(Photo is of Adventure inside Minerva Reef at low tide, when the reef extends just above sea level and the waters calm. Since there is no land here, the blues and whites of sea and sky blend together and make a surreal backdrop to the anchored sailboats.)

Wed. Nov 12 Nuku'alofa, Tongatapu Island, Kingdom of Tonga
The instructions on where our fuel was to be delivered were sketchy. Sean and I dinghied to where the old wharf fueling station was and unloaded 7 jerry cans. We'd need to make two trips to transport the full 200 liters of diesel. Since the truck wasn't there, I dinghied back to Adventure to call on the radio to find out where the fuel was suppose to be. The truck was just pulling in behind Adventure on the jetty. I went back and picked up Sean and the jerry cans. The fuel guy had unloaded the barrel of diesel and a hand pump and looked like he was going to leave. Sean quickly asked him to show him how to set the whole thing up. They guy pulled out some tools and, after a lot of hammering, got the barrel open. He instructed Sean to put the pump into the hole and told him how to crank the handle to shoot the fuel out of the long plastic tube. As we started to fill the jerry cans, Tim from Camissa came over and said he needed the pump when we were done. We filled our 3 jerry jugs and the 4 or 5 Kairos had given us to fill. We went dumped our jerry jugs into Adventure's tanks and then went back for the rest of the fuel in the barrel.

Kairos called while we were fueling and said they were ready to leave for Minerva Reef. They'd already put their dinghy up and were anchored at the motu, so Sean motored out of the jetty to deliver their fuel while the girls and I went to town to buy our final supplies. Sean had decided that we wouldn't leave today, so we could take our time. We took a taxi to town, bought some movies, and then went to lunch. We walked to the public market and bought some fruit and veggies and then hired a taxi to drive us to a few stores. One store was recommended to us by the owner of the ice cream shop. She said it had a good selection of cheese. We were excited because the store had an automatic door that opened when we walked up to it, But as soon as the door opened, we were affronted with the overwhelming smell of rotten meat. The store looked like a small, clean, air conditioned shop you'd find in the USA. The only difference was the horrid smell. I knew that this was not the shop to buy meat in. I looked at the cheese and there were a lot of choices, but many were outdated. I selected some feta and brie cheeses and a few other items and then quickly paid. The last stop was I Butcher, a meat shop that was the cleanest I've seen since leaving the USA. The store smelled good, had air conditioning, and had lots of frozen meat. We bought $180TP worth of hamburger, boneless skinless chicken breast, bacon, sliced ham, and steaks. Sean let me turn the freezer on so we could eat fresh meat on our trip to New Zealand.

When we returned to Adventure, Sean had checked us out of the country. We took all the food back to Adventure and Sean used our taxi to go fill our jerry jug.

Tara and I went back into town with Sean so we could do our last internet session and get some lunch. Casey wanted to stay on board and watch a movie. On the way back to Adventure, we dropped Sean off at the nearby pizza place so he could spend the last bit of pa'anga we had. He wanted something to much on during the first few days of our trip.

Sean wanted to put up the dingy tonight, but I reminded him that we'd need it in the morning to release our stern lines. We talked about the process of getting off the quay and came up with the idea of tying several dock lines together so we could string the line from Adventure, around the shore cleat, and then back to Adventure. Then we'd be able to drop the line and pull it up while aboard Adventure. He took off our mid-ship line (our longest line) that ran to shore so he could use it for a stern line. Later that night, the wind started to blow hard from our starboard side and Sean had to re-string a mid-ship line to shore. He got rained on a bit, but nothing like when he ran the line before.

Thu. Nov 13 Nuku'alofa, Tongatapu Island, Kingdom of Tonga, Day One To Minerva Reef
I got up at 6am and went to take a shower on shore and drop the last bit of garbage in the can. Sean was ready to go when I got back. We pulled our midship line in and one of our stern lines, and then loaded our dinghy and engine. Casey pulled up the anchor as Sean threw off the last stern line and we were off the quay like pros. Ogopogo and 4 other boats were leaving the same morning as us, all headed to Minerva Reef and, if the weather permitted, all the way to New Zealand. There's a low front coming in the next few days, so it looks like Minerva is as far as we'll get until it passes.

The seas were relatively smooth and there was no wind. We motored all day and all night. In mid-day, Sean was on watch and the girls and I were below. He pulled the engine throttle all the way down. We ran up on deck and saw him holding the fishing pole and the line was spinning out of the reel. "I need a cup of water fast!" he yelled. Tara ran below to get the water. "Gloves! Gloves! I need gloves!" he yelled even louder. I dug in the cockpit pocket for gloves. Tara came from below and handed Casey the cup of water. "Pour it on the line!" Sean yelled. Casey dumped the entire cup of water on the spool as the line came out in spurts. He must have seen this procedure in a move, because the line wasn't smoking or anything. The friction on the spool of string couldn't have been much until it shot out of the reel and entered the water, which would have cooled it off quite quickly had it been hot (which it probably wasn't). "Not the whole cup!" he yelled. "You were supposed to drizzle it on the reel!" He reeled in the fish, little by little. We saw a movement on the water about 30 feet behind Adventure and then a huge, 5 or 6 foot marlin jumped out of the water. When Sean saw the great fish, he exclaimed, "Oh boy..." and then started telling us how he was going to have to cut the line. But the marlin had been toying with Sean and had grown tired of the game. It snapped the line and swam into the deep. We were all happy with the outcome.

Sean put a smaller squid lure on the line and threw it back in. A little later we caught another fish that snapped the line. We're using 50-pound test. These were not the size of fish we wanted to catch, so we decided to stop fishing for a while.

Fri. Nov 14 Day Two To Minerva Reef
More motoring all day.

Sat. Nov 15 Day Three To Minerva Reef
At the 4am change-over watch, we decided there was enough wind to turn off the engine and sail. The wind picked up to 18 knots and the seas started getting a bit uncomfortable. Both were on our bow. Some time during the night, the algae bloom had stopped and the water was clear when I awoke. The wind was shifting a bit to our beam and, rather than sailing off course, we started the engine and motored the final 6 miles to the reef.

It was about 10am as we approached and it was bizarre to see 4 sailboats anchored in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, with no land in sight. It was just deep, blue ocean, a circle of breakers with a light blue ring inside it (shallower water), and then dark blue water inside the ring. The sail boats were all anchored in the light blue ring, with their sterns toward the breakers. I was a bit concerned that they had all anchored on the lee shore so that if their anchors came loose, the wind would drive them into the coral. We paralleled the reef for several miles until we came to the pass, which was about 100 feet wide and easy to see. Our way points were spot on and we motored through the break in the reef quite comfortably. Ogopogo was in front of us, coming in at the same time. Once inside, we saw Ino, Kairos, Elise, and Honah Leigh already at anchor from a day or two before.

I found a big space in the middle of the line of boats, pulled forward in the direction the middle of the reef until our depth increased to 50 feet, started backing up, and yelled for Sean to drop the anchor. I knew that 50 feet was a depth we could handle with our 280 feet of chain, but also gave us some distance from the reef behind Adventure. The wind was blowing about 12 knots and pushed us toward the reef. We still had several hundred yards of clearance before we'd hit bottom. This would give us enough time to respond to our anchor alarm if we dragged. I pulled back on the anchor extra hard to ensure we stuck. It felt solid to me, but just to worry me, Sean told me later that he thought the anchor dragged a bit when I set it. When Clint came to visit, he made me feel better when he said that it is difficult to drag and anchor up-hill (from our 50-foot depth toward the shallower reef area).

Once our anchor was set, we were all hungry for lunch and it was only 11am. After we ate yummy ham and cheese panini sandwiches, Sean started to get the dinghy unloaded so he could lower it into the sea. Jeff from Ogopogo came over to help Sean, but Sean called me up on deck to help get the dinghy down and then to help him with the engine. We have a system that works well, and he didn't want to have to show Jeff how to do it. The anchorage was getting a bit rough because of the fetch from the wind across the lagoon, so Sean tied the dinghy to the back of Adventure so it wouldn't rub on her side. Now there were two dinghies off our stern.

Clint, Joel, and Abby dinghied over to chat and tied their dinghy (the third on our stern) to Adventure. A little later, Tom from Anzak came over in his dinghy, so we had four dinghies off our stern. Joel called us the party boat. It made me laugh about how weird it was that we were more than 250 miles from any land mass, yet we were still with lots of people we could socialize with and depend on.

The boys left with Tom and Clint, Abbey, and Casey went to pick up Carrie from Blue Jay, which had just come into the lagoon. The girls all came back to Adventure to go snorkeling. But the wind had churned up a bit of a swell in the lagoon, so I recommended that they wait until tomorrow to snorkel. The girls all wanted to bathe, so they jumped into the water off our swim platform - each yelling as they hit the cold water. The temperature change is significant from the Tongan waters we'd left two days ago. I'm going to go snorkeling tomorrow, but I'm not looking forward to the cold water. The girls rinsed with fresh water and then came below to watch a movie.

I called Ino to see invite them for dinner, but Hanna said that they were just pulling up their anchor to head out. Ben and Mariana have a flight to catch on Nov. 24th, so they are going even though the weather is not going to be good.

Hanna said the fishing here was real good. They had caught 4 yellow-fin tunas just outside the pass the previous day. Kairos had caught three fish and one was a yellow fin also. Several other boats had caught bill fish on the way to the reef. There was also a small commercial fishing boat from Tonga here that was fishing and getting lobsters. One boat had bought 6 lobsters from them for $20TP. We were all over that! I said goodbye to our friends on Ino.

Clint and Sean made plans to go buy some lobster, but before they left to go get them, the fishing boat left the lagoon. We are hoping they are just going for an afternoon fishing trip and will be back.

We had Kairos over for dinner. I made rice and poisson crux (using the tuna they'd caught) and Janet taught the girls how to make sushi rolls. Casey made garlic cheese bread with two of the baguettes we had in the freezer and the girls made a vanilla cake with vanilla and chocolate frosting. They used the chocolate frosting to make an image of New Zealand on the cake. It was fun and yummy. Since Casey won't eat fish (especially if it's raw!), she had the last leftover piece of pizza and a bunch of garlic-cheese bread for dinner.

The girls all stayed on Adventure and ended up in plastic hula skirts and glow bracelets, giggling in Casey's room. Sean had given them permission to watch a movie, but they goofed around for so long and we were very tired from the three nights doing watches that it got too late. So Sean read them a scary story from the book I Am Legend instead. It freaked the girls out. Sean took Abbey and Carrie back to Kairos. Tara didn't sleep well because she was scared.

Sun. Nov 16 Minerva Reef
The girls did a full day of school and it took a lot of my morning helping the girls with science and math. I did some deep-cleaning under the stove, which is really hard to get to because of the 1-inch of space between under the stove. It's just enough room to get a bunch of food stuck in it, but not enough room to clean it properly. It was about 3pm before we were all ready to go out and play. The wind had died completely during the night and now that it was low tide and the reef was peaking above the water to hold back all the waves, the lagoon was perfectly smooth. Sean jumped in to check our rudder and found that the line Joel and Clint had pounded around it was still there. This was great news. We dinghied to the lagoon entrance and saw a bunch of 2-foot-long yellow-tail tuna. Outside the reef, we snorkeled in a couple of shallower spots. Where the reef stopped, the ocean floor dropped away rapidly into the depths. The coral was alive and the fish plentiful. The water temperature didn't seem so cold with the sun out. We dinghied back and dropped the girls off at Adventure to bathe while Sean and I dinghied to the reef so we could walk on it. It was so strange to be on a little ring of coral in the middle of the ocean. The sky and ocean are both blue and it give one a sense of vertigo or a dream-state to not see other colors like green trees. Everything is blue, except for a few white clouds. The reef added a mustard-brown to the scene. I saw something in the distance that looked like a stick. I was curious about how a stick would get out here on the reef. When we walked to it, we realized it was a boat rudder. I told Sean that God might be telling us something and maybe we'll need a rudder before we reach New Zealand. Maybe we should take it back to Adventure with us...But it was too big, so Sean made me leave it there.

Two or three of the boats moved to the other side of the lagoon because high winds may hit us tomorrow. They didn't want to be on a lee shore with 20 knot winds. We decided to check the weather in the morning to see if the storm was still going to come up this far.

It was already 5:30pm and we'd promised a dinner of chicken pot pie to Ogopogo, so we hurried back to Adventure to cook. Casey helped me make the pot pie, one of her favorite meals that we make. I'd already cut up the veggies, so she saut�ed them while I jumped in the slightly-cold lagoon water to take my bath.

Peg and Fred came over in their dinghy and Jeffrey swam over later, right before dinner was served. Since he was wet, the guys ate up in the cockpit and the girls ate below.


Mon. Nov 17 Minerva Reef
We awoke to the surreal blues of the reef and sky. Looking across to the other side of the reef, it was difficult to tell where the lagoon waters ended and the sky began. I made a cup of coffee for Sean and asked him to take me fishing. The girls were still asleep. We loaded the dinghy with our fishing gear and our spear gun. We'd lost our gaff along the way and Sean decided he could use the spear gun as a gaff if we caught a fish. We put our lure that looks like a 5-inch fish on our fishing pole line and the squid lure on the trolling line. As we motored through the pass, I got a hit on the fishing pole line. Sean put the dinghy in neutral and I fought the fish. He actually pulled the dinghy around and slowly through the water. When I got him close to the dinghy, we realized it was a long fish with really big teeth. Sean speared him behind the head and we pulled him aboard. It was a 3-foot long barracuda and we'd heard they were good to eat, but I really wanted to catch a tuna. I threw the line back in and, a few minutes later, saw another barracuda skipping across the water toward my lure. I tried to reel it in before it hit the lure, but it was too late. I'd caught another one. Sean tried the same technique to gaff the fish, but this time his spear hit the creature's head, glanced off it, and the fish fell off the hook. We were relived that we didn't have to bring another one back to the boat.

We changed the fish lure out to another squid, hoping to deter the barracudas. We didn't get any more bites, so we headed back to Adventure. We stopped by Kairos to make sure we could eat the barracuda and they said that Elise had caught one the prior day and had eaten it. We stopped by Elise and found out that they had decided not to eat the barracuda because it had a blue-green spine and they were afraid that it may have ciguatera poisoning.

Casey was excited to see the barracuda and, since we decided not to eat it, she put on rubber gloves, got a fillet knife, and dissected it. Tara watched, but wouldn't participate. I let it count as their science for the day.

Jeffrey came over to see what we were doing and Casey and I wanted to go fishing, so Sean took us out. Jeff came along with us and had advice about how to set our drag and which lure we should be using. I told him that I would push him in the water if he offered any more advice. Just outside the pass, our trolling line was struck but we didn't know it right away. Jeff even tugged on the line and then let it go. "We have a fish on the line!" I yelled as I saw something bigger than our lure on the end of the line. Jeff was driving the dinghy and stopped the engine as he pulled in the line. It was a white snapper, big enough for a 4-person meal. A little later, we caught a bigger white snapper, but it got off the hook as Jeffrey pulled the last 4 feet of line in. Sean hadn't put much fuel in the tank, so we needed to head back to Adventure.

Jeff and I cut fillets from the fish and I cleaned the head and guts so I could make fish-head soup stock. I used this as the base to make fish chowder. Jeffrey had tuna that Ino had given to him, so he contributed the tuna to the fish chowder since the snapper meat was a little too flakey for it.
The girls went to Kairos, then to Blue Jay, and then back to Adventure during the day, hanging out with Abbey and Carrie.

Clint and Janet came and picked Sean and me up to go to Ogopogo to talk with Fred about the weather and when we all wanted to make a run for New Zealand. We took a few weather sources, such as Buoy Weather, a grib file, info from the weather guy on the German net, and recommendations from Commanders. Fred wanted to leave the next day, Kairos wanted to leave in two days, and Sean and I were split - I wanted to leave in two days, and he wanted to leave tomorrow. We decided to look at one more weather report in the morning and then make up our minds.

Janet came over to keep me company while I finished the fish chowder and made the corn bread. Peg had one package of powdered buttermilk left, so I used it in the corn bread. I'll have to remember to buy some of that stuff before going on another sailing journey. I made a double-batch of corn bread so I could give half to Kairos. Clint, Sean, and Joel went fishing and came back empty-handed.

We went to Ogopogo for dinner and Peg made a yummy chili with rice. With the corn bread and butter and honey, we had a meal familiar from back home. Since Jeffrey is a vegetarian, he ate rice, plain beans, corn bread, and the fish chowder I brought for him.

Tue. Nov 18 Minerva Reef
We looked at the weather forecasts and decided to wait one more day to leave. Sean took me to the other side of the lagoon in the dinghy. I wanted to see if the fabled "platform" was still there. This platform was supposedly built by rich people who were somehow trying to avoid paying taxes by putting a building in at the reef. But we found no platform at the other side. Three sailboats were anchored there and we asked one if they'd seen any sign of the platform. They hadn't. We dragged our trolling line while were crossing and got a bite, but it didn't stick. We motored to the navigation light that Tonga had put up at the reef, claiming it as their property. Sean climbed the 15 feet to the top of the light and I pulled away in the dinghy to take his photo. As he got back in the dinghy so we could leave, we saw a 4-foot black-tipped reef shark swim near us. He looked like he was on the prowl for some lunch.

The girls called on the radio to see if they could skip school and go snorkeling with Abbey. I said it was fine, but didn't realize we had all the snorkel gear in our dinghy. They ended up swimming to Kairos and goofing around instead. We also had the spear gun, and Joel wanted to borrow it. So we headed back to the civilized side of the reef.

Joel came by to get our spear gun. He shot a nice snapper, but the tip pulled off the gun and it got away. Later, Jeffrey called to borrow the spear gun, so Sean had to find a new tip. It was time to replace the old one anyway, but locating it was a bit of a challenge. Sean dug through the entire closet, taking one bin out after the next. Finally, I remembered seeing them in his nuts and bolts container.

Sean took Abbey, Tara, Casey, and me snorkeling/fishing. The girls jumped in the water at the pass, but the current was too swift and we had to pick them up with the dinghy. We went outside the pass and down about 20 yards and found a big coral head with underwater valleys that led to the deep water drop-off. We snorkeled there while Sean lay in the dinghy. He was a bit peeved because he thought it would be more of a fishing trip than a snorkel trip.

I saw the black fish with wisps off its tail fin and small yellow fins that looked like bows that grew off the meaty part of its tail. I'd only seen these in Niue before and they are fabulous! We also saw huge, beautifully-colored parrot fish, biting off mouth-full's of coral with their large buck-teeth. The butterfly fish all seem to come in pairs. There were lots of other reef fish too.

We decided to fish for a while before going back to the boats, and Abbey asked if she could use our pole. I told her she could if she caught us some fish for dinner. I had invited Kairos over for dinner and was going to try my Long John Silver's recipe for fried fish. Abbey yelled that she had a fish on, so I stopped the dinghy. She screamed as it pulled out more line and handed the pole to Sean. He reeled it in just a bit and then gave it back to her. She'd have to be the one to bring it in...It turned out to be a 2.5-foot long rainbow runner and a really good eating fish. Tara and Casey were now really excited to catch one too. We trolled some more, got a few bites, but didn't catch anything more.

We dropped Abbey off at Kairos and told her to fillet the fish for dinner. She proudly brought it over that night and I cooked it up, along with the snapper I'd caught. It was delicious! I also made corn dogs and Janet brought salad and potatoes.