Tainui Internet Log
August 2000
Recorded by Brian Fairweather
(continued from Part 1)
August 23 – We end up bypassing the volcano, as the weather is a bit rainy and anchoring would be difficult with the northernly winds... Dan and I make a heartfelt decision to stop swearing, stop drinking and get in some sort of shape! We are both feeling a bit rough from the constant social activities and lack of exercise, so we resolve to do 100 pushups, 100 situps and 100 dips each day. Moreover, if we swear, we add 5 to one of the exercises for the day! (This lasts for about 3 days, until we start making other excuses - "I sanded the teak today, so I'll skip exercises..." However, we are at least not swearing like sailors as much!)
Arrived into Vava'u group as the sun set (got some AWESOME photos!) and navigated the channel into Neiafu Harbour in the dark, since we feel pretty comfortable with the area. Took up a mooring again right outside Ana's Cafe and went to sleep...
August 24 to 26 – The days tend to blend together in Vava'u - we ended up staying here a relatively long time, with little sense of hurry or worry. This is what I liked about the place. There really isn't much here, the local people are fairly boring and religious, there is not much to see or do in the little town, but it was very pleasant just to sit on the boat or take the dinghy into Ana's Cafe.
Dan and I plan to get our PADI Open Water Diver certification, so we sign up for a course with Beluga Diving. Our instructor is Wendy, who took the five of us out when Jasper, Mom and Dad were here. We do a few hours of 'classroom' instruction outside the shipping containers that serve as Beluga's offices, then go for a couple of instructional dives just in the harbour - it is remarkably clear, even here and it makes me feel very good about Vava'u, especially remembering Tongatapu!
On Friday afternoon, we entered the race organised by the Moorings Yacht Rental place - they get a few prizes from local vendors and any boat can race - no handicaps, no allowances, just a racing start and a course around a few bouys in the harbour. Boats from 15 feet to 65 feet all race together, and afterwards, everybody goes to Ana's Cafe, gets a little prize and has a few drinks - these folks at Ana's are not dumb!
TAINUI is a good boat for crossing an ocean, but can't compete on a short course with the Beneteau harbour yachts! They are light, flat bottom boats with a fin keel, whereas we are deep and solid, with a 3/4 length hunk of lead below... However, we do like a good beam reach, and a strong breeze was blowing in the harbour that day. We had recruited a few people to race with us - Dave is a medical student from London doing his summer program in Tonga with a few friends whom we met diving; Justin is sailing on his yacht 'Good Eye Deer' - we met him and his girlfriend in Rarotonga; Wendy, our diving instructor came along, too!
Somehow, we got a great start, right up with the head of the pack! Kiwi Coyote, a full-blooded racing yacht, was quickly ahead, along with two of the Beneteau 51-footers - we were just ahead of the rest of the pack, with Gungha II right behind us - a steel yacht of over 60 feet that was keeping up on the first leg, which was a close reach. By the first turn, the racing boat was 300 metres ahead, with the Moorings 510's just behind - we were still ahead of Gungha II heading into the turn and managed to do a pretty good tack back down the course, even with our inner forestay making it diffucult to move the sail across... ususally, we tack at a leisurely pace, as we sail on the same tack for days at a time, but now we were using every trick we could think of to move the sail across! One of us pulled in the furling line to reduce the sail area, while another couple stood on the bow and pulled the sail around, while yet another couple moved the sheets! In all, we tacked fairly well, but somehow Gungha II got ahead of us - we hoisted our staysail on the new tack - a beam reach - and were thrilled as we started to run right up on them! By the next turn, we were neck and neck and stayed very close (like 10 feet apart) through the next turn... I really liked the thrill of moving a couple of huge yachts through the water, so close together, yet in control! This was mixed with the knowledge that if we smashed into each other, it would be pretty tough to get repair work done out here...
The final turn we took too wide, trying to copy one of the racers - we lost wind, screwed up the tack and watched Gungha II move ahead by a long margin... in the end, we came in a respectable fifth and decided that it had all been really good fun! We won a certificate for 10 pa'angas worth of food from the local fish shop and spent the evening at Ana's, meeting people from the other yachts and discussing our private victories...
August 27 – Everything is shut on Sundays in Tonga, so I spent the day on the boat, continuing on the teak work that I had started a couple days before and needed doing desperately. When we bought TAINUI, we knew she was a great yacht, but needed some cosmetics. I started scraping away at the old varnish that was nearly falling off anyway, sanded and put on a new coat on a small part of the toerails. Wow! Looks a million percent better and I am now excited about doing the whole thing. This becomes my project for the time we are here and I have to say I really enjoyed doing it - Dan, meanwhile had ordered a brand new digital wind instrument to replace the old analogue one that got seawater in it on the way to Raivavae. We each spent a good bit of time working on our projects over the next week...
We spent the afternoon sailing out to Port Maurelle with Dave and Chris, the med students from England who went diving with us while we did our Open Water Course - Dave is a Brit and Chris is from Singapore. It is only a short way to the anchorage named Port Maurelle, an hour or two sailing around the small islands of Vava'u, and Dave and Chris helped do some sanding and scraping of the teak, so that by the time we got there, the whole starboard side was stripped! When we arrived, we were pleased to see the familiar sight of Sea Witch, Jeff and Gail Casher's yacht which we had last seen in Opua, NZ. After we anchored, Dan and I swam the two hundred metres to their boat and talked for a while, then swam back. Dave and Chris were already on the beach, so Dan and I swam the 200 metres in the other direction to join them. After all this exercise, we agreed that there was absolutely no need to do pushups or anything else that day and I think we had a beer instead. So much for resolutions...
August 28 – Monday - back to work - just kidding, we went diving instead! This was the final day of our official course and we were again joined by Chris, Dave and Louisa (another med student). Another Brit named Mike came along on the dives - he is doing a Divemaster course and the Beluga folks give him a chance to do surveys, lead dives, etc. while he works for free, helping out with the chores and driving the boat sometimes. We all end up spending a lot of time together, hanging out at Ana's or the other places in town and it seems a pretty good lifestyle. After our dive that day, we go to pick up Scamp, our new dog! (We're just dogsitting for a friend of Wendy's, but it's fun to have her aboard - for a while...)
Of course, our tiny outboard engine doesn't have enough petrol to make it all the way down to the owner's house and then back to the boat, and we run dry still a far way away from TAINUI. Happily, we row by Gungha II and the owner, Debbie, calls out and asks if we need a ride. We have met Debbie and her family on shore several times and they are pretty cool - Debbie, her husband Mike and their two daughters, Misha and Alix, are from New Zealand, where they run a business chartering their yacht and live aboard during the winter. They have been doing this for something like thirteen years, which means Alix has been sailing since she was about 6 months... The girls seem to love life on the boat and at 16 and 13, are more mature than the other girls their own age who come to visit them on Gungha II. Debbie shows us through the yacht, which is almost identical to the 'dream design' that I had drawn up a few weeks earlier when I was bored one day! After the tour, we take Scamp back to TAINUI in Debbie's dinghy, with our dinghy towed behind...
August 29 – You sure do meet people when you have a cute puppy in your dinghy - everyone knows this dog, and claims to have been there when she was 'rescued' from the mean streets by the owner. Wendy, our dive instructor, is also a veterinarian and told us that Scamp was malnourished and abused as a new puppy, with rickety hind legs. She now is well-fed and frisky, fed on spaghetti with sausage, tinned mackerel and bread. (There is no such thing as dog food on Vava'u!)
We had previously met a couple crew members from a beautiful Swan 79 sailing yacht named Capercallie, and now that the owners had left, the crew was free to invite us aboard for drinks - of course, we brought Scamp. As we were maneuvering the dinghy around the stern of the yacht, Scamp decided to have a swim, so we had to recover her from the water. Now, we boarded this multi-million-dollar luxury yacht with our soaking wet dog, who promptly became so nervous she took a big crap right behind the steering wheel on the lovely teak deck...
The captain, Tony, showed us through Capercallie (5 cabins, crystal, separate crew dining area, wine cellar.... sigh...) and then we all sat in the cockpit and had a few drinks. Tony and his striking blonde English girlfriend Sophie were accompanied by the South African first mate (also called Tony) and Leah, another pretty English blonde. Not a bad life, it seems to me!
We all headed off for dinner at the Mermaid, then the two Tonys headed back to the yacht while Dan, Sophie, Leah and I took their tender (15+ foot, 70hp outboard!) to a housewarming party at Chris, Dave and Louisa's new place. We had brought along a 10-litre container full of a peach-flavoured concoction that Dan mixed up using some of our huge supplies of booze and soon people were in the 'dentist chair,' while somebody poured the stuff down their throats and inevitably, all over their faces. I was still feeling a bit gunshy after the big drink-up in Tongatapu and declined, which I was glad for later, as I was not the least bit hungover the following day...
August 30 and 31 – Once again, the days blend together - Dan finished his work on the new wind instrument, I managed to strip, sand and varnish all the toerails, along with our small cockpit table and drink holder... we went for a recreational dive, now that we are Certified Open Water Divers, with little cards and a certificate with a blue ribbon on it! We dove around Tuungasika (or was it Luafatu??) at a couple of really nice sites called Split Rock and Sea Fans - we even dove into caverns with sea snakes (only one) and thousands of fish all around us.
We were preparing to leave Tonga after nearly three weeks and while I liked the place, I decided that the thing I liked about it was mostly just the freedom to do things as we chose, at our own pace. The diving was amazing and the social life fun, with all the visiting yachts, but the local people seem much less colourful and interesting than those we met earlier - maybe I'm just getting a bit accustomed to the lifestyle?!?
In any case, it was memorable and we met a lot of nice friends whom I hope we see again!
Hope you enjoyed reading - please feel free to send news from home to [email protected] - catch you soon and don't forget the pictures!