After hanging in an outside anchorage in Vava'u waiting for weather for three days, we had a nice day sail down to Ha'ano Island in the Ha'apai group in Tonga. We've spent most of the last week in various anchorages around the eastern Ha'api group of Tonga. This area is a lot more remote than the Vava'u islands. The reefs are really healthy with some great corals. The weather pretty much sux though. Mostly windy, blowing to 25kts, and we've only had a few breaks in the cloud cover to get some sun for a snorkel. Diving with overcast just turns the colorful reef into black and white.
Most of my time and effort has been consumed with growing my hair back. I'm feeling a little bit like Samson - the biblical character, not the rope manufacturer. Chris has been spending her time on the best shelling we've had this entire trip. There are some small, remote sand spit type islands, like here in Tofanga, that have been really good. Getting our hands on a couple of the large Tun shells has been cool (photo to follow).
It doesn't look like the weather is going to get any clearer or the winds any lighter for the next 5 days or so. We'll keep moving southward, on to the next set of anchorages. It is a little dicey trying to move between islands because there are a lot of reefs, many not marked or well located on the charts that are hard to see in the overcast. We try to sail slow enough to keep a good watch through these spots.
No pictures now as we just don't have enough Internet bandwidth to get even small ones out. The plan is to make it to the southern island group of Tonga, the Tongatapu group, and the town of Nuku'alofa by about the 25th. There we'll pick up friends Bill and Anne, flying in from San Francisco, and prepare to head off for our passage to New Zealand.
Paul
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You are getting quite a shell collection since we first met you for the morning body surfing and shell collecting adventures in El Salvador. We hope you will have a nice passage to NZ....no storms!
ReplyDeleteJust caugh up with your blog. Glad you loved Vava'u. We are loving your old neighborhood ...the Pacific Northwest. We pulled into Port Townsend yesterday and are thrilled to get the last berth at Point Hudson Marina. Hoping you have a great passage to NZ. BTW- nice haircut and I beat that faka lady in a dinghy race when we were there! Cheers! Ann and Bob on SV Charisma
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