Confessions of a Calendar Girl: Tonga to NZ!

Sept 23 – TONGA!
We’re here! In Niafu that is, party central of the Kingdom of Tonga.

Sept 24 – Rugby France vs. NZ
The first of many nights watching the Rugby World Cup in Niafu, at Mango Bar, I think. The All Blacks smooshed France! And I mean that NOT in a Snookie smoosh way. Gross.

Sept 25 – Hangover Day…Church Singin!
Lisa and Andy were the only heathens sleeping off a bender. Don, Carl and I went to the Catholic church to experience the famed Tongan singing! Hassle Don for the recording…he made one!

Sept 26 – Pre-B-day Beer Bingo
That’s my (Leslie's) birthday we’re talking about, and it was pretty amazing! Beer Bingo is like normal bingo, only you win beer and food, and the crazy fun people at Sunset Grill throw in other games like music trivia, darts, bottlecap toss and beer pong. We were glad to share the fun with boat peeps Tuatara, CD, Sharkita and Dolphine. High fives to 32!

Sept 27 – Leslie’s B-day, recovery!
What birthday? Can I go back to watching movies now?

Sept 28 – Anchorage 8, L&L shelling w/ Rals
We broke away from the sucking black hole of partytime in Niafu, to visit Anchorage 8, a quiet spot where we were the only boat! Lisa, Raleigh and I went for a walk along the beach, and found some lovely shells.

October 1 – Mariner’s Cave land adventure! Anchorage #15
Most people have a dinghy with a working engine, and can go anchor nearby and dinghy up next to this cave. Not us though. Along with Kevin and Evelyn of Tuatara, we tramped into a village and then followed a kid into the bush. I don’t think he knew exactly where he was going, but we finally bashed our way to the edge of the cliffs over the cave. “Ok. It’s down there” “Down there? You mean, we jump?” “Yep!” “How do we get back up?” “Um…climb up?” These are scrape-your-feet-up coral rocks we’re talking about. Andy doesn’t worry though, he just strips down and does a front flip into the water. Don and Carl join him soon after, but Lisa and I are still stuck on the, “How are we getting back up here to get our stuff?!” question. Eventually we followed Kevin and Evelyn further along the cliffs to a better launching point, where we could actually stand a chance of climbing up. Then we jumped, and took the slightly scary plunge down under and up into the amazingly beautiful sea cave, which would fill up with steamy fog as the surf rushed in and out. The kid who led us eventually asked for some obscene amount of money, but we gave him one of our extra snorkel masks, which was more than a fair trade.

Oct. 2 – Church, Anchorage 15
Ah yes. So that previous evening, we’d intended on cooking dinner for Kevin and Evelyn. But a local woman who’d met the young couple previously, rowed over and gave us heaps and heaps of leftover Tongan feast. Sweet and sour fish, breaded fish, fried kumara (like sweet potato), grilled breadfruit, watermelon, coconuts, and other unearned delicacies. Kevin arranged to return the woman’s dishes the next morning at church, and I agreed to go with him and experience yet another pious, melodious celebration. This mass was a “Free Church” gathering, which included some hellfire and brimstone sermon I couldn’t understand, but did have lovely singing. Afterwards the woman, Dominique, fed Kevin and I with more of the same food we’d gorged on the night before. She and her girls stood around the table, fanning away insects, which was kind of weird for us, then we brought back even MORE leftovers for our crews! Fat times! It was hard for me to accept that someone would want to make a meal for perfect strangers and get nothing but conversation in return, so I gave Dominique some music discs, which I hope she likes and is currently grooving to at her lovely little seaside home.

Oct 3 - #16
Anchorage 16, we moved.

Oct 4 - # 16, Bonfire and Reef Snorkels
Kevin and Evelyn (now known as Kevelyn for ease and funniness) joined us in a day of beautiful reef snorkeling (like an underwater garden), and a night of chatting around a smoky bonfire. Good fun!

Oct 5 – Tranies @ Tonga Bob’s
Tonga Bob’s  hosts a phenomenally entertaining transvestite show. Our vote goes to the bespectactled chubby guy who works at the supermarket. He didn’t even bother to shave his pits! He was hilarious, and a far more confident dancer than the “girls” who tried very hard to look like female strippers.

Oct 6 – Trivia @ Tonga Bob’s
We showed up late, midway through the quiz, but they let us play anyhow, and the old folks won and shared their prize of a flat of beer with the bar (even the table of 13 year olds got one beer to share, they went wild!), and our new friend Damo came, and we all danced , and Lisa and I won the dance competition against one other couple with our signature kid ‘n’ play and in-synch electric slide. These are the pictures from this night!

Oct 7 - #7 Pig Roast
Pics and one-liners here!

Oct 9 – Niafu Rugby
More Rugby watching, at Mango I think.

Oct 10 – Movie Night with Mel
We watched a movie with Mel, our new kiwi friend.

Oct 11-13 – Sailed to #11 – Mel left, met Britania and Pico
Britania and Pico came aboard for sundowners. Lisa whipped up mini quiches like a crazy person. Don hid down below like a criminal. We stayed here awhile because of some bad weather I think. There’s a floating art gallery here owned by a nice older couple with a mean cat who scratched Raleigh.

Oct 14 – Left 11, Swallows Cave
Cool cave with bats, not swallows. We hovered outside the cave and took turns snorkeling in. The water was kinda gross though, and I’m surprised none of us got a guano disease.

Oct 15 – Neiafu, France beat Wales @ Tonga Bobs
This was a close, good game, in a fun atmosphere packed with a good mix of Tongans and expats. Boo France!

Oct 16 – Neiafu, AB beat Oz, Marina Bar
Rugby is a crazy sport! Another fun game. Marina Bar was also packed! Yay All Blacks!

Oct 17 – Mexican night on Hokule’a
We’d met Jake and Jackie on Hokule’a, along with their cruising buddy Bill on Solstice, in Bora Bora, and mused then about Mexican food and how much we missed it. So when we met up again in Tonga, we planned a Mexican night. Aldebbie made veggie tacos and we had a feast of tacos, spicy shrimp, Spanish rice and margaritas. Things went downhill when Jake ran out of limes and tried to sub in Crystal Light lemonade. Then I severely heckled Bill’s movie about a haunted boat until I fell asleep. But we’re all still friends, thank goodness!

Oct 18 – Taco tuesday at Aquarium, cleaned Sharkita’s Hull
Sharkita hired us to scrub their boat’s bottom in exchange for lunch. It was a fair trade. Chrissy is a great cook. Don, Lisa and I weren’t through with tacos yet, and splurged on a $5 burrito-sized fish taco at Aquarium. Yum.

Oct 19 – Andy’s package arrives…grrr
Andy’s parents had sent us a care package a month before. After much checking up, calling, and $70 in mysterious taxes and fees, we got our coffee, whole leaf tea, and dark chocolate peanut slab! It seemed worth the wait to me, but then, it was Andy and Graham doing all the follow-up work. Thanks guys!

Oct 20 – Movie night at Balcony
We watched a cool documentary about a cultish/church type group that worships this mythical American guy named Joe (something) who supposedly came to Vanuatu in the 60s and told them the American army would come back again and give them more nice stuff.

Oct 21 – Provisioning begins! Oz beats Wales 2/1, Poolside
Poolside has an amazing 2 for 1 pizza deal on Friday nights. The pizza isn’t the greatest, but then, we have high standards. It was good and cheap and filling, and we could watch Rugby outdoors, so, who’s complaining? Oh and we’ve started provisioning. Noooo! I don’t want to leave!

Oct 22 – Dinner at Ovava, movie night at Aquarium (The Last Waltz)
We’d been told to go to Ovava by one of the Whale people in Nuie. She said Lawrence, the owner, was the best chef in Niafu. Lisa and Andy had already gone on a date here, and had been promised free pizzas if they came back. So we came, and it was the best pizza in the South Pacific! And, even though the waitress spilled my Sav Blanc all over our hummus and flatbread and replaced nothing, I couldn’t stay angry, because Lawrence also comped us each a “painkiller” cocktail, which is a strong tasty rum punch. So after a fine meal, we merrily we went to Aquarium for a screening of a young Scorcesse’s music doc on The Band, The Last Waltz. This is a must-see film if you like 70’s era rock music and want to see a rather square-looking Van Morrison continuously wiping cocaine off his nose.

Oct 23 – Cleaning, NZ vs. France rugby final, woohoo!
Most of us spent all day cleaning the boat for pictures for our new broker, and then had many well-deserved beers at Marina Bar, watching a very tense and close game between France and NZ. The All Blacks won by the skin of their teeth!

Oct 24 – Still in Neaifu
More provisioning! Noooo!

Oct 25 – Left Neiafu to #7

Oct 26 – Ha’apai, Ha’ano Island
Carl and I took a walk down a long, tree-lined dirt road into a pretty little gated village. Pigs and dogs and chickens and goats waddle around happily, and the spiders in the trees are huge and scary.

Oct 27 – Potluck on Far Fetched, Snorks in Crevices
The snorkling here was alright, a pretty live reef and some underwater tunnel/crevices that the daredevil twins Don and Andy swam down into and through. Scary! Then we went over to newly-met friends Far Fetched for a dinner of fish and fried rice. Good times.

Oct 28 – Sailed to Ha’afeva

Oct 29 – Beach Walks and Lobster Attempts
Carl met some guy on land who said he’d take Carl and Andy lobstering one night, but he didn’t seem to actually know anything about lobstering, and the weather was dark and windy and awful, so they came back to the boat and we all ate dinner. Good story. Oh, and that day we walked on the beach with Raleigh. This was his first daylight walk in like, a month, soon to be his last for a month!

Oct 30 – Hull Cleaning and Cook-off
Carl would have better headings and stories for these days in Ha’afeva, as he spent all day and night hanging out with locals in a hospital, and eating food at their houses. But the rest of us chilled out, and apparently we also cleaned the hull and Lisa did her usual thing of cooking 2-3 nights worth of dinner before we headed out to sea.

Nov 1 – Left Ha’afeva and Tonga

Nov 2 – Lavac Explosion
The potty wouldn’t flush and did a weird gross thing that Andy and Don, bless them, cleaned up.

Nov 3 – Motoring, no wind
Terrible

Nov 4 – Minerva
What a crazy place! It’s this big still spot in the middle of the ocean (actually it’s an underwater, circular reef), where boats come and rest. Andy and Carl go out for a snorkel, and Andy warns Carl of an “Aggressive gray”, meaning gray shark, but Carl hears “aggressive ray”, which sounds interesting to him, so he goes looking for it and get charged by a little reef shark, which makes him scream and flap around like a bloody wounded screaming fish. Don’t try this at home!!! P.S., he makes it back to the boat unharmed.

Nov 5 – STORM
There’s a storm, but we’re too busy watching movies to notice.

Nov 6 – Getting ready to go, reef walk.
I don’t know what “getting ready to go” means at this point, since we’re already “gone” from land, but Don, Carl and I dinghy over to the edge of the reef and go for a walk. It’s kind of surreal, watching waves crash on a flooded shore, with nothing but water for 360 degrees all around.

Nov 7 – Leave Minerva, big porpoise.
Is it a small whale or a big dolphin? What is that? Sea monster, probably.

Nov 8 – Ripped main sail (at first reef point)
Don feels bad about this. Now we go slower than slow.

Nov 9 – Motoring, no wind.
Slower than slower than slow.

Nov 10 – Slow going.

Nov 11 – Jack Honey (? Can’t read Andy’s writing) B-day. Wrong Way! Caught another tuna.
Jack is one of Andy’s old family friends, and Andy talks to him on the ham sometimes. Happy birthday! Wrong way means that we had to head off the rum line because of some navigational/weather reason.
Don and I wondered what that tin can was doing caught on our line, but then it turned out to be a tuna. A delicious tuna!

Nov 12 – Oatmeal, masala eggs, fried rice and tuna.
Our meals for the day. Not bad for sea-going food, eh?

Nov 13 – Lavac mutiny again.
More pooeyness for Don to clean up. You’re the best, Don!

Nov 14 – Underwater fishing lure treasure hunt.
Another terrible screw-up that leads to the boys going into the water to unwrap something from important parts of our boat! This time our trolling line wrapped around our prop. Another 2-3 hours of water drama, and we were going again. At least this happened during the day this time!

Nov 15 – Wind! Maybe we’ll be there by morning! Oh yeah and there’s a gale warning!
We were there by morning! But there was not a gale, phew!

Nov 16 – NEW ZEALAND!
Andy’s parents flash their van’s lights at us as we cruise toward Opua, all of all bundled up in our foul weather gear. Goodbye tropical weather! Once at the quarantine dock, we cook up a huge pancake breakfast and invite Hokele’a and CD. Oh, then the customs lady shows up, just as all our guests come pouring out of our boat. “Have you finished your paperwork?” “Um…paperwork? No, but we have pancakes!” Thank goodness kiwi officials have a sense of humor!


From this point Raliegh goes to jail for about 2 weeks, we hang out with friends at the All Points Rally events, we drive up north with Andy’s parents, have amazing seafood on Solstice, have an amazing Thanksgiving potluck on Hokelea, Carl falls in lurve with a Swede, Andy and Don bring the boat to Auckland, Lisa and I couch surf on boats then drive to Auckland, with a stop at Sheep World, we all get the boat clean and unpacked in Auckland, and everyone takes off for awhile in different directions to enjoy New Zealand. It’s not really “the end” yet, but it’s close.

Confessions of a Calendar Girl: Niue

Leslie:
I feel bad that Niue (and the 5-day passage there) got left out in the jump from Suwarrow and past photos, to up-to-the-minute reports of debauchery from Tonga. So, here you go: a daily report of a very special place—yet another which was never on our itinerary until we made the decision in Bora Bora to go to Tonga via Suwarrow and Niue.  As always, pics will be up later when Don feels like it.

September 10 – Left Suwarrow
As mentioned in an earlier post, an emotional departure.

Sept 11, 12
Both days on the calendar feature quick, messy drawings of a sailboat charging up waves. It might have been like that.

Sept 13 – Scary Squid Night
Awful, awful night.  I awaken to hear shriek-like laughter, the loudest belonging to Carl, which normally means something funny or ridiculous has happened. It meant that in this case too—Andy’s auto-inflatable personal floatation device (pfd) spontaneously combusted while he was leaning over the side of the boat. But why was he leaning over the side? The answer to that culminates in a serious of not very fun or funny circumstances leading to the heading, “Scary Squid Night” (although I meant to write “jellyfish”, not squid!).
At the time of the laughter, our gennaker sock (that pretty, blue and white, balloony-like sail you’ve seen in previous photos) had fallen overboard from not being tied to the deck. Immediately following the laughter, the boys discover that the sail has wrapped around the rudder, Don jumps into the water (with the engine still running) in an attempt to free it (in the middle of the dark, dark night), gets stung by a jellyfish, and reacts to that by peeing on his leg and applying ice—neither of which you are supposed to do to a jellyfish sting, btw. By this point Lisa and I are up, looking at our medical book (use white vinegar on stings, and an antihistamine can also be helpful), and helping to hold and yank the gennaker sock up. Andy is the next to go into the drink, this time with a knife to cut away the still-wrapped length of sail. Suddenly he screams, “Get me up! Get me up!” We are sure that a shark is snacking upon him. Lisa tries to hoist him up with all her might, but Andy quickly calms down and tells her not to hurt herself. Don finishes the job and gets him safely on deck. Andy’s been stung too! Carl then jumps in to get the last of the sail free, but it has worked itself out and floated away, which is sad, since we were hoping to Frankenstein it together at some future date. We then find that there are glowing jellyfish parts in the retrieved piece of sail, so then we have to shake them overboard since allegedly they’ll sting long after they’re dead. Like zombies!  In the wee hours of the morning, Don gets paranoid that his throat is going to close up, so Lisa and I monitor him with an Epipen at the ready, while I take his blood pressure. Fortunately, it turns out that all Don needs is a cookie and a nap.

Sept 14 – Arrive in Nuie
That night Carl, Don and I are meant to meet Andy and Lisa in town to walk to the “golf club” which is showing the All Blacks vs. Japan game, but we are late (big surprise there). So they walk on without us. Meanwhile, we stop at a restaurant to ask directions, and find out that the owners of the golf club are still eating dinner there, and can give us a ride when they’re finished. It was very amusing to wave at the Craigs as we cruised by them.  The golf club was like a Lions Club or a grange hall or something, with mismatched couches and chairs and a big screen TV, as well as a makeshift bar area. The Craigs caught up just in time to get a good seat, and settled in to watch their first Haka of the season. Or not. The Haka was plastered over with badly produced commercials for Fijian businesses. Anyhow, the game was a lot of fun for us, but not for Japan, who got smashed, a million-something to zero.

Sept 15 – Indian Food, Yum!
The Indian Food place in Niue is the only deal in town. You can share an entrée, or get your own something-curry-wrapped-burrito-naan thing for about $5. The guy who runs the place is very nice. If you go there, ask him immediately about things to do at night, and he might go “clubbing” with you. We missed out on this experience, sadly.
 
Sept 16 – Andy’s B-day
Andy turns 33 years young! Chrissy and Simon on Sharkita, and Chris and Dave on ChrisandDaver’s Dream (otherwise known as CD) come over with balloons, snacks and drinks, and share some of the lovely slanted chocolate cake Lisa made. It was a rolly anchorage, hence the slant while baking.

Sept 17 – Car Rental
The car had no radio and smelled like kitty litter, but it got us around to lots of sea tracks, which are paths to immensely diverse, scenic oceanview experiences. There were fairytale-maze-like chasms, limestone caves, arches, and still pools where you could swim and snorkel, and even jump from the rock walls into the deep pools. The boys did this last bit, of course.

Sept 18 – Washaway Café.
Carl, Don and I hitched a ride with some Mormons to get to this place, which was meant to be an unmanned “honesty bar.” This was not true, and we didn’t have enough money to spend it “honestly”. So we sat by the beach under a tree while lots of rain fell, drinking the beer and punch we’d brought along with us.  The hitch back made up for everything, as we met an interesting guy from India who stopped for ice cream. I got rum raison, and it was delicious.

Sept 19 – Whales Alive
We took out some young whale researchers who paid us in gas money and an awesome lunch of veggie sausage sandwiches and asian rice cracker snacks and oranges. We learned that whales like Barry White, and though we didn’t have any on our ipod stereo, we saw a fluke-flapping whale anyway. Unfortunately, we didn’t get to hear the whale singing its own rendition of  “Can’t Get Enough Of Your Love Babe,” as the whale people suspected it was a female, and only the dudes do the singing at the whales’ undersea singles’ bar.

Sept 20 – Leaving Nuie, market
Lisa and Andy went to the market in the morning. They did not buy anything. We left.

Sept 21 – Lost Day
Time zone thing. Today is tomorrow is yesterday. Where am I?

Sept 22 – Squalls!
Rainy poopy blowy.

Field Report #18

Ok, let's get this done already.

The last flight of the Gennaker 

I was beginning to forget about the whole "sunset photo" thing

yup

Dog diaries

This is all a bit out of order, but it's close enough.
Things calming down in the morning 

The beginning of a long night of squalls. 

Raleigh is a bit nervous

Andy feeling a bit sensitive

I was cheering him on

Strutting our stuff as we baffled the anchorage by taking the long way round the island

Here we are finally in the place we had never planned on going

Don on a hot tin roof

"First things first, this boat of under 40 year olds  just pulled in and we need
someone to go on the roof and install the VHF antenna. Give them a call." said Soggy Paws

The yacht club and ranger accommodation

The anchorage. This place is "bring your own boat". Nothing comes
here except cruisers, and the 2 park rangers who are on a six month stay

Uh, some trees

The anchorage with an emo haircut

John skinning a coconut

James beginning the Coconut fritter lesson

A nut

The uto of a coconut

Just give it a whack with the back of a machete

Like this!

You have to have a beard though

something wrapped in a leaf

Fishing buoy swings, along with all the "spare swings" that wash up on the beach

James

OK Let's fry some uto!

P.S., Leslie wrote about Suwarrow here.

Sellouts

Yeah yeah...I know we haven't caught up on our pictures and stories since Bora Bora, but nowadays it's all about the Benjamins...or whoever it is on the New Zealand $100 currency. You need foul weather gear? Hydrostatic auto-inflatable life vests with safety harnesses and tethers? A CPT autopilot? Are you in New Zealand, or willing to negotiated a fee for shipping all the way to wherever you are? We are selling stuff! 
Tell you friends and enemies, and have them contact us.

Lisa, looking sharp in a Men's Medium!

Don is so excited, and he just can't hide it.

Isn't this sooo feminine? The product info would like you to believe this.

OMG, it's so yellow!

Hydrostatic auto-inflatable vest with harness and double tether! Hook it here, and here!

Sexy sailing bib looks even better when they let me stick this stapler in the utility loop!

Butt view.

Steer your ship of fools/dreamboat with no hands! Just make sure your wheel will come off first.

At the speed of light or day

So here we are, New Zealand. The End. Well we will be heading to Auckland this weekend with a stop near Whangarei. We are in Opua and have been here for about a week at this point. The last passage was cold and very slow. It gave us some of our slowest days, about 38 nautical miles I think. Lisa and Leslie will drive down to Auckland while Andy and I take Aldebaran down the coast to her new slip in Auckland. Carl will be hitching a ride down with a friend on Monday. Between now and Christmas we will be posting everything that has been left out, including a couple hundred photos from Suwarrow, Niue, Tonga, and New Zealand. As well as some posts that were written along the way that never quite made it online and some photos from the early days of working on the boat.

So there you have it. We sailed to New Zealand.

Thanks to Graham and Annette for providing us with
the means to gorge ourselves on hot water  and snacks.
And for snapping this pick on our arrival

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This Is It and I Am It and You Are It and So Is That and He Is It and She Is It and It Is It and That Is That

So it looks like this will be our last post before New Zealand. It's been a pretty incredible experience. When we first set out from Ventura our imaginations were the source of all of our fear and excitement. Now, as we prepare for this last leg, it's our experiences that fuel our mixed emotions. On this passage we still have one or two remote places to stop and the trip's potentially roughest leg makes up the final few days of sailing into Opua.  

I'm writing this from the dock as we fill our water tanks for the last time. We're all provisioned up, tanks almost full, and anxious to to reach our destination. Hopefully you have enjoyed our photos and ramblings. We've enjoyed creating them. 

If at any point over the next two to three weeks you are wondering what we are feeling just hold your breath and stare into the sun. 

Thanks for following along.