Having slept on it, we rose on Tuesday determined to rush preparations for sea and leave by afternoon. Or, rather, having unslept on it, since I woke up at two and could not get back to sleep, running over pre-departure tasks and routing possibilities in my mind. So finally, I got up, made a checklist, and plotted out fuel saving passages on a chart.

The list was
�"clean and photo bottom
�" start checkout process
�" retrieve bikes, buy boat parts
�" fuel and water run
�"vegetables
�"groceries
�"complete checkout
�" send advance notice of arrival to NZ customs
�" garbage
�" set sail.

Looking at the 12z GFS run, it seemed that if we left Tuesday afternoon and ran directly south from Neiafu (dodging the reefs, of course), we would have a nice gentle reaching breeze for the first 12-20 hours - allowing us to make some important latitude gains without burning precious (and harmful) fuel. One big concern of mine about rushing to 25 south is that if we had to motor into the wind most of the way, we would use all our fuel and have nothing left to get into Whangerei harbor or dodge the next, unpredicted storm.

Sailing south twenty hours would relieve that concern - and would also get us into the deep and relatively hazard free water east of the Ha'apai and Tongatapu island groups. Keeping east also would make an easier reach to Whangerei once the wind turned SE and strengthened, Also, at least the GFS model showed the strongest winds west of the rhumb line, so staying east might reduce our exposure.

But it is not the traditional route - everyone seems to go west, picking their way through islands, reefs, and active volcanic eruptions. It didn't make sense to me, burning fuel to go southwest when you really wanted to get south as fast as possible.

When we rose, we were both pretty determined to set sail. We emailed Met Bob with our departure plan and proposed route. Robin dove on the bottom after breakfast, first with the snorkel then with the compressor tubes when the sun hit the solar panels. I worked on some boat repair projects on the checklist, and emptied one Jerry can of diesel into the boat tank. I was amazed how long Robin was comfortable staying under water. My shipmate truly is a mermaid! At around 0930, I went in and scraped the inside of the centerboard case, and took pictures. I noticed that the clevis pin for the centerboard cable toggle was about to fall out, so I fixed that, too. Nice clear water for bottom work!

We sailed back to town and tied up at the wharf, next to Horizon, an America. boat just arrived from Samoa. Robin got her NZ visa confirmation email on the way (I had mine already). We set to work on the checklist, though customs told us to come back after lunch, and I got stalled trying to email all the attachments required by NZ customs. We got the bikes back from the Beluga Diving landing, got two five gallon jugs of rainwater on a hand truck from Greg at Tropicana, and we wheeled the water to the boat, stopping for customs paperwork on the way.

Then I walked the hand truck 1/2 mile uphill to the petrol station to fill our two empty Jerry cans - first fuel I have purchased since leaving the Galapagos. So we got something like 5500 miles out of ten gallons of diesel!

Meanwhile, Robin went to the farmers market for fruits and veggies. Hundreds of pineapples were laid out by the stalls in neat rows in the sun, sweetening the air around the market. Galapagos to Marquesas was the lemon run, Marquesas to Society Islands was the pamplemousse passage, Bora Bora to Tonga was definitely the banana run, and it looks like this will be the pineapple run. Though we ended up with many green bananas, too. And a watermelon.

Somehow by four thirty everything was loaded, stowed, stashed, and tied down, and we cast off our lines from Tonga. So many other things we might have done in these Friendly Islands! Though there is a slight edge to the friendliness - children are more likely to shout “Bye!” than “Hi!” from open car windows at the odd westerners like us. These are the least developed and the least westernized PolynesIan islands we visited - Tonga was never a colony, and it shows. That means that the storefronts are not as glossy as Tahiti, for sure, but Tongans are in charge.

We sailed south through the protected waters of the Vava'u group this evening - what a great cruising ground, with its protected clear blue waters and unique limestone cliff and cave islands. Once we cleared the last island, a steady but gentle easterly filled our sails, and with a clean bottom we rapidly accelerated to seven knots of silky smooth sailing on a close reach south, as planned.

About 1800, Robin read the email from Met Bob that I had just glanced at in the rush. It said “motor west on the dying easterly wind” to a waypoint well west of the islands, then sent us southwest for a couple of days, and had us motoring the last two days into Whangwerei.

But we kept sailing south, after some discussion onboard. I haven't worked with a weather router before. But I am out here sailing because I love to sail, and to have the freedom to choose our own route and destination and move around the globe relatively free of the constraints of the Petro-Energy culture. I am not out here on the ocean to take sailing orders from a meteorologist, even a very good one.

So it's after midnight and we are still making a comfortable seven knots straight south. The horizon is dimly lit by cloud shrouded stars and the sea hisses past with green sparkles in our wake, We have passed Disney Reef, and in a few more hours we will clear Bethune Bank, the last of the hazards east of Tonga on our rush to 25 south.