Altair Cruising Log

Bula Bula from Fiji (hello in Fijian). We arrived in Fiji 25 July after a great three-day passage from Tonga. We started off in somewhat boisterous conditions, caught a mahi mahi half way, and ended up motor-sailing the last eighteen hours. In crossing the180th Meridian of Longitude, we not only crossed over the true International Date Line, but also entered Melanesia from Polynesia. Interesting that this imaginary line separates these two distinctly different looking people. The Fijians are wonderfully friendly people and always seem to have a warm smile ready that lights up their whole face. There is also a large Indian population here and we are enjoying the different cultures. Getting our tongues around some of the Fijian words requires a bit of effort as words are frequently spelled two ways and pronounced a third totally different way, but we are slowly getting the hang of it. The islands are much larger than those in Tonga and it seems almost strange to see land stretching off into the distance after the many small islands of Tonga. But more on Fiji later, first we will finish up with Tonga.

Picking up where we left off -- leaving the Tongan capital of Nuku'alofa we did an overnight passage and then spent a week revisiting anchorages in the Ha'apai Group that we had first explored last November. The Ha'apai has wonderful quiet islands with great sand beaches, excellent shelling and a more rural/isolated feeling than other parts of Tonga. The villages in Ha'apai are all very neat with no litter and the houses have wonderful gardens. The rich volcanic soil here supports a variety of crops that prosper in the bush between the different villages. The Ha'apai are visited by far fewer yachts each year than other parts of Tonga and so cruisers are still a novelty. Everywhere we went in Ha'apai we were greeted by the kids who would follow along as we made our way through a village. Many times we felt like the Pied Piper as the group of kids would grow as we walked along all wanting to say hello to the "Pelangi" (whites) and to ask our names.

Pigs are a common sight all over Tonga and you see them everywhere - walking down the street in town, going up the path to church, even walking on the beach. The cute little piglets trotting along after their mom's is an entertaining sight. There are fences around the homes to keep the pigs out and fences around the villages to keep the pigs in, but they all know where home is and come when they are called. Each family has a log they drum or a distinct whistle to call them home, reminds me of when we were kids.

We stopped at the island of Nomuka, with the smaller Nomuka Iki across the channel, to visit a Peace Corps couple we had met last year, Jonathan and Cory. We had enjoyed learning more about how Peace Corps works, their work here in Tonga and more about Tongans from people who live among them. It was fun to catch up with them, to find out that they were safe and not much affected by Tropical Cyclone "Waka" on New Year's Eve. We also discussed their plans for the future once their stint with Peace Corps comes to an end next March. After taking their Tongan cat to the states, they plan travel for a couple of months before starting advanced degrees. We had a great picnic together with them and our friends off "Patron" on the beach on Nomuka Iki, they really enjoy a chance to get away from the eyes of the village as living here on a small island is like living in a small town anywhere.

While in the Ha'apai in November we used CMAP electronic charts on a regular basis for the first time as we only had one chart and a cruising guide for this area. You run CMAP on your laptop computer with the GPS plugged in and you can follow your exact course on the computer screen as you sail or motor along. It's like magic and we can easily see how people get hooked on this and use it as for all of their navigation. Although we like the ease of CMAP, we feel we will always carry paper charts as they work quite well even when wet which is not true of computers and other electronic navigation gear. But it is quite amazing to have all the charts for the world right in our computer.

Our friend Sally from Jackson Hole joined us in Ha'apai and made the trip up to Vava'u with us. She was our first boat guest and had been traveling with another friend doing diving in Fiji and Niue. It was fun to be able to share one of our favorite places with a good friend, to introduce her to our cruising friends and to show what our life is really like out here. It's hard to explain the day-to-day realities, both joys and frustrations, with mere words.

We have so greatly enjoyed all of the parts of Tonga we have visited but our favorite is probably the Vava'u Group, a fantastic collection of islands that is the sailing and tourist center of Tonga. The islands are like stunning green jewels surrounded by white sand beaches and scattered among the bright turquoise waters. You can enjoy the solitude of a small island anchorage all to yourselves or the camaraderie of fellow cruisers and the local community in the main town of Neifau. Neifau has everything from great restaurants, local Tongan dance presentations, dart nights, Friendly Islands Yacht Races, shopping, laundry and various yacht support services all within an easy walk. Vava'u is a fantastic cruising ground as everything is within an easy one to two hour sail and if you don't like where you are at mid-day it's easy to anchor up and go some place else. For those sailors out there - if you are thinking about a bareboat charter some time in the future, consider Tonga, both Moorings and Sunsail have bases here, and it's a magical place. Vava'u offers so much - white sand beaches for walking, great snorkeling and diving, caves to explore and swimming with whales besides the fantastic sailing over the bright turquoise blue waters. There are numerous small resorts scattered among the islands if you wanted to go out for drinks or dinner away from town. Everything is on a smaller scale and very simple here with no major hotel chains and no over the water bungalows. It can be a bit of a challenge to get to, but well worth the effort as the possibilities here are endless.

Neifau is great and very cruiser friendly. Right on the waterfront there is a "small complex" with two restaurants, Moorings and Sunsail bases, Sailing Safaris Marine Center, two dive operations, laundry etc all easily accessible from a couple of dinghy docks. Almost one-stop-shopping so to speak. It is a great community and you immediately feel a part of everything. You can easily visit with friends and have lunch while changing the laundry from washer to dryer. This year as returning cruisers we especially felt welcomed as people remembered us by name from last year and with fewer boats here (being so early in the season) we quickly got to be better friends with a number of the Tongans and Palangi's who run the businesses that offer services for cruisers.

One of the fantastic things about Tonga is the humpback whales who come here each winter to calf. This year we were a bit early and the whales were a bit late in arriving so we missed seeing any of them, but last October we had the opportunity to go on a whale-watching trip, which was outstanding! Whalesong, the boat we went out on, is an old landing craft which worked great as they would lower the front of the boat and you could easily get in and out of the water from the landing gate to swim with the whales. After seeing the whales' surface several times we got in the water with a humpback whale and her calf. It was truly an amazing sight to see these huge creatures swimming up to the surface from beneath you, the mother and calf just seemed to emerge out of the depths, one moment you could not see them and the next moment they were right there. They started a 90 degree turn just below us, surfaced, then with one whip of the tail, they disappeared down into the deep blue waters. We also had a mother and calf off Altair one afternoon. We were just getting the sails set when we looked off the port side and saw something white in the water that looked a bit like a sandy bottom. But we were in over 200 feet of water- what could it be? Whales! Quick turn the boat away from them! They surfaced and then were gone. It's fun to be so close to the whales on our own boat, but a bit scary all the same as in a collision; the whale would probably "win" over Altair.

While in the Vava'u Group we would usually return to Neifau on Friday afternoons to re-supply, do laundry and to do the "Friendly Islands Yacht Race" organized by Moorings and Sunsail. It was certainly different racing "the house" complete with 300 feet of anchor chain in the bow and all our cruising gear aboard. There were anywhere from six to 20 boats racing each week including some of the local charter fleet as well as a number of cruisers and all boats received one prize and occasionally two. This year the cruisers who raced regularly included an Oyster 53 from England, an older Farr 42 from New Zealand that still looked very current in design and Altair. Prizes included dive trips, dinners at restaurants, bottles of beer or wine, and video rentals with the "best" prizes not always going to the winners, especially if they were the local charter boat staff. Last year we crewed on a friends J-130 for our first race, winning easily, and then raced Altair on the following three Fridays. We introduced several cruising friends to racing which was a great deal of fun and since the prizes were worthwhile, of course we had to try our luck again. This year we raced "the house" in four Friday night races with our best finish being second, excellent for Altair against the bigger boats! Our last race was very specially and great fun as we had three locals on board: Hollie, the Palangi manager from Mermaid and Sailing Safari who is a sailor; a new waitress on her staff who had never been on a sailboat before; and a young man (perhaps 16 years old) from Sailing Safaris who did an excellent job driving the boat on the down wind legs. In each race we always had a great time, the most important thing of all. We managed to win several dive trips over the two seasons giving Paul a great, diverse diving experience in Tonga.

One of the interesting things about returning to Vava'u this season was to check out for ourselves the damage done by Tropical Cyclone Waka with its 150 knot winds that roared through New Year's Eve 2002. We were really quite amazed at how much things seemed back to normal in only six short months especially after the harrowing stories we heard from friends about roofs being lifted off and boats being tossed ashore as the cyclone passed directly overhead. We noticed that the vegetation was a bit thinner in places as many trees were blown down, but if you had not been here before, you might not have noticed at all as the islands looked pretty much the same, businesses were open and ready to greet this year's visitors. There are still a few blue or yellow tarps on roofs around town and a few buildings still being rebuilt but otherwise things were all back to normal. The banana trees seemed to have to taken a beating during the cyclone and bananas were in short supply while we were there but otherwise the selection of fruit and veggies in the market was about the same.

It was fun to return to a place we knew after exploring so many new places last year. Nice to feel you belong sometimes. All in all the Kingdom of Tonga is a fantastic place to visit and we will always have fond memories of our time there.

Cheers -- Suzette and Paul