The Kingdom of Tonga

As it's been nearly a month since I last managed to post a blog......French Polynesia really should polish up their act as far as internet services to yachties are concerned...far too expensive and extremely unreliable....! Anyway, I digress..... Moonshiner is currently about two thirds of the way to Tonga and we are having to motor for a while as the ocean is glassy smooth without a breath of wind to ruffle its surface. A slight change from the force 8 which blew in last week and delayed our departure from Bora Bora.

The story so far from the beginning, ie leaving Papeete ( that's pronounced Papay et ay....just for the record sorry for repetition!). The intention was to sail overnight to Raiatea, the "sacred" isle believed to be the cradle of the Polynesian race, about 120 miles away from Tahiti. Dick having spent a small fortune on getting everything sorted out once and for all, this short trip was going to be a breeze?............................Wrong!
What went wrong first? Oh yes, the autopilot, {which had so far been working perfectly), decided that it was on strike. No idea what the problem was but impossible to sort out at sea. Luckily, there is a spare on board..one of those Autohelm ones that push the tiller. Phew! I was not looking forward to hand steering even for just one night. The next thing to go was the engine overheating later that night. This was fortunately sorted out by Dick in an hour or so as he found some spare engine hose to replace the one that was spectacularly leaking very hot water all over the place. Ouch! The next "thing" was the main navigation computer over the chart table not working although the cockpit repeater was OK. This meant that I had to use the mouse at the chart table to move the cursor, which Dick could see outside in the cockpit, by him shouting instructions...up, down, left, right, click!! Not easy to do...I'm no "Bernie the Bolt". We were getting close to the island which is surrounded by dangerous reefs as all islands are around here and night was falling so the chart plotter was needed somewhat.

We pressed on and found the pass through the reef into Raiatea later just as it got dark. This pass is well lit so navigating the channel around the island to find somewhere to anchor was interesting but no problems. We found somewhere near a marina in the dark and dropped anchor in about 20 meteres of water. Then morning came..... We were much too close to the marina walls and there were coral heads very close too. So we had to move…… and before breakfast too! This is when the most annoying "thing" went wrong...the anchor windlass just wouldn't work..We absolutely had to move so there was nothing for it but to pull up over 60meteres of heavy chain by hand with just some help from a winch. My poor arms! It took 3 days for the ache to go.
But after all this, things started to go right for a change. We motored down the coast a mile or so and found a very accessible quay at Utaroa, Raiatea's main town where mooring is unbelievably free! After securing alongside, I went ashore to find someone who might be able to fix things. Meanwhile, as luck would have it, he had turned up right there in front of the boat without being asked. This was Canadian Richard the marine electrician...sent from God if you can believe that! Well, he's quite religious, being a Bahai so we found out. Richard spent most of the following four days on board and managed to fix just about everything there was that could be fixed. Manna from Heaven? OK, enough of the religious talk...we did enough of that too!!

I really liked Raiatea and put it in my top three places we've visited. It's just the right size, a small town with about 3000 people....just the right amount of shops with just one or two of each type and a very happy community atmosphere among the people. Each night, there was something going on for the locals young and old, dancing, singing etc. We went to a dance spectacle...very colourful and saw the local women of all ages, shapes and sizes doing their famous bottom wiggling dances!! Dick says that European women just couldn't emulate them. I say we can with a bit of practise...but I was certainly not going to try in full view of passers by!

With a “fully” working boat, it was time to move on. We had been joined in Utaroa by a couple of Blue Water stragglers like us and we had decided to spend a few days together in Bora Bora before striking west for the Cooks and Tonga even though we had been advised against visiting this "Rip off French Polynesia" by the tourist board in Papeete. The spot where we all ended up was outside the Bora Bora Yacht Club on reasonably priced mooring buoys. It should have been idyllic and in the right weather, I'm sure it would have been but we ended up stranded there having to watch white water actually within the reef which would normally have been a crystal clear azure blue. The waves crashing over the outer reef looked incredibly dangerous so we just sat and waited until things improved. Chairs were even blown over on the decking at the Yacht club!

It was a shame I suppose though we couldn't have taken Moonshiner with her deep keel to the best places for swimming and looking at the fish etc anyway. I didn't mind that in the end though because I'd spent many happy hours in Utaroa looking at the reef fish swimming under the boat and around the coral heads which were happily growing around the pier supports under the fuel dock. So much for coral needing perfect conditions in which to survive! I fed some of these fish with bits of bread etc. They loved it! I reckon I spotted at least 20 different species of fish there, some of them the really well known ones too...you know, the colourful ones with very thin vertical bodies..... I didn't find Nemo though...he lives within anemones on the coral and spends most of his time just hiding there. Debs, on Scot Free saw him however while snorkelling and I was just a few feet away so I almost found him I reckon?

The weather eventually improved and we left.....in the wrong direction! There was a slight glitch with something... so we headed back to Raiatea (which is only about 40 miles away) for Richard to fix it... not sure if he was pleased to see us? A very simple job in the end but leaving us another two days further behind the rest of the the stragglers. This meant that we wouldn't have time to visit the Cook Islands so we are now heading straight for Tonga, about 1400 miles from Tahiti.
As I type this, it's day eight with about 400 miles to go. One gets used to the distances for sure. That's practically next door in these parts. Let's hope I can post this from Tonga.......
In the meantime, I'm passing my time handsewing some skirts in beautiful Polynesian flowery cottons. I can do one a day if circumstances permit, weather etc but I'm definitely not taking orders...apart from being commissioned to make a "wedding" skirt for Debs on Scot Free. The tale of the proposal etc is another story...... maybe next time........

So we are now in Tonga after 11 days & 1500 miles. 1st impressions? 1930s time warp apart from 4x4s, internet & mobiles! Leaving for Fiji in 2 days. More from there plus photos I hope.

PS We crossed the dateline and lost a whole day. I think it may have been Thursday!!