We watch weather everyday, in fact, several times a day if we are trying to make a passage between islands. A small weather window opened up for our south bound journey from Samoa to Tonga. We had a choice of 2 days to leave, one with higher wind speed and bigger angle with bigger waves or lower wind speed, better angle, with a slight reduction in wave height. Or wait a week or two and hope for different conditions. Wind speed equals time spent on the ocean, in swells. Big swells equals Lisa and kids getting seasick. I’ve never got seasick yet, as I knock on wood. Our boat is a ¾ keel cruiser that loves 20 knots of wind. In fact, she moves great when most landlubbers go inside their house and complain about it being too windy. She handles swells and waves wonderfully due to her heavy weight. I say she’s not fat, just big boned.

We left Samoa on a Tuesday night with plans to sail for 2 days to the Vavu’a island group in Tonga arriving in the morning to insure plenty of daylight to drop the anchor in an unfamiliar anchorage. We have a satellite phone that we can receive emails and texts on and GRIB files that predict the weather. The key word there is PREDICT. The program is actually called PredictWind. Most of the time it has been spot on. This time, the prediction was way off. After 30 hours of bashing into swells, crew puking, and not getting the predicted wind angle to keep up our speed and therefore our desired distance, we decided to divert to the island of Niuatoputapu in the northern most island group of Tonga. It is kinda hard to pronounce in Tongan so the lazy cruising community refers to it as New Potatoes. Sound similar.

At 1:30am in a pitch black, moonless night a rogue wave broke over our boat with tons of green water crashing upon on deck. It was so powerful that the stainless steel surfboard racks snapped in half and a board bag with 3 surfboards was ripped off and washed away. The extra “safety” straps were left dangling as the attachment points on the board bag were also ripped out. We circled around and spent some time searching for the bag, but it was too rough and too dark to see anything. Had to move on and accept the loss.

I did a rough estimate of the miles left and the race was on to get to the pass in the reef surrounding the island before the sun went down. When the sun came up we let out our reefed headsail and increased up our speed for the daylight hours. We made it with about 20 minutes to spare. If we hadn’t made it, we would have sailed in circles for the next 12 hours in the dark and entered when the sun was up. Our friend about SV Neverland, met us at the entrance in their tender and piloted us into the anchorage. Unfortunately, one of our snatch blocks that holds our Genoa control lines exploded just as we made the turn in to the passage and we couldn’t get our headsail in. It flapped non stop for 20 minutes and made a big birds nest of the control lines. Once we dropped the anchor, I spent over 2 hours fixing the lines and thinking of how to repair the block. I had a plan, but first we checked in with the authorities when they came out to our boat, had a few drinks with them, and made plans for an island tour the following day. The cost of the tour was a donation of 1 cold Samoan beer. Our guide was the Minister of Agriculture who also did the quarantine inspections. His nickname of Bingo was assigned by the other boats because he could seek out and smell beer and wine better than any drug dog’s nose. He kindness and genuine good nature was enjoyable. His island knowledge and plant expertise was amazing. We gladly pitched in a few beers for his tour. I know we got the better end of the deal.

The next day we went to see what was for sale in the market, and ran into Stefan, a single German guy who has been sailing from Greece to the south Pacific around south America on a 30 foot sailboat. He saw us enter the reef and knew something was wrong. After I told him what happened, he offered up a set of snatch blocks that were not being used on his boat. Someone passed them along to him and they were too big for his tiny boat, but correctly sized for ours. When I asked him what he needed in exchange, he said beer as New Potatoes is a dry island and he ran out 2 months ago. I dropped off my last cold one for him with the promise of more in the next island group. He was so happy! That’s the cool thing about cruising, the pay it forward actions that always happen. Everyone helps out everyone else.

Losing the board bag and not being able to find it got me thinking about what would happen if one of us went overboard. We have Personal Locator Beacons that attach to our lifejackets that when activated, send a GPS signal to our chart plotter on the boat and any other boats in a 10 mile radius. I decided it was time to test them. They worked perfectly and the other boats in the anchorage saw them on their displays, too. It set my mind at ease knowing we could find someone floating, even in the dark.

When we left a few days later, another German boat got stuck on the reef while leaving. Stefan turned around immediately, coming back into the pass to offer assistance and Stu from SV Neverland and I went out to help pull the boat off the reef. A local fisherman also arrived to help. Luckily the steel boat won the battle with the reef and we got it off by pulling the halyard from the top of the mast at 90 degrees to the boat, heeling the boat over so its keel could clear the reef while Stefan’s boat pulled the boat out in reverse. Crisis averted. A flotilla of 6 boats all left within an hour of pulling the boat off the reef as the weather window for this passage was short. We had a very fast passage to the Vava’u group doing 165 miles in less than 24 hours with 30+ knot winds and 4 meter seas. It was so nice to sleep in lake-like conditions when we got here. Enough words, here are some pictures.

Tongan pigs at rush hour

A typical house

Bingo grabbing us some papayas from his plantation

Fisherman netting his lunch

Lunch

One of Bingo’s many piglets

Mama pig

Kava and yam starters ready for planting

The grass runway at the airport

Airport waiting area

Twice a month flight if the weather permits

Fuel storage. I’d trust that!

Control tower room

Waiting for the next flight

Luke was thirsty, so Bingo asked this kid to climb the tree for some coconuts

40 feet up and still smiling! He dropped down 12 coconuts for us. Used a machete, or Pig Knife in Tonga, to open them for us. We saw him at school the following Monday.