Footnotes from Water Music

Especially for Nikki Foot our position at the moment (which should also be shown on the Sailblogs map) is 21.07.51S 175.09.71W

We had a pleasant but slightly frustrating crossing from Nieu to Tongatapu. On the one hand it was warm and dry and we a beautiful full moon to guide us through the night - and fabulous broad reach sailing in 15 knots of wind in the day time but sadly the wind would die after 10pm and only start to fill in pre dawn. This meant is was going to be touch and go whether we would get into Nuku Alofu before nightfall - as it turned out we sailed through the Pia Passage under spinnaker with whales breaching all around us. The pilot book told us to be wary of the Pia Passage as currents can run up to 4 knots and there are a few dog legs to be wary of. Fortunately the breeze held and we handed the spinnaker before sunset and anchored off the main town just as night fell at 1900 hours but having lost a full day as we have now crossed the Date Line to enter Tonga. Tonga's motto is 'Where Time Begins'! As we were approaching Tongatapu I called repeatedly on channel 16 on the VHF to try to get hold of customs to see if we were able to clear in that evening - Friday - as we feared they would be closed for the weekend and without clearing customs we would be unable to step ashore which would be extremely irritating! There was a NZ yacht who had arrived just ahead of us and after some discussion we decided to anchor just outside the harbour and try again first thing in the morning.

We went into rather a challenging harbour at 8am - whilst it was deep enough it was very unclear where you could tie up we did consider going alongside the ocean going tugs as Stephen thought that might attract some attention! There was an option of doing a med stylei mooring onto a grassy verge but we were put of by the sight of a mast sticking out of the water and nothing else just where we thought we might go! Eventually we decided to go alongside a fisherman's rather rusty key - luckily on the dock was an enthusiastic local taxi driver who was keen to get our business. It appeared that Customs do not operate a VHF radio they only respond to telephone calls - all well and good but no yacht can a local phone signal without first going ashore to get a local sim card. The satellite phone wouldn't work as we had no idea what the code was so thankfully our friendly taxi driver called them on his phone and persuaded them to come to us even though it was a saturday. By this time we had two other yachts that we knew alongside us also waiting to clear so they had a busy morning! We were then visited by a selection of enormous, but delightful, Tongans representing Customs, Health, Immigration and lastly environment. By this stage, we seem to have understood the system (contrast with the Galapagos) and ended up with the environmental person taking our garbage bag and nothing else. We now know to have no fresh fruit or vegetables on boat and have only cooked meat and mark everything else including alcohol as 'ships stores'. Sadly the young guys on the Danish boat next door weren't quite so lucky and lost of huge bag of onions and a fridge full of fresh fish!

Brian and Penelope left the boat after being cleared by customs and are continuing their travels in Fiji and Ethiopia., where they at least shouldn't need oilskins! Stephen and I then took off with Inoke our friendly taxi driver to explore the town and more importantly to fill our depleted gas bottles. Inoke also does a laundry service so three large bags were also given to him at a fraction of the price of laundry in Bora Bora - the laundry costs in Bora Bora were significantly in excess of the value of Stephen's clothes .... he is now rescuing various items from the rag bag to wear, and we washed everything by hand there! We then went round the fascinating markets full of interesting fruit and veg we hadn't seen since Tahiti. Fantastic whale bone and wood carvings and tapa (cloth made from wood) which forms an essential part of Tongan dress. The national dress of Tonga is a skirt called tupena, worn ankle length by women and knee length by men, in addition women wear a highly decorated waistband of sort of tapa or string known as a kikie. On formal occasions or curiously also when working both men and women wear a taovala - a woven mat tied at the waist with a woven sennit cord. This dress is also school uniform with the tupenas being blue but generally they seem to be black. The taxi driver said this was if they had a recent death in the family but as far as we could tell they were nearly all black! On Saturday night another boat came and rafted up alongside us - this time it was Australians James and son Sean from Love Child whom we hadn't seen since they were clearing a poo pipe in Shelter Bay , Panama. Lots of catching up on routes, highlights and dramas!

Tonga is a very religious country and literally everything shuts down, and even on Saturday there is a lot of preparation for Sunday everyone seemed to be busy with garden rakes and when we remarked upon this they said they were preparing for Sunday! All children seemed to be either raking or playing with rugby balls! We decided to go to church and after our recent experience at the protestant church in Rarotonga where we had absolutely no idea what was going on, we opted for the large catholic church just across the road. Everyone was in traditional dress and the singing was beautiful, the service was led by a rather charming cardinal, and although we couldn't understand the language the format was very familiar and gave us an incredible insight into the culture of these wonderful people from the 'Friendly Isles'!

We leave you know having barbecued a spatchcock chicken just of Big Mama's Yacht Club on the tiny island a mile off the town. This is a south pacific paradise!!!