Wed. Oct 15-day 5 at Neiafu, Vava'u Island, Kingdom of Tonga
After tending to our bug bites, I took the girls to Kairos. Janet made us waffles for breakfast and they were yummy! We couldn't remember the last time we'd had waffles.

The girls and I walked around town to find the best deal on a room with a bed. We ended up at the Port Wine Guest House, where we pay $30TP per person and the girls have their own room with two twin beds. There's a queen bed in our other room. This is a building with a shared kitchen, shower, toilet, patio, and family room, with 4 private sleeping rooms. The only thing new about the place is the roof, which is a deep red-painted corrugated metal. The walls are a patch-work of different materials that have an old coat of paint over them. But it's clean and the kitchen will enable us to save a bit of money by preparing meals here.

The guys pulled the rudder out and we found that the outer shaft was completely broken in two pieces. There was just one spot weld that was holding the rudder onto our boat. Clint has been really interested in the rudder repair and is now the official photographer, capturing the damage and the repair as it progresses. When the guys take a break or go to lunch, Clint is there with Sean, lending moral support. When I arrived at the boat and checked out the damage, Clint, who is a pastor, asked if he could pray for a successful and quick repair. We were sure we'd have to order parts from the USA and that can take quite some time to get in remote islands like this.

Thu. Oct 16-day 6 at Neiafu, Vava'u Island, Kingdom of Tonga
When Tara woke up, she headed to the closest store to buy fresh-baked bread. She'd been dreaming of having toast, and our guest house had a toaster.

Casey and Tara did a full day of school, even though it was humid and there were lots of mosquitoes looking for a bite to eat. We lit two mosquito coils and put them under each of the girls' chairs. Tara and I walked a few blocks into town to buy some cheese so we could make sandwiches. We'd decided to only go out for one meal a day so we could save some money and eat healthier. There are grocery stores all over town and down neighborhood streets. Most are owned by Chinese people and carry the same stuff, mostly from China. We ended up going to a few stores and none had cheese. One had chicken curry wrapped in dough and then fried. They were huge and cost just $2TP ($1USD) each. Tara cringed at my buying hot, homemade food from a dumpy grocery store, but it was a low-cost risk. I opened the plastic wrap and took a bite. It was fabulous! Tara tentatively took a bite and said, "Give me some money so I can go get one too!" It was more than enough food for us for lunch.

Tara was hot and wanted to go back to her room, so I trudged on alone, looking for cheese. After going in a few more stores and not finding cheese, I saw Tara walking into a store up the street. She was carrying the two 2-liter bottles of soda we'd bought. I got to the store as a lady pointed down the street, giving her instructions on how to find the guest house we were staying in. She'd gotten lost and had been trudging up and down the streets with the heavy soda bottles.

As I walked to Adventure, several cruisers stopped me along the way and gave me updates about our rudder repair. The last guy to stop me said that the rudder had been welded. This was exciting news. I hurried to Adventure and found that the rudder had been welded and they were waiting for it to cool down before fitting it and doing some fiber glass work. It was getting late, so they'd finish the rest tomorrow. Sean was sitting in the yacht club with Clint and Jan for a drink.

Fred called and invited us to dinner on their boat. The girls had gone to The Aquarium to do internet and Sean and Jan went back to the guest house to shower. We had BBQ chicken, coleslaw, and bean salad for dinner. We're getting tired of going out to eat, so it was nice to have a home made meal. We dinghied back to Sailing Safaris, where Adventure is pulled out, and then walked the half-mile back to the guest house. It was 11pm and all the places cruisers hang out had closed. The only place still open was the karaoke bar. This is not a cruiser hang out. Local young adults seemed to hang out here at night. The music was loud and there was a really drunk guy outside the door, yelling at someone inside. Another guy was pulling him back and they were laughing. We passed a lot of young men, who were walking the streets. As we walked out of town and down the dark side streets that led to our rooms, Sean was getting a bit nervous for our safety. No one was threatening to us, but we were walking down dark streets in neighborhoods where people live in 10-foot square shacks made of 10 or 12 pieces of corrugated metal sheets. I remembered that I had gone to the bank that day and had $2,000TP in my wallet didn't make us feel any better.

The locals and foreigners don't seem to mix very much here. The restaurants and bars along the water front are all owned by foreigners, who are also the patrons. I've heard that this is because the price is too high in these places for the locals, but I don't see much integration happening anywhere else either.

The Aquarium is for sale for $300,000TP ($150,000 USD). The young owners had sailed into Tonga 4 years ago and bought the business. They then bought part of an island and now want to spend their time and money building a house, subsistence farming, and sailing around the many islands. We asked the girls if we should buy the restaurant and live here and they both yelled, "No Way!" They want to live in a country that is more developed and the people look like them. How boring can they be...?

Fri. Oct 17-day 7 at Neiafu, Vava'u Island, Kingdom of Tonga
We spent another night at the Port Wine Guest House and were awakened by church bells at 5am. They rang more than 30 times, one set following the other by about 10 minutes. They sounded like warning bells that were telling the village of a raid upon the village or a pending cyclone. I later found out that they were to announce the early-morning church service that happens every Friday.

The shower at the guest house has great pressure, but only one valve controls both the hot and cold water, as well as the water flow. When the valve was turned to full pressure, the water got very hot, so it was difficult to get a cold, high-pressure shower. The shower floor and walls were lined with two-inch tiles and 5 or 6 of the floor tiles were no longer stuck to the floor. These tiles tormented me, suctioning to the bottom of my flip flops and moving with my steps. The bathroom sink is in the hallway and is stuck in the on position. Although this is handy because you don't have to turn it on or off, it was stressful to always see it running and wasting water. All the taps in the house are plumbed to ground water, which has lots of minerals and tastes brackish. For drinking and cooking, rain water is available outside in the middle of the yard in a hose tap. It was strange to have to walk out in the yard to get drinking water. There was no oven, but there was a portable gas stove that had two burners. The stove, a cheap brand from China, was a complete fire hazard. The burners had burned through so that the gas escaped in many places it shouldn't have. The flame was almost uncontrollable and burned much too hot. The pans all had scorched handles where the flames had hit them. To light the stove, I had to first go outside and open the valve of the propane tank.

I was excited to hear that the guest house had a washing machine. When I asked Louisa, the guest house owner, about washing clothes, she proudly took me around the back of a shack and pointed to an old barrel-shaped washer with a hand ringer at the top. She said to put my clothes and soap in, fill the barrel to the top with garden hose water, plug the machine into the outlet that hung in the air from an electrical wire, and let it agitate for about 30 minutes. She said the ringer doesn't work, so I must ring the clothes by hand, put them into rinse water in bucket, ring them by hand again, and then hang them on the clothes line to dry. The cost was just $5TP per load, she said. I decided that the full-service laundry that costs $21TP per 4-kilo load was a better use of my time.

The village has more than 20 small grocery stores full of stuff we don't want. Many of the stores are owned by Chinese and full of stuff from China. There is one store that's out of town that is known as the "American store" because it carries lots of USA brands. Another store, known at the "German store" has good meat. We also found a small store that looked like a lemonade stand, which had some US branded foods.

Pigs roam free on the island and in the village. The local radio station is called "The Pig".

The kids went to Ino for a bake-off. Tara and Casey made banana muffins, Ino made brownies, and Abbey made chocolate chip cookies. While everything was cooking, they went swimming and skurfing (pulling a surf board behind a dinghy). Three or four of the kids from Georgia were also aboard. The baked goods were brought to shore, where the judges (I got to be one!) wore masks and snorkels on our heads while we tasted each item and voted by secret ballot. The brownies won, then the muffins, and then the cookies, but they were all really good.

Our rudder was put back on Adventure, but they forgot to do the fiberglass work on the hull where the rudder rubbed it. The boat needed to go back in the water by 10am tomorrow, so the guys decided to meet early in the morning to do the rest of the work. I'd been off of Adventure for two days and, when I came back on board to get some clothes, I noticed that the refrig/freezer had been off for a few days and all meat was spoiled. It seems that the shore power had made it turn off. There was blood at the bottom of the refrig from the defrosted meat and it smelled horrible. I cleaned it out and sanitized it. When I asked Sean about it, he said he wondered why the cans of Coke he'd been pulling out of the refrig were getting warm.

In the evening, Kairos and Ino entered the weekly sailboat race, so we sat at the yacht club to watch and take photos.

Sat. Oct 18-day 8 at Neiafu, Vava'u Island, Kingdom of Tonga
Sean got up early to get to the boat yard. They needed to finish putting the rudder on and do some fiberglass work before our 10am splash. I packed our room up at the guest house and then left the girls to move out of their rooms and then do their schoolwork. Louisa said we could leave our stuff in the living room until that evening and the girls could do their school work at the house too. They just needed the rooms to get them ready for the next guests that were coming that day. I got to the boat yard at 9:30am and they were almost ready to put the boat in the water. But their policy was "no cash, no splash" so we went to settle the bill first. We'd already paid the welder $880TP and the boat yard bill was $1,900TP, so our total for the pull out and rudder work was $1,350USD. The boat went in without a problem and we tied her to the side of the yacht club dock (Ongo also owns the yacht club). Sean, Dave (the guy who did the rudder work) and I sat in the yacht club to relax. To celebrate the successful repairs, Dave had beer and Sean and I split an order of french toast.

Sean and Jan put our stanchion back together, which we had to take off so it could be welded. The girls showed up because they were hungry, so I gave them money to go eat at the Aquarium. Paul and Ann came by and asked if we would join them for lunch there at the yacht club. After lunch, Sean and Jan fixed a few more things while the girls and I cleaned the inside and put things away in the cockpit. Tara and Casey loaded our seat cushions into the dinghy and took them to the water hose nearby. They hosed them off on the pontoon dock and we didn't realize until later that one of the pontoons had a huge hole in the top that all the water from the hose was going into. They almost sunk the dock. Tara said that she wondered why the end of the dock kept getting lower and lower. Sean was tired and was just willing to hose Adventure off, but we hadn't had a proper boat washing since Panama. Casey and I took over and Sean watched us scrub the boat while he sat on a stool in the yacht club and sipped on a cold drink.

We took Adventure on a test run and then back to her mooring. Sean and I dinghied to the other end of town and walked to the guest house to take our final shower and retrieve all our stuff we'd left there. We picked the girls and Jan up at the Aquarium and then went to Ogopogo for dinner.

Sun. Oct 19-day 9 at Neiafu, Vava'u Island, Kingdom of Tonga
Tara went to the Catholic Church with Peg, Jan, Paul, and Ann. They said the singing was superb. The people were dressed in their traditional long skirts and woven mat over the top.

Sean went to the Aquarium to get internet access. I worked on organizing photos that other boaters have given to us and reducing the best ones for our web page. Casey and I started cleaning the inside of the boat, but when Sean got back to Adventure, he didn't want us to clean any longer. He had planned a relaxing day on the boat and didn't want us bugging him with a broom. While driving slowly in the dinghy and looking into the clear water, I had found a sunken wreck under the mooring ball right next to Adventure, so when Casey started bugging me about what she could do, I told her to go snorkel the wreck. Jan and Tara went too. It was a catamaran and Tara kept diving down to look for treasures. Casey and Jan laughed at her as she brought up a rusty tin can, a broken bucket, and other junk.

Jan, Sean, and the girls walked to the nearby cave that had brackish water in it to go swimming (see Casey's blog entitled "Sunken Ships" for more details). We had dinner at The Aquarium with Free Spirit (Paul and Ann) and Jan. Jeffrey came by and showed us photos of him going to church in the traditional island dress. This is a long skirt, cotton shirt, and a natural-woven mat wrapped around their waist that hangs half way down their skirt. The kids' school uniforms are the same. The woven mat seems to be optional, with older boys wearing it more than younger ones. Women also wear the mat. Jeffrey told us that the mat is to show honor to their king. Another of our friends had assumed it was because the missionaries made them wear it to cover their private areas.

My ankle was itching real bad and, when I got back to Adventure, I realized my foot and ankle were swollen. Casey put some massage oil on and rubbed it for a while to try to get the blood flowing better and I took some Motrin and Benedryl to reduce the swelling. Sean thinks I got bit by a bug and had a reaction to it.

Mon. Oct 20-day 10 at Neiafu, Vava'u Island, Kingdom of Tonga
As soon as Casey woke up, she wanted to go to shore for breakfast. Now that we're back on the boat, we need to start eating here. It's healthier and less expensive. So I decided to try something new with the kids. They each get $20TP for food each day. They can eat on the boat and then splurge for one big meal, or eat all three meals on shore by finding the lower-cost meals. Casey thinks this is not a fair amount for her to spend and tried to negotiate for more, which she didn't get. The girls decided to go to The Aquarium and split some waffles while they did their school work. I washed and dried 5 loads of laundry at the machine in the Sailing Safaris boat yard. It cost $16TP per load to wash and dry.

The girls finished their school work and asked me to take them to what we call the horse stalls to get pizza. We met Abby and Carrie, a 15-year girl from the boat Blue Jay and they decided to come with us. The locals recently built their version of a food court. It is a horse barn with a concrete floor that has about 12 stalls for their fast food booths. Most of the stalls serve fried fish plates for $5TP each. They pre-make the plates of food and let them sit out all day, so we we're afraid to try one. Instead, we went to the stall that serves pizza for $5 each. One pizza is enough for two people. The girls were excited to share a pizza and only have to use $2.50 of their food money. I was excited that they were looking for less expensive food to eat. We took our three pizzas down to a small park on the water front and ended up sharing them with Camilla and Mathew, a couple we'd met at the Port Wine Guest House. They are hitching rides on sail boats, working as crew. Since they have no income, they'd been "volunteering" on a nearby farm, working 8 to 10 hours a day just to get a room and food. They quit their volunteer work and came to the town, where they paid $10TP per day to pitch their tent on the lawn of the Port Wine Guest House and have use of the kitchen, toilet, and shower. When Mystere, the mega-yacht, was here, they were able to make some money cleaning the boat to prepare it for the owners' arrival. They have a promise from Tin Soldier to take them as crew to New Zealand in a few weeks.

Abbey and the other girl left to go find ice cream and the girls and I went to Tropical Tease to pick out shirts that the shop will print a drawing of our boat on. The girls have been bugging us about getting boat shirts since our trip started two years ago. Tropical Tease sells printed shirts for $45TP ($22.50USD). Cindy, the owner, said she'd do the line art for free. All I have to do is bring in a line drawing of our boat, which we have on board. Jan called on the VHF and asked where we were and what we were doing. I told him we would be in the T-shirt shop for another half an hour and then going in a taxi to a store outside of town that had American food brands. He showed up at the shirt shop a few minutes later. He looked around the shop while we finished trying on different styles and sizes of shirts. We then took a taxi to the American store. The two-way trip, which included waiting for us to shop, was $6TP. The store was small and half of the food items were behind the counter, but we found Snickers bars, Kirkland paper towels, and Country Time Lemonade powder. All were priced high, but worth it to us. I spent $189TP and got three small bags of groceries. The taxi dropped us of at the dock and Jan and the girls went to the dinghy while I went to the ATM. I remembered that Casey wanted to rent a movie, so ran by the video store. I'd rented a movie at another store a few days prior and it cost $2TP, but we forgot to take it back for three days, so we had to pay $6TP. At this new store, I picked out the movie Casey wanted (The Golden Compass) and paid $3TP. I thought this was a bit of a rip off. I asked the clerk when it was due back and he said, "You just bought it. Keep it as long as you like." I hoped that his video wouldn't include the silhouettes of people going to get more popcorn in the theater...

We went with Jan, Paul, and Ann to Tonga Bob's for dinner and had a rather disappointing Mexican meal. Peg and Fred joined us toward the end of our meal and had a drink.

Tue. Oct 21-day 11 at Neiafu, Vava'u Island, Kingdom of Tonga
I went to a bakery in the morning to get some cinnamon rolls and wheat bread and then to the public market to buy some veggies. Lettuce, 7 small tomatoes, 6 small bell peppers, and 4 cucumbers cost $12TP. I went back to Adventure to take Sean to shore so he could go on a hike with Jan and Paul. I then went to the t-shirt shop to drop off our Catalina 42 line drawing. Cindy scanned it into her computer and then began drawing lines over it in Illustrator. She said it would take quite some time, but she thought she'd have it done today. She also downloaded the SF Fedora font for our logo. I told her I'd come back later to see how she was progressing.

I then went to find meat. I need to replenish the meat that spoiled when our freezer stopped working, so I'll have something to cook when we go to the islands tomorrow. The girls stayed on the boat to do school work.

I first went to the Chinese store and found that they only had two whole chickens left in the freezer. I then went to another store recommended by several people who live here. This is the same shop that Paul had seen lots of flies in and he said it smelled bad. He was right, but I still bought two big ribeye steaks. They cost $48TP per kilo, and they weighed one kilo together. This shop was out of other types of meat too. The supply ship for this group of islands is now three weeks overdue, so supplies are running low.

The girls called me to pick them up so they could go to The Aquarium to do internet and to eat lunch. Tara also needed my help on her math problems. Peg came by while we were eating and said she'd just gone to a store that had a good selection of meat. I wrote the store name down and will take a taxi to it today or tomorrow.

The girls and I went to town to buy a movie, but the store was closed. There's been a rumor that today is some sort of holiday, but none of the locals we asked knew about the holiday. Someone had put up a big sign in town that read, "Long Live the King", so we think it may be a holiday that has something to do with the king. Tonga is still ruled by a king, but it seems that not many people here like him. His father, the prior king, was well-loved by all of Tonga, so he had big shoes to fill. Now, there is a strong movement to make Tonga a democracy. After the king died two years ago, there were riots and demonstrations in support of a democracy, but it doesn't seem that the current king will agree to step down.

We went back to the T-shirt shop and Cindy was just finishing our line drawing. It had taken her all day to draw, and it looked great. Our shirts will be ready on Friday.

That night Tara decided to have some alone time on the boat while the rest of us went to a nice restaurant with Michael and Linda on B'Sheret, Peter on Sionara, and Darren and Melissa on Mischief. Jan called while we were sitting at the table and we asked him to join us. He showed up a few minutes later and was excited to report that he'd been successful at changing the belt on Ogopogo's Genset and it was now working properly. Peg and Fred wanted to buy him dinner, so gave him $30TP to pay for his meal with us. He ordered pizza for $25 and said it was the best he'd ever had. Sean and Casey also go the pizza and verified that it was really good. I ordered parmesan-crusted chicken breast with caper sauce, carrots, and au gratin potatoes. It was superb. We had a wonderful time talking with old and new friends and, just before we left, Darren started whistling like a bird. Every one in the restaurant became quiet as he did a long set of bird calls. When he was done, we all clapped. It was unbelievable. Ha was able to throw his voice to different parts of the restaurant.