Since our last report we have been busy in Nuku’alofa (aka Nuke). 

We have signed up to a Digicel SIM card so well sorted with both phone and data coverage, have arranged for our 4 months visa with immigration and have a good handle on provisioning.

All advice we have received suggests we buy any provisions here as it gets tougher as we move north through the island chain.  So far we have found Molisi which is definitely the best supermarket in town, the cheese shop which has a good supply of all things dairy and an excellent Italian shop owned by a genuine Italian that washed up here 30 years ago from his home town of Torino so all sorted for salami, parmesan and porcini mushrooms however, we are finding it pretty tough to source decent meat so chicken is definitely going to big on our list of protein sources during our stay although we have found that the Bilo Bilo BBQ stand does do lamb as well as roast chickens – yummy!!

 

We have moved anchorage 1.5 NM East from Faua harbour and are now parked in front of Big Mamma’s Yacht Club on Pangaimotu Island which is a very comfortable spot to anchor and has nice cold beers so Mark is very happy to hang here for a bit.  They also have a daily ferry service so easy to pop back into Nuke for the morning.

It looks like we might be spending another week around these parts as we have plenty of wind for a bit which seem to be a by-product of Cyclone Donna even though it is over 1000NM away over in Vanuatu.

 

 

Currently we are experiencing winds of 20-30kts at the anchorage as the island is very flat so does not provide much shelter from the wind but the seas are calm for the most part.  On a bright side the wind generator is vying for crew member of the month by contributing the vast majority of our electron requirements for the last couple of days.

 

Seems that we have a few electrical gremlins after our passage from Fiji.  The AIS unit has cooked itself and is no longer functioning which is no biggie and will look to replace once back in Vuda but is not good for those AIS stalkers.  The next issue was the AutoHelm which seemed to be a little flaky for the last part of the passage here and after some communications with Raymarine and some handy work with the multi-metre it would appear that the Rudder Position Sensor Unit has gone terminal so now looking to Amanda, who will be our first guest to arrive in Vava’u, to bring a new one with her.  As you may have gathered there is pretty much no sign of any marine industry in Tonga so you very much have to do it yourself.  As we still have some significant passages ahead of our us we will be very much relying on AutoHelm for the trip up to Samoa and back to Fiji and while it is still working we really want it to be in tip top shape for these trips.

 

As we have plenty of time on our hands we got Big Mamma to arrange for Leita to take us on an all day tour of Tongatapu.  

Tongatapu is quite different to the many islands of the SW Pacific that we have already visited as it is very small (~32kms x 16 kms) yet is home to around 70,000 people or 70% of the Tongan population which makes it more like a large suburb rather than many small villages.  There are plenty of houses, small gardens for agriculture along with many churches and cemetery's.

We saw many things including the landing sites for Able Tasman and Cook who both visited these Islands, the famous fishing pigs although the ones we saw looked more like they were rooting around in the mud in the mangroves not the ocean.  We also saw the Trilithon which is the South West Pacific version of Stonehenge i.e. a sun calendar which is considered to be very old, although there is no date specified these islands have been inhabited for over 3,000 years and the Royal family can date their lineage back over 1,000 years.

 

 

 

 

                                                             Blowholes

 

 

 

 

 

We are hoping that this weather may start to ease up later this week which will allow us to stop in at the fishing wharf to pick up some water, get our local movement report which is required when travelling between Island groups and then set off to the rarely visited Ha’apai group approximately 60NM’s North.