Photo shows the huge tail fluke of a humpback whale that we saw just before turning into the channel between the Nomuka Islands.

We are anchored off the island of Nomuka Iki (little Nomuka) in the Ha'apai Group of Central Tonga. It's a stone's throw from where Christian Fletcher and an assorted bunch of crew mutinied on the Bounty, threw Bligh and 18 others into the Bounty's largest dory and sailed back to Tahiti. Bligh went on to make an epic open water trip through Fiji and the Torres Strait to Kupang in Timor.

Two years before, he had accompanied Captain James Cook on his last Pacific voyage to this same spot, where the ship stayed for 2 months. Apparently, the islanders were pretty fed up with having to entertain them and plotted their demise. The plot never eventuated and Cook gave the locals the name that stuck later to Tonga - the Friendly Isles! The descendants of these islanders still live, 500 of them, on the larger island of Nomuka across the channel from where we are anchored. The availability of good fresh water and safe anchorage was one of the attractions of this place.

Nomuka Iki is now the site of a bold project by Aussie adventurer and entrepreneur, Don McIntyre. We met Don here in November 2015 when he was just getting the "Royal Nomuka Yacht Club" going, based on his converted trawler "Ice". He is here again with his Chinese partner on his newly acquired Lagoon catamaran with supplies for the next phase of the project on this uninhabited island.

It's a combination yacht club, hotel, bar, training ground for young enthusiastic Tongan sailors in traditional sailing vaka that will be built on the island, as well as a venue for high school and college marine science using the surrounding pristine coral reefs. It's an ambitious project that has got the approval of the Tongan Crown Prince, Tupoutoʻa ʻUlukalala, who just happens to own the island anyway and has now become the club patron!



Anchorage off the "Royal Nomuka Yacht Club" on Nomuka Iki

We had a benign but long sail up here from Tongatapu. The wind was light and too much from the East but the ominous grey skies that had accompanied the trough that had been hanging about cleared to a clear blue sky and we started seeing humpbacks almost everywhere. Several hundred humpback whales are known to make their way every year to the protected waters of the Ha'apai and Vava'u groups from the Antarctic. They breed here and give birth (a year later) but do not feed here. Once born, the calf has to swim the entire way down to Antarctica using mum's milk before learning to feed on krill.

All the 15 odd whales we saw were slowly making their way North. Most were on their own, but there were some in twos, probably mums with their year old calves, and one group of four. We saw them breaching, tail slapping, spy hopping and just blowing spume in the air as they came up to breathe. It's nice to know that at least they are doing well in a world where it seems that nature is suffering so harshly from humanity's collective greed and myopia.

One other surprising sight was an island off to port we had not seen on our last trip. At first we thought it was a ship, but it was definitely an island with a noticeable volcanic cone. On checking the bearing we discovered it was Tonga's newest island - Hunga Ha'apai - Hunga Tonga. It appeared in late 2015, just after we passed this way. It now joins two smaller islands which are actually the remnants of the rim of a huge volcanic caldera which lies under the sea. The new island arose out of the sea after an eruption.



Image (not ours!) shows the position of the Hunga Ha'apai-Hunga Tonga volcanic island sandwiched between the two original islands of Hunga Ha'apai (to the west) and Hunga Tonga (to the east).

Just 30 miles to the North of us lie two more volcanic islands - the large, but lower Tofua, which is still active - and the smaller, but higher Kao. If the weather is right, we might just make it to Tofua and find a track that is supposed to climb up to the rim of the island's crater in which lies a large crater lake and a steaming vent with lava in it!



Active Tofua on the left, inactive but more volcanic looking Kao on the right with Italian superyacht "Path" passing.