by KC2RIY, on October 20th, 2010 (
Recently Updated, Sara 2, Sea Mist, Tonga)
Ben woke with stomach pains which put a dampener on his day eventually ruling him out of the things we had planned. In the morning Helen, myself and John from Sea Mist went ashore to stretch our legs. Having asked a local who informed us we could walk north or south and that either was much the same we chose to go north. It almost felt middle aged with the town surrounded by a fence with gates on the roads through which we had to pass to leave. We walked north along a straight track with lush vegetation on either side, often semi cultivated with plenty of fruit trees. We reached the next village to the north which again was surrounded by a fence and gates. We guess this was to keep the pigs in which roamed freely within each village.
Passing through this next village and past a pack of somewhat brave (until we got near them) dogs we found a small trail down to the beach/coast. We walked the beach for a while before finding another, longer and run down path which took us back to the trail joining it just before the gate to the second village. We walked back to the first village collecting a few mangoes on the way which were reached by Helen sitting on my shoulders. Back in the first village I picked up a few extra mobile phone minutes. It always feels strange in a village in the middle of nowhere being able to top up the phone although I do understand it’s easier and cheaper to install mobile phones these days than a land network.
We were back on the boat in time for lunch and a short rest before the afternoon events. We’d planned on getting the hookah out and we’d extended and invitation to Sea Mist to join us. Ian and John responded and with Ben out of action and Helen feeling ambivalent due to the mediocre weather it ended up with the three of us out for just over an hour. Underwater we felt none of the rain that fell. We saw plenty of fascinating corals, not too plentiful fish and explored some caves/channels. I took my small spear gun in case we found lobsters in any of the numerous nooks and crannies but none were peeping out.
Helen cooked up a curry for dinner and as we were settling down John dinghied over from Sea Mist as the one other boat nearby, Sara 2, was having difficulties raising their anchor. The winds were predicted to rotate round overnight and they had been trying to move to get further from the reef. In doing so they’d discovered their anchor was tangled in the coral and had jammed their windlass. John had got involved and figured we needed numbers and muscle to get them shifted before the light fell. John went to fetch his son, Ian, to go underwater and free the anchor while John and I went aboard Sarah 2 to assist. We soon figured out the windlass wasn’t broken and got that going again. With Ian in the water direction our motions and occasionally diving down to free up the chain/anchor we were soon off. I took my leave and zipped off back to Dignity to finish my cooling curry. We capped off the evening by polishing off 4 more episodes of Prison Break. We’re over half way through now.
Today we’re out of here. One could easily chill for days here but there’s lot to see and time is running out. The weather windows form a pattern that seems to repeat every 10 days or so. There’s a weather window opening up right now and some vessels are already legging it south to catch it. Their should be another at the beginning of November. I suspect we’ll catch the one after that.
We learned from Sympatica, over the radio a couple of days ago, that there is an excellent sea mount 3nm away from us. We may well visit that later this morning before heading back to a new anchorage.