South Pacific « Aboard Dignity (Lagoon 420) Blog

Update

by steve, on October 11th, 2010 (Infinity, Tonga)

News on the injured person from yesterday is not encouraging. I won’t name him but it’s a chap we do know. He’s the boyfriend of a girl who works at one of the whale watching outfits here. We’ve seen him at a lot of the parties and is always energetic. He was up on the crows nest on Infinity when he fell, perhaps 30ft or so, landing on his back on the roof of the boat missing all deck hardware and other protuberances. Ben witnessed the landing as was soon alongside while helping to stabalize him while an on board doctor examined him more closely. There were clear head injuries but he was soon conscious and able to move fingers and toes. They got him ashore strapped to a surf board which was fortunate as the dock they landed on collapsed leaving the shore party in the water and the injured chap floating on the surf board. He is now currently in the hospital. There are medical staff here in Tonga but no specialists and calls have been made for additional help. It’s all very sobering.

From what I heard of the effort to get the patient ashore and my involvement with the individuals coordinating the effort I was very impressed with how they handled the very difficult situation in a less than perfect environment. The crew of Infinity deserve a lot of credit for their response to the wayward antics of one of their guests which could have been tragically worse.

Ben and I are currently ashore enjoying the free internet at the Aquarium Cafe. I have managed to upload a lot of recent photos so if you page back through the last few entries you should see some new pics. The earliest uploaded are those of Ben’s chemistry lesson.

Party time

by KC2RIY, on October 11th, 2010 (Infinity, Tonga)

Can’t say too much about the afternoon as I did get down to some paperwork. Always frustrating on labouriously slow internet connections but I made a fair bit of progress. Ben did some snorkeling under the boat and managed to snag a fish which he tossed back as it was not as big as the ones we have still in the freezer.

In the afternoon Ben and I went ashore to find the local distillery where we’d heard we could get some cheap rum. We did find it and after some samples bought a few bottles.

In the evening we went ashore to eat at the local Chinese. The food was again excellent and we ate perhaps a little too much as we ended up quite bloated. At 8:30 we dinghied over to Infinity as they are here in the harbour and again had a party. Helen and I stayed until 11:30 and Ben brought us back to Dignity before returning to Infinity to finish off his rum.

Around 12:30 we were woken to a call from Infinity for an ambulance to meet them ashore. We don’t know the details yet but there had been an injury, possibly spinal, and they needed assistance. The hospital wouldn’t answer their number but I managed to call one of the local restauranteurs who drove to the hospital. I did manage to confirm the injured party was not Ben and when he called later to confirm he was ok we were fully relieved. I put the person coordinating the evacuation aboard Infinity directly in touch with the local I had contacted and listened in for a little longer in case there was any other help required.

Ben returned in the early hours waking us up with his crashing around in the galley and his loud apologies. We didn’t inquire then into the specifics of the accident but it sounded serious. Hopefully the light of day will show things in a better light.

Today we’re off karting around the island. The Bamboozles are joining us and Helen has decided to come too. Should be fun.

Back to Neiafu

by KC2RIY, on October 10th, 2010 (Passages, Tonga)

Our plan was to head back to Neiafu stopping for one night on the way. After some deliberation we decided to stop by the island of Utungake. There really wasn’t much wind so we motored all of the way there.

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Shortly after arrival and making sure the boat was sitting well at anchor we dinghied around the corner to the Tongan Beach Resort to look around and see if we wanted to eat there. It turned out they were doing a lunch time BBQ so we decided to hang around. We ended up spending a peaceful three hours there reading magazines and books as well has having the BBQ washed down with a couple of beers.

When we got back to the boat we found it had swung around 90 degrees and was now dangerously close to the reef. It would have been on it if the chain hadn’t have wrapped around a coral head. Needing no better excuse we up anchored and completed our trip to Neiafu where we anchored more or less at the same place as before.

Not a lot to say about the rest of the day. I did pop over to see March on Passages who is now out of hospital having earlier been in for a leg infection. I also popped by Stella Maris to help them with a computer problem which he solved in the process of showing me his problem – it’s often the way. I didn’t escape without being plied with a beer and receiving some useful advice about the passage to New Zealand.

This morning we’ve been a bit busy. We’ve extended our Tonga visas for another month and booked our karting for tomorrow and dive the day after. Our evening schedules are bouncing around a bit but it now looks like party on Infinity tonight, Ovavu’s pizza tomorrow (one of the local’s birthday) and possibly curry evening aboard Dignity on Wednesday followed by Tonga Bob’s and the fakaleitis. We’ve also done some provisioning but not all we need to do. Once we leave here it will be nearly three weeks before we will see a half decent supermarket / store so we do need more. I’ve also started the paperwork for New Zealand which is nearly complete. I may just get around to doing some tax work this afternoon – it has to be done sometime.

Barnacle Beach

by KC2RIY, on October 9th, 2010 (Anthem, Bamboozle, Pursuit, Tonga, Wonderland, Zephyrus)

Around mid morning we dinghied ashore to Nuku to explore the island. There wasn’t a great deal to see but we did get to stretch our legs. Back on the boat we hooked up the hookah so we could explore the area in which we are anchored a little better. Ben and I went down shortly before lunch as we were keen to see what fish we could catch deeper than we could free dive. We found an underwater prominantary which appeared particularly abundant at around 70ft. Here we snagged a couple of groupers of a decent size which we took back to the boat where we gutted and bagged them for a later meal.

In the afternoon Helen and I went out, not going quite so deep, to explore the corals. The area is quite abundant with fish of many different species and numbers. Around each coral head was a blaze of colourful fish which made for a pleasant exploration.

After this I popped over to Zephyrus who had anchored nearby to pick up our diesel. It turned out our jerry can, which had held diesel all the way over from the Galapagos, had sprung a leak. Andy offered to replace the can but I declined his offer saying that it must have been faulty and would soon have gone on us. He did have our diesel in a can so I took that and tipped it into our tanks promising to drop off the can later on.

We’d decided to have a ‘Tonga Feast’ that evening as Barnacle Beach was nearby and they have a feast every Saturday evening. On the way there we dropped of the diesel can back at Zephyrus as well as loaning them our phone. We’d had reports of a boat than sunk 110nm to our south and it turned out to be very good friends of theirs. We knew the crew had been rescued but Andy needed to contact them. I’d bought some extra minutes expecting to be talking to the US to fix our charger (which we won’t be doing here now) so they’d have gone to waste any way. Hopefully Andy will have got through.

Next stop was Barnacle Beach for our feast. The first thing we learned that it was bring your own wine which we hadn’t. I had to whizz back to Dignity for a couple of bottles getting back late. There were a few folks there we knew – Jack from Anthem, Evy from Wonderland, the Bamboozles and we got to know Gary and Tiere from Pursuit.

The feast was very well laid out and very, very tasty. There were all sorts of meats, fruits and salads laid out in shells including a small roast pig. We felt quite full. After the food we had four Tongan solo dancers doing their thing. We were then given some time to mingle and chat before the evening was over.

The winds which have been blowing hard for the last 2-3 days have finally subsided. It is quite calm right now. We intend to move closer to Nieafu today before reentering the harbour tomorrow. Ben is quite pleased as Infinity is in town and they’ve already announced a party on Monday night.

Nuku

by KC2RIY, on October 8th, 2010 (Bamboozle, Tonga)

As a result of a weather system sitting over Tonga the wind stayed above 20 knots and the anchorage we were in lost it’s charm. We therefore decided to tuck in behind Nuku and take shelter from the strong south easterlies and get out of the chop. The sail over was quite bouncy forcing us to put things away which is normally only required if we go out into the ocean when it’s bad.

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Ben wanted to cook up the fish he caught for lunch so we decided to snorkel again before lunch to see if we could add to our fare. It was an interesting swim with plenty of colourful coral around the 20-30ft mark. Ben bagged a couple of more fish which I threaded onto a line I’d bought which we took back to the boat, gutted, wrapped in tin foil and cooked along with one from the previous day. All three fish were quite tasty.

Recovering from the night before we all dozed off in the afternoon. Waking later we found the boats that had been here had left and Bamboozle had arrived. They invited us over to dinner which we accepted. We ended up staying until midnight, partly due to the torrential rain and thunder that kept us inside and partly because we were enjoying ourselves too much.

During the course of the day I fleshed out our plans and timetable for getting to New Zealand. We’re going back to Neiafu on Monday where we’ll stay 2-3 days to renew our visas and to use up our prizes from the regatta. We’ll then head out to the anchorages on the SW side of this group for a few days before spending the next 2 weeks or so heading down to Tongatapu where we’ll clear out. The trip down to New Zealand will take anywhere between one to two weeks largely depending on the weather which in turn will affect whether or not we stop at Minerva Reef on the way. We’ll arrive in NZ somewhere around the 20th of November.

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