such a hairy passage ..... once at anchor we could all
relax and the whole thing was a great team effort.
Very nice anchorage , relaxing afternoon and
catch up with the blog and em's ...
The last but one anchorage before the big one to NZ
..
The eye ball crew
|