Southern Tonga, May 14, 2010

We made it to Tonga and have been here relaxing and enjoying Tom Kollmer's company for about a week now. However, I would be lying if I said it was a fun passage here. In my opinion it was our least pleasant passage to date.

Things started out OK, but a few days into the sail, instead of the 20-25 knot winds we were expecting we had 30-35 sustained winds and were having to sail upwind in it. This alone would be enough to make things unpleasant (sailing downwind is ALWAYS nicer and normally what we do), but we also had some technical difficulties on the way, just to make things worse. The new anchor locker hatches leaked so much that we burned out a bilge pump on the way up and had to replace it during the very roughest portion of our passage, and since we were so far heeled over from sailing upwind, we also had to hand pump water into the central portion of the bilge so that the electric pump could get it overboard for us. It was a lot of work in very unpleasant conditions, but our friend Sean, who sailed with us from New Zealand is an avid boater and his help was invaluable. He pumped and repaired like a maniac. Thanks Sean!!!

Luckily we were able to stop at Minerva Reef for a much needed rest on day 7. Minerva is a spectacular landless atoll, which means it's just a big ring of coral reef with no land on it in the middle of the ocean. Inside is about 2 miles across and the water is quite calm except at high tide when some of the waves sneak over the reef.

We were able to effect some more repairs here and when we left we basically glued the anchor locker hatches shut, thereby temporarily solving that problem. Then we had a two day trip from Minerva to Tonga with basically no wind at all, so we motored up in very calm seas and dropped the anchor off Big Mama's resort (which I've mentioned previously in this blog) and have been enjoying her fine hospitality since then.

We hope to leave in a day or two for the Ha'api group (middle Tonga) and will have no internet access there. We'll be there for a week or two, then up to Vavau in northern Tonga and will send another update and post some photos from there. These are short sails with lots of places to duck in if the weather gets bad, so we expect no trouble along the way.