First there was just a broad dark yellow ray in the eastern sky coming straight up from the low clouds. Soon the ray was join by another and another until it resembled the crayon lines children draw when asked to draw a sun or perhaps a saint's crown. As the sky shifted from dark blue to the daytime light blue, the rays faded to a pale yellow and then disappeared into the sky. Just a sunrise with crepuscular rays and no drama looming.

We as sailing along the very deep water of Tonga Kermadec Trench. The digital chart reports 19,542 feet of water under the hull and the paper chart indicates the trench can be as deep as 10587 meters. The ~100 million year old ocean floor here is the oldest we have seen since the Atlantic. The Pacific Ocean floor is made at the East pacific spreading ridge now more than 4000 miles ago close to the Galapagos . Here the old ocean floor is diving down at the to trench and under the Tonga islands where it will be melted and recycled. Recycling ocean floor means it is heated up and melted deep in the earth then erupted in volcanos like the Tonga islands. All the sediment n the ocean floor also gets recycles, traveling deep into the earth. That sediment mostly is plankton shells but in the future will include everyone that makes it to the bottom of the ocean: whalebone, sunken ship, out wahoo fish carcass . All these magic ingredient pushed down into hot mantle will melt. Some will come up to the surface as volcanos, like the island we are heading toward and the one erupting right now.

With all these wonderful ingredients make Tonga a high end bakery for volcanos. The hot spot volcanos are more like home baking done here and there. With all the ocean sediments and the ocean water, Tonga makes explosive volcanos like the one that recently caused a tsunami and cut off all communications to the islands when the fiber optic cable failed. Looking forward to seeing this earth bakery.

At afternoon tea I declared that we were not going to see Tonga today there it was. A odd colored persistent wave. By sundown the young lava cones and cylinder become clear. So different from he other islands we have visited. We are headed toward a harbor inside a caldera. As the stars slowly emerge a moss green smell, like your uncle who ate a lot of plankton, fills the air.whales breath. Young islands and whales ahead.