THERE'S BEEN NOTHING VERY PHOTOGENIC ALONG THE WAY, SO HERE’S ANOTHER TONGAN WHALE PHOTO.

Thursday 29th August: The weather forecasts remained consistent, promising F5/6 SE winds from Friday (a bit brisk for our comfort) and 2-3m SSE seas with a 7-8 second wave period (again a bit higher than we would’ve liked and certainly a lot faster) but on the upside there’s little rain or squalls predicted. The unsettled weather, bad colds and pumice field have put us uncomfortably behind schedule once again – this was supposed to be a leisurely season cruising gently through the central Pacific, not hanging around in French Polynesia until July and then rushing through. If we don’t go on this weather window there’s yet another low pressure system heading NE from New Zealand and the Tasman Sea next week, so we’ll lose another two weeks.

Today was due to be light winds, so we got re-provisioned and checked-out yesterday and departed after I’d followed the Burnley v Sunderland League Cup game on BBC Sport’s text-service this morning; we lost 3 – 1, so I needn’t have bothered! The rules say that you must leave Tonga within ‘one to two hours of checking-out’ but as there were a couple of cargo ships due today (they get check-in/out priority over yachts) I enquired about an early check-out, the Immigration Officer informed us that No, we would have to leave immediately, but did stress that their requirement, or at least what would be policed, was that we had to ‘leave the harbour’, so once checked-out we moved three miles to a nearby, but out of their eye-line bay and spent the night there. They did still insist that we must bring Moon Rebel onto the high, rough and frankly dangerous Customs Dock to do the check-out, that's particularly annoying as they don’t actually come on board, they just want to be able to see the boat from their office window.

We upped anchor and got away just before 10:00 and for the first time since we arrived in the Pacific more than a year ago, we’ve had a passage where the weather’s been consistent with what was forecast; a bit rough and bumpy at times, but without doubt our best extended passage (it was 420 miles) since arriving in the Pacific. We didn’t want to arrive until after 08:00 on Monday morning as Fiji levies some huge out of hours/overtime charges at the weekends, which meant that despite the strong winds, we were actually trying to go fairly slowly, which made for some easy sailing. We’d a poled-out genoa during Thursday’s lighter winds, but when the first and indeed only, major squall of the trip arrived at about 19:00 that evening, it went away and we flew nothing more afterwards than the small jib sail; during the day we were looking for 5-5.5 knots, so 2/3 to ¾ of the sail was generally enough, then as darkness arrived (A New Moon, so as black as a coal-miners arse) we rolled that down to ½ and at times less and simply pottered along at around 4 knots through the night, which allowed us to sleep easily, rather than the ‘hanging on tight’ which was the order of the day. Not much fun to try cooking anything either, so I got by on Weetabix and pot-noodles, whilst Lesley opted for the Kokopelli’s recommended ‘cookie diet’: don’t bother with real food, just load up on biscuits.

Four days of ‘nothing to report’ at all saw us finally running out of wind near the head of the bay, less than a mile of Savusavu Creek entrance, so we motored that bit and at 09:00 local time (we’re now only 12 hours ahead of UTC/GMT/Zulu) we were picking-up a mooring at the Waitui Marina and before noon had been visited by the Health Officer (No, nobody’s died on passage and we’ve no suspicion of plague, yellow fever, or smallpox) Customs (we’ve only got two cans of beer and five cigarettes left aboard) Immigration (No, we’re sure that there are no stowaways) and Bio-Security (No pets aboard and our walking boots are clean) We’d been warned that Fijian Officialdom could be difficult, but our experience here in Savusavu was just the opposite; they were certainly thorough, but invariably professional, polite and good humoured.

With the formalities over we were free to get on with more important matters – more beer and cigarettes for a start! Then after a few beers ashore at the Copra Shed Marina bar with a bunch of Irish lads who sailed in soon after us (Realta Bheag) we headed for the Arun Restaurant: Fiji has a huge ethnic-Indian population whose ancestors arrived here as indentured labour to work the sugar cane two hundred years ago, as a result there are several Indian Restaurants in Savusavu and I suspect we’ll be sampling most of them before we leave: Samosas followed by lamb curry, rice and selection of thali dishes at