|
| ...continued from the previous page |
10. day - 01/11/2007 - Rain, rain and rain... |
11. day - 02/11/2007 - Today the rain continued. We were cleaning the bottom of the boat (the antifouling is now one year old and it is not efficient any more). Then we motored back to the town Nieafu. Three days holiday will be with the Constitution Day. We still have things to do before leaving: shopping, water and diesel refill, sails change, masts check so it seems we still cannot clear out.. |
12. day - 03/11/2007 - We were having an early breakfast meanwhile a fast motorboat run into Yagoona SV next to us and hit their rail. The captain did not watch out. Unfortunately he had not got insurance either.
We did some shopping on the market and filled the tank with water.
We had written a letter to the NZ weather guru Bob McDavitt. This part of our journey could be the most difficult and we have to watch for the southern storms (we can face before NZ) and lows (which can evolve even a hurricane). Bob works from many sources before he predicts the weather. We thought he could have some good advice for us too. Based on the letter from Bob we still have time to wait for the next good weather window.
Yagoona is leaving tomorrow and they plan to marry in NZ. It is a nice news. So we said good bye them in the evening in the yacht club. |
13. day - 04/11/2007 - This is the first day we saw the sun in the last few days. Sunday is church and rest day in the town. The church service here is particularly interesting with the nice singings of the choir and the band and with the most elegant clothes of the people. After the service everybody goes home there are no people on the streets.
In the afternoon we checked everything on the mast and changed the sails to the storm sail. If the wind is weaker we can pull up a bigger sail on the second stay. We also filled up the batteries with liquid.
After the first shiny day we could stare an amazing sunset too.. |
14. day - 05/11/2007 - We could get a weather forecast from Bob McDavitt and from the predictions it seems that we still have time until the weather window. Our estimated leave to NZ is on the 20th November.
There is a reef between Tonga and New Zealand called the Minerva. It is 400 miles from Vavau group so we decided to sail down to south Tonga before the window will open and we may sail to Minerva first before the good weather.. |
15. day - 06/11/2007 - Our story for today started last Friday when we bought the gasoline for the journey. We recognised that the gasoline was a bit cloudy which was probably still good, but before the big journey to New Zealand we did not want to fill with this the tank. If it goes wrong could be a problem on the way. We figured out that we got the bottom of the fuel from the filling station. Geza got a taxi to the BP filling station and checked the fuel there and tried to get rid of the old one. But the taxi driver
asked for the old one so Geza gave it to him (150 liters gasoline). And the taxi driver was so happy that he offered a free island tour for it. He had 7 seets in his bus so we invited Hafskip and also Muline for the trip.
There were couple of things to see on the island a cave lake, a vanilla plantation and a house where the kava powder (natural sedative) was made from the kava roots. The owner of the vanilla plantation was from New Zealand and we were invited to listen to the whole story how the vanilla is made for sale.
In the evening we were having dinner with Jane and Jim on Lady Jane III SV (they arrived also at Tonga) and we had Irish Stew.
When we went back to Rotor Geza lost one of his filling from his tooth so we have to find a dentist tomorrow instead of clearing out. |
16. day - 07/11/2007 - In the town hospital we found a Japaneese dentist. She could make the appointment only at 4 pm. It costed only 20 pangas (USD 10). We also filled up our cooking gas bottles and they did not care that it was a bit rusty.. |
17. day - 08/11/2007 - After we cleared out from the Vavau to Nukualofa we did the shopping. This was the first time I could not by anything to the fridge so I switched the fridge off. At least we will have more energy. The fresh goods are overdued in the shops, and the cheese were freezed. The meat was not very nice either. But we found nice fruits and vegetables on the market so the next journey will be a vegetarian trip or we start again fishing.
We sailed to anchorage 8 and caught a parrottfish for dinner with the speargun and stayed for the night to relax. The weather was suprisingly nice and we could get some nice pictures on the beach. We also met here with a Polish sailor with his catamaran having a strange and unspeakable Polish name.. |
18. day - 09/11/2007 - Today we went to anchorage 15 which was our last stop out from the Vavau group. We planned to sail overnight towards south of Tonga. We were doing a good sail in the 10-12 knots of wind. At dawn the wind was a bit weaker.. |
Continues on the next page... |
|
|
|
