Arrived in Tonga
12 September 2008 | Marla Island, Vava'u Group, Tonga
David
We left Niue at 6am on Thursday the 11th for the 245 mile run to Tonga. We arrived the next day at 2pm for a passage time of 32 hours but lost Friday the 12th completely as it is Saturday the 13th here in Tonga on the other side of the international date line. Very hard to wrap my mind around the concept. A nice passage with lots of wind at first and down to 10 knots at the end. Had too much excitement at first though, two hours out of Niue we wrapped the spinnaker around the head stay so bad I had to go up the mast in the boson's chair to unwrap it. While up the mast getting bruised all over we caught a 16 pound Mahi-mahi just to add more stress to the morning. Anyway after two hours we had the sail back down on deck in one piece and shortly there after had the whisker pole track fixed and we were wing and wing again. Another catamaran that left Niue at the same time as us blew their spinnaker out and then ran over it, so our outcome was better with fish to boot! Its nice to be fast, they and all the other boats that left Niue Thursday (six boats besides ourselves) will not arrive here until tomorrow. so will be at sea for two nights instead of one. Not that we can do much until Monday when we check in to the country. We have been spoiled in places like the Cook islands and Niue for instance where the Customs guy told us to come to the dock at 2pm but he was early and caught us coming back to the dock from the land where we had already been touring the island with friends. It was no problem at all. This is the same Island where one of the other boats had asked the policeman (out of uniform) where he could buy some pot which the whole island knew about within hours and was an ongoing joke with the locals during our stay there. Not in Tonga, here we will stay on our boat until Monday and play by the rules. We would have loved to stay in Niue for another week but the anchorage there is exposed to the open ocean and a low pressure system will move though next week making it impossible to stay there.