Wednesday, October 26, 2005

Journal Entry October 26, 2005 – Departing Tonga for Whangarei New Zeland

Author: Scott

We have decided to send current journal entries throughout our passage to New Zealand, since we have had trouble with our website and journal prior to leaving Tonga. Upon reaching New Zealand we will continue posting our past journals along with reposting journals from the beginning of the voyage. With good Internet access in New Zealand we should have the entire journal completely sorted out. When our Internet provider moved us onto a new server it caused all sorts of problems, we apologize for the confusion.

So here we go with October 26! We woke up early this morning with a long list of things to accomplish prior to leaving for New Zealand. We have decided to leave now so we could take advantage of a weather window that is providing fabulous sailing conditions down to New Zealand, but should also dissipate by November 5, so in order to make good use of the window we have had to really get organized quickly. We were both up by 0630. We spent the early morning getting the boat ship shape for the passage. At 0800 we checked in with Gavia Arctica (Gavia) on frequency 8122. Gavia is about two days ahead of us on their way to New Zealand and they were doing well, but had light winds. After listening to the local net we were off to unload our last batch of trash with “Pete the Meat” the local guy who collects trash and sells meat from New Zealand, a combination I find a little disturbing. Next we were off to face all of the officials for our checkout. First, we visited Immigration and the very friendly agent efficiently stamped our passports and wished us well. He was personally interested in our trip and had a number of questions for us. He told us that when we are done with the voyage, San Francisco will seem like heaven. Next we visited the Port Captain, a friendly man that took our $13.09 pa’anga ($6.50 USD) as a fee for leaving the country, the least expensive departure fees we have had to pay. Our final stop in the checkout process was Customs. The Customs agent took our form from the Port Captain, stamped our departure form and we were all finished. We were not required to bring our boat along the wharf for clearance which was a big relief for us since the town wharf is quite ominous with tall cement piers.

Our next challenge was how to manage getting our bakery order including frozen pizzas and enchiladas from Ifo Bakery and to get ice from across town all without letting any of it melt. The plan was to divide and conquer, I ran off to the store for ice and Pam ran off to Ifo. The plan worked pretty well, but I did get back to the dinghy with my ice before Pam arrived with the food. I sat on the dock talking to Luke and MJ from La Boem while I waited for Pam and shielded the ice from the blazing sun. When Pam arrived we were off like a flash to the boat to get everything into the cooler.

No sooner were the enchiladas and pizza on ice then we were off again. Our next stop brought us to Tropical Tease, a local store selling very groovy custom made T-shirts. When Pam was in shopping the other day, Cindy the owner ( from the US) mentioned that she was trying to get her website up and Pam mentioned that I sometimes take on website projects. I had a look at Cindy’s art and believed that she is most of the way there towards posting a website. We stopped by and Cindy and I agreed I would assist her with her site over the next few months. Our plan works out well for voyage and everyone, Cindy will have a completed website, I will feed the ever hungry cruising kitty a little, and all the work can be done over the web after I leave Tonga.

The next stop was a quick chicken enchilada lunch at the Mermaid and then we paid our moorings fees, faxed our Advanced Arrival Form to New Zealand, took a shower, checked email and I had a final cappuccino at The Aquarium. I am getting tired just writing it all down.

With all of our land chores done we dinghied back to the boat, pulled the outboard onboard and stowed the dinghy. Today is an important day for the outboard, if all goes well it will have mostly worked through the South Pacific and now it can rest until it gets a thorough checkup in New Zealand. Though it has been the bane of our existence, with a little love the bratty motor did serve us well in the end. Ann and James from Novia dropped by and said goodbye, they are also headed to Whangarei and we will see them there.

Finally everything was ready! We hoisted the sail while still on the mooring, and as Pam fell off the wind I pulled the line from the mooring and we slowly eased into the wind. At first our progress was slow and we did not have a lot of steerage, so we decided to run the engine for a few minutes so we wouldn’t drift into anyone, but we were able to return to sailing five minutes later. Terry from No Komis yelled over and said we looked in fine form sailing off the ball, and we sailed off through the pass with Pam at the helm and me on the bow with a monocular. Of course we passed the biggest commercial ship we have seen since arriving in Tonga just as we were exiting the skinny pass. The winds were light but solid and we slowly made our way out of the Vava’u group. Pam had a big rock to her port that she artfully just managed to squeak by without having to jibe the boat and then it was smooth sailing off into the sunset.

We turned on the stereo, and relaxed at a three knot pace with twilight descending on us. Dinner was the pizzas from Ifo Bakery and they were just as good as all the delicious pastries and breads they bake, we only wish we had gotten a few more for dinner. As darkness hit, we settled into our first night at sea with a gentle 10 knot breeze blowing and sailing on a perfect beam reach.

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