The 252 mile nautical passage from Niue to Tonga was excellent with 15 to 20 knots (albeit from astern) , which we covered in a day and a half. We've become very good at goose-winging (for the non-sailors – mainsail out one side and genoa or other headsail poled out on the other).

Whistle Stop Tour of the Pacific - That's what it feels like anyway and after Tonga we still have two countries to go until we reach Australia. We had decided that due to time constraints we would only visit the Vava'u group in the north. This the third time we have been to Tonga since 2005 and I'd have to say very little has changed in that time. One thing that is changing slowly is that many of the villages are now getting solar power. We have always felt that this simple improvement can provide a significant improvement in the quality of people's lives in such countries. As with Fiji, the solar system can generally only supply power for lighting. Each house is provided with a solar panel, a battery and fitted with a small number of LED or low power flouro bulbs and they pay a monthly fee for the use of and to cover any maintenance issues. People in Tonga have houses built with western materials and at a casual glace one could be forgiven for thinking they live pretty well. But the truth is that the village people have very little, they are generally subsistence farmers. Inside the houses there is little furniture and up until recently after dark, there wasn't any lighting. Also I was surprised that many of the people in the villages did not speak English but perhaps I shouldn't be, as they would rarely have any contact Palangi (white people).

We spent much of our time in Neiafu on the net working on our Solomon Islands Project but managed to catch up with dear friends Marcus and Michaela on Alita whom we haven't seen for several years. They are on their way up to Alaska and Canada so we gave them a few tips on salmon, crabs, prawns and bears and compared a few home brewed beers.

In Tonga we did manage to go to visit a number of islands where we conducted some Eyeglass Assist clinics with the help of Steve from Duende. Needless to say we were well received. One island we went to was Taunga and spent an afternoon with the people fitting everyone with glasses, having a few laughs and trading a few stories. The pastor, Saya was kind enough to correct the flaws in my coconut husking technique. One thing we did see here that we haven't seen before is people cooking and eating puffer fish, which unfortunately we don't have a photo of. Puffer fish are poisonous. In Japan only elite specially licensed chefs are permitted to cook them but here we were in Tonga with a pot full of the whole animals being boiled over an open fire. So how can they be safe to eat and how did they find out? Beats me. There are one or two species that aren't poisonous so perhaps these were one of those or perhaps hours of boiling broke down the poison...

We encountered a rather large sailing boat in Vavu'a's Neiafu harbour and we were invited on board for a visit. We had run into the operations manager of the research/aid organization (that had temporary use of the vessel) in the market, whom we had previously met in Majuro several years ago . Apparently their aim was to do research on plastic pollution in the sea as well as running basic first aid in the villages. The vessel itself is 120 ft (40m) long, weighs 200 tonnes and is made of concrete ! Yep, concrete. The owner/skipper claims it's the biggest concrete sailing ship afloat, a fact which I wouldn't dispute. The owner has plans to motor the vessel to the Marshall Islands for a refit and then travel across the North Pacific and transit the Northwest Passage. You may notice I haven't used the word “sail”. At the time we saw the boat the sails were in tatters so it motored everywhere. To be honest, in my option the whole boat had the appearance of being in a pretty poor state of seaworthiness. There is often a good reason for a hull that is painted red or orange (to hide the rust stains), the large inflatable dingy had one pontoon that was deflated more often than not and the rigging, which was galvanized, was also too rusty for my liking. As for taking the boat through the Northwest Passage: Not for me thank you. In my experience concrete boats don't like running into things. They have a tendency to hole and then sink ! Good luck to him.

There were at least 20 volunteers with the aid/research organization most of whom were young females. I mention this fact because this particular arrangement resulted in their also being at least two solo male sailors constantly following the vessel as it moved around the islands. The standing joke on Monkey Fist was that they were “trying to cut one out of the herd” and in fact we were reliably informed that the two gentlemen sailors were indeed successful in doing so.