The Aquarium
14 October 2008 | Tonga
Randy
We had breakfast on the fisheries dock and then after Ino made way for the mooring field we followed. It can be tricky getting off of this dock if the wind in coming straight down the bay at you. HAve to watch for the fishermen with anchor lines way out front.
In the mooring field we picked up a ball that the Moorings Base quickly kicked us off of. We found a Beluga Diving mooring a little farther down that ran about 12 Tongan a day and we were finally setup in Tonga.
We made our first trip to town and tied up the dink at the Aquarium. This is perhaps the number one cruisers establishment in Neiafu. They will help you with anything and have good food three meals a day, a nice dock for the dinks, island tours, and a shop with some minimal books, charts, cruising guides and crafts. They also have internet service with supplied computers or Wifi that reaches the anchorage (barely). They will hook you up with a cab, beach BBQ, hold packages or just about anything else you can imagine. A great place for the sailors.
You will see almost everyone you know from the anchorage if you just hang around the Aquarium for a few hours. We spent a while just catching up with friends we had met and chatting.
We also had to arrange to ship the contents of our Saint Brendan's Isle mail box in Florida to the Copra Shed in Savusavu, Fiji. Our new ships documentation is in there and the old one expires on October 31st. The Coast Guard will not renew your docs prior to 30 days before the old one expires and they require you renew every year. This is a pretty big hassle for casual circumnavigators and I wish they would change the term to 2,3 or even 5 years like most other countries.
After a nice lunch and a brief tour of town we wrapped up for the day.