We’ve been on the hook in Neiafu for 9 days – something of a record for us this year. Time to move on – even if we’re heading back fairly soon. We’ve now moved down to Ano Beach / Tapana in readiness for this evenings Full Moon Party. We’re looking forward to it. We’re being encouraged to go dressed as pirates. I briefly thought about going as a video pirate but decided to go with what was expected. We still have our ‘light sabres’ from Grenada. These will do for our pirate swords.
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Day two was hard and fast. The morning saw us entering the corn hole tournament. Just a bit of fun really but it ended up being quite tense. I ended up partnering John from Sea Mist and made it all the way to the final losing by a whisker. We played five long rounds in all which took, including a long break in the middle, about 4 hours.
This morning we were all hung over – what a surprise. I put it down to the dehydration during the corn hole contest. This morning we forced ourselves out and about despite our resisting minds and bodies. Ben is back working on and rehearsing for the full moon party tomorrow. Helen and I visited a local kindergarten and watched the kids singing away for us. The second annual Tonga regatta kicked off around 11am in blazing sunshine. We were there for the opening involving local politicians and prayers and speeches and prayers and some more prayers. We picked up our ‘passports’ and signed up for a number of events and tee-shirts all to support the locals who have been so friendly to us. Our ‘passports’ encouraged us to visit a number of street stalls and local businesses to collect points which may help us qualify for some prizes at the end of the week.
As the local Chinese restaurant was one of our ‘passport’ stops we decided to go there for our evening meal. For just over US$20 we all ate very, very well (and deliciously) and had a beer each. Fantastic value. Much to do today including Fancy Dress pub crawl this evening. All for more points on our passports. Monday was the wet day which somewhat curtailed our activities. In the morning we dropped off an empty propane tank for a fill and picked up our repaired main sail (which we’ve yet to reattach). We did a little shopping as that evening we had a curry dinner planned with Callisto and Delos. Throughout the day I spent more time copying DVDs to my hard drive for future viewing. Around 6pm Brian, Erin and Brady from Delos along with the Callistos came over for curry and drinks. Everyone had made a couple of dishes and it went very well. Somehow we polished of a great quantity of beers and gin.
We finished the evening watching the movie ‘Fastest Indian’ which we really enjoyed. Ben went ashore with Brady and Jenny for just a couple of beers but we were asleep before he returned. They’d ended up on Mojomvo playing Clue/Cluedo until midnight. Today sees the start of the regatta when we expect to find out more about what’s planned about the week ahead. We may well shift the boat out of this anchorage on Friday to get a break for the scene but only for a couple of days. We’re still waiting for our charger to arrive. It’s been a bit frustrating as for a number of reasons it was delayed in sending. Apparently it’s now in transit but it’s been impossible to get hold of the tracking number which is even more frustrating as I’d like to hand that over to our agent before we head out of here. We spent most of the day on the boat not doing a lot. I’ve been working my way through building up my movie library which takes time. More folks we knew showed up in the harbor ready for the regatta/rendezvous next week including Inspiration Lady who we first met in the Caribbean. We went ashore for our evening meal at The Balcony for their Aussie BBQ. We shared our table with Ed and Cornelia from A Cappella and Kerry and Andrew from Mariposa. Later we were joined by Anne, Mike and Jenny from Callisto. Although we didn’t intend to we stayed quite late and polished off a few beers. |
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We rested the afternoon building our strength up for the fancy dress pub crawl. Looking amongst all the gear on the boat it was hard to come up with anything really innovative as we’d got rid of all 
our junk coming onto the boat. We visited 10 pubs in all have at least one drink in each. The last stop was Tonga Bob’s where we stayed on dancing until we could last no longer (at least Helen couldn’t). When we returned to the boat we were shocked to discover it was already 2am.
