Beautiful Sailing
04 October 2011
Beautiful, beautiful sailing. Winds are between 5 and 12 knots and the sea swell is between 1-2 metres. We left Pago Pago, American Samoa late Saturday afternoon and the winds were so light that our speed during the first night was only around 1.5 to 3 knots, with dips to .9 of a knot. Our first 24 hours got us only about 100 miles along. After our last two blasting, boisterous passages, this one seems like a dream. Later in the day on Monday, the wind began increasing. Our boat speed increased to between 3-5.5 knots. Michael downloaded a weather file which is showing that the winds are going to drop off substantially tomorrow, to the point where we would need to motor for a couple of days. So, as a result of all this, the timing for arriving in Fiji is off. We had planned to arrive on Thursday, having Friday as a buffer, but the winds have been so light that we won't arrive until the weekend. Therein lies the problem. If we arrive on a weekend, we will have to pay overtime charges. To avoid these charges, we have decided to make a 2-3 day stop at one Tonga's most northerly island called Niuafo'ou. We hadn't planned on stopping anywhere in Tonga, even though it is en route to Fiji, because we are running late in the season. We need to be in the Solomon Islands at the beginning of December and they are still quite a distance away. I'm happy though to be stopping at Niuafo'ou, so that we will be able to see a tiny bit of Tonga.
The following is copied from our MOON HANDBOOKS: South Pacific, travel guide:
Niuafo'ou, 50 sq km, is a collapsed volcanic cone once 1,300 metres high. The centre of the island is occupied by a crater lake, Via Lahi, nearly five km wide and 84 metres deep. Within this lake are small islands which have crater lakes of their own -- lakes within islands with in a lake within an island. Presently, Miuafo'ou is dormant, but the southern and western sides of the island are covered by bare black lava fields from the many eruptions earlier this century.
Apart from the lave fields, the island is well forested. Incubator or megapode birds (malau in Tongan) lay eggs one-fifth the size of a grown bird, in burrows two meters deep in the warm sands of the hot springs by the lake. Natural heating from magma close to the surface incubates the eggs, and after 50 days, the megapode chicks emerge fully feathered and ready to fend for themselves. Unfortunately, the malau eggs that aren't collected by the islanders for food, are dug up buy free-ranging pigs and the birds are facing extinction.
So in about 28 hours, we should be arriving at Niuafo'ou Island in Tonga and doing some exploring while waiting for wind, weather and perfect timing to arrive in Savu Savu, Fiji.