The weather here has been cool and with scattered showers, but strong
winds are predicted for later in the week. Katy decided she liked
meeting people more than swimming and snorkeling when it’s cool and
cloudy, so we headed back for the Port of Refuge and the town of Neiafu.
It was a three-hour-cruise, threading our way slowly through the narrow
spots around our anchorage, and then motoring at our cruising speed of 5
and a half knots through the deeper channels.

We saw a mother and calf humpback whales on the way. The mother was
doing a headstand with her flukes (tail) completely out of the water and
the calf was hanging around her. Occasionally, the mother would go back
to swimming horizontally, take a few breaths and then resume the headstand.

Once we arrived in the harbor, we found a vacant mooring that we picked
up. We thought it belonged to “Moorings” cruising yacht charters. After
a dinner of corned beef hash prepared by Mike we turned in and slept
through a rainy night.

This morning’s plan featured a visit to the botanical gardens and
errands. About the time we dinghied ashore, the rain resumed and
increased, so we decided to put off the botanical garden for a less
muddy day. First errand on the list was to pay for the mooring. When we
went to pay for the mooring, and found out that it didn’t actually
belong to “Moorings” and was of unknown provenance. Not a good idea to
take a mooring with unknown maintenance when high winds are expected, so
we asked Benny at “Moorings” to let us know if someone left one of
theirs vacant (they only have a few, and they are first-come,
first-serve, but more likely to be maintained). We completed the rest of
the errands and dinghied back to Rover in time to get a call from Benny
that a mooring ball was opening up. The crew did a great job of quickly
casting us off the old ball and picking up the new one.

We’re close enough to shore that we can practically swim to the dinghy
dock at Mango Bar. With rain and high winds projected in the near
future, we set the anchor watch,  taken an inventory of the games on
board, everybody has books to read, we have 3G internet and have plenty
of provisions to stay here until the weather improves.

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