Aboard Dignity (Lagoon 420) Blog

Category: Cruiser Connections

  • A great day

    It would be really nice to say that we started our day with a lobster breakfast having done a quick trade with some locals. It really would. So I will.

    Just as we were preparing breakfast Ben called out to say we had some visitors. I quickly made myself decent and went to see who was here. A couple of Tongans were here in their dugout canoe with three lobsters for trade – two quite big and one enormous. They asked if we had any alcohol. As it happened, we did. We’d bought some Tongan spirits in Neiafu which we’d grown to dislike. Having no purpose with it ourselves we have them a bottle of the local ‘whiskey’ if you can call it that. Soon we had the lobsters in the pot. We could not fit all three in at once so the two smaller ones went in first and then the large one. A totally delicious breakfast.

    The Tongans had told us we could find more on the reef near our boat so later that morning Ben and I went out in search of them. The reef turned out to be a fascinating place to explore – one of our best snorkels to date. There were plenty of small underwater caves we could swim in and the odd tunnel we couldn’t. But we found no lobsters of our own. We swam round to where La Tortue had sunk and spent a while peering inside. It was about 20ft down so easy enough to reach and stay for a while. We decided the whole place was fit to scuba dive.

    Back at the boat we decided not to get out of our wetsuits but to ready the hookah so we could start fine cleaning the hulls. When we get to New Zealand we understand we’ll be inspected and if there’s much growth we’ll be forced to haul out and be cleaned off – all at our own expense. We almost finished the port hull before Ben got too cold and the fuel ran out in the hookah so we stopped there.

    After a couple of hours of warming up we decided to go ashore. A second vessel, Tahina, arrived. We’d briefly met Frank and Karen in the past but had yet to get to know them. We called them on the radio to see if they were interested in going ashore. They had lunch to prepare but agreed to meet up later.

    As we headed in, the dugout canoe, this time with three aboard, headed out to Tahina. We were met on the beach by another local who offered to show us around the island. We learned there were nine people on the island. They all lived on Nomuka but were here for three weeks to fish. He showed us where they were drying out fish and octopus for eventual sale to New Zealand in December. We climbed to the top of a local promontory for a great view all around before heading back into the depths of the island. The paths, such as there were any, were sporadic and mainly grown over. He had to use his machete to clear the way a lot of the time. At the peak of the island he cleared a view out to the bay by cutting away the undergrowth blocking the view. Our last stop was a beach on the far side of the peak where he opened up coconuts for us to drink from and eat – totally delicious.

    He then took us back over the top of the island and down to their camp where we met Frank from Tahina and his new crewmate, Paul. We learned from them that the third man in the dugout – the elder – was pissed as a fart. He’d drunk most of the booze we’d traded earlier for our lobsters. As cruisers do we were soon chatting and had arranged for evening nibbles and beers – this time aboard Tahina.

    Another short rest and we were over to Tahina. Frank turned out to have an interesting history, was more than a bit of a tech head who also knew the google founders personally. We’d heard about someone with a cool phone with an application that could show and identify the night sky wherever it was pointed. It turned out to be Frank. He also has a hobby flying kites over islands and photographing them from low altitude and feeding the images to Google for their Google Earth application.

    Plans for today are to do our dive. Frank will probably join us. In the afternoon we hope to finish cleaning the port hull and to start and finish the starboard. Tomorrow we may move off to Nuku’alofa. The wind has calmed which is nice and the seas should now be settling.

  • O’ua

    Our trip into the village was somewhat of a repeat of the previous day. John picked me up at 6:30, we crossed the island, found Kaleb the lobster guy who told us he’d stayed up till 4am but noone came in with lobsters due to the weather. We are destined not to have them.

    We decided to head for the island for O’ua. This time Helen helmed the boat off the anchor while Ben raised it. With the winds up around 20 knots this was quite challenging and they did well to do this. They followed up by raising the sails and getting us on our way to O’ua including having to tack twice to squeeze between two islands. Sea Mist left a little later and headed further south as they’ve decided to make a party down in Nuku’alofa which we’re not so keen on.

    There are a few anchorages around O’ua and we chose the one to the north behind the reef but exposed to the wind.

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    This had mixed blessings. The wind gen loved it and the reef protects us pretty well from the swell making it quite calm. The wind picked up and stayed in the mid twenties all day. It also rained heavily all day and into the night pinning us inside the boat. Had we chosen the anchorage to the west of the island we may have had a bit more protection from the wind. For the first time in a long time I set my spare GPS to alarm if we dragged but fortunately this didn’t go off overnight.

    We collectively made a decision last night to favour more time in New Zealand rather than here. This may be influenced by the generally poor and cool weather we’ve had for the last few days. We’re slap bang in the middle of one good weather window down to New Zealand. Chances are we’ll take the next one which. The weather windows occur in cycles of 8-10 days as highs spill of Australia and head east. The boats that caught this one appear to have had a good ride. This has turned out to be very much a ‘La Nina’ year which means we should see reinforced trade winds as well as the weather patterns moving south earlier than normal. There is certainly evidence of this. The winds have been pretty strong recently. Looking at the wind forecasts for the north of New Zealand the westerlies have given over to easterlies as the trades have pushed down in late October – something I understand doesn’t normally happen until November. If this persists then the normal sail plan to head more west early on to catch the westerlies on the final leg gives over to sailing the rhumb line which makes the trip shorter and easier. We’ll see.

  • Lobsters?

    At 6:30am, John from Sea Mist dropped by and picked me up to go ashore. We trecked the 1/2 mile across the island to the village on the windward side to find the chap who bought lobsters from the overnight fishermen and sold them on. With all our luck finding them ourselves, this represented our best chance. It turned out the seas had been too rough the night before so noone had brought any in. So it turns out we can’t even buy them.

    On the way back to the wharf we found Peter who had agreed to find us some fruit. After nearly a couple of hours of trekking through the plantations outside of the village we had a few bags full of lemons, mangoes and papaya. At the wharf we negotiated a price for it all and headed back.

    During the morning I did a few minor projects. I tend not to mention this in the blog these days as I think it’s a little boring to write about and mainly I tend to forget about it when I get round to writing the blog.

    Shortly before 12:30am John picked all three of us up to go ashore for the dinner we had been offered by Miimi in the village. Another trek across the island and we met up with Chris and John from Sara 2 and Lorraine and Chris from Gryphon 2. Cheryl and Ian from Sea Mist had stayed behind as neither were into sea food and we had been promised fish and lobster. On entering Miimi’s house we saw that our luck was in. There were indeed lobsters on the table. As seems to be the custom, the eight of us guests sat down to a prepared dinner while Miimi, her husband and other relatives were around. Two of them spent the entire dinner wafting fans to keep the flies away from us. The dinner was tasty and filling. At the end, after some conversation, we offered the gifts we’d all brought from our boats to Miimi who seemed quite pleased.

    The afternoon, such that was left, was spent back on the boat generally relaxing.

    Today we’ll definitely be moving on. Not without one more trip ashore to see if we can pick up lobsters today. You never know.

  • Ha’afeva

    For our sail to Ha’afeva I again gave Helen and Ben a challenge. This was to determine the best route and plot this into the chart plotter. There was a choice of going around the north or south of the island and based on wind direction, etc. it was really up to them. They decided to go head sail only. With 20 knots of wind this was a reasonable thing to do. I performed my usual (for now) role at the helm to get us off the anchor but handed over to them to set the head sail, get us out from the reef and sail us over to Ha’afeva.

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    On arrival we saw Sea Mist and Leu Cat here with Kamaya just raising their anchor. Behind us Sara 2 was arriving. The Sea Mists having been here 24 hours were just going ashore at the same time as we were so we ended up hiking the road across the island to the village together. In the village we found a chap who sells lobsters and agreed to pick up two each the following morning.

    Later on during our walk around the village we were greeted by Miimi who invited us over to lunch the following day. We’d heard about this before and were half hoping this would happen. The custom is they invite us to lunch and we bring gifts from the boat. She promised us sea food, including more lobster.

    On the way back we bumped into another local called Peter who I think wanted to invite us to lunch but on discovering we’d been invited by Miimi he offered us (probably to sell) some mangoes. We were interested but suggested we’d bring some bags the following day when we collected the lobsters.

    Back in the dinghy we dropped by Leu Cat to say hello as we hadn’t spoken to them since Tahiti although we had seen them in Nieafu. As we eventually arrived back at Dignity we were offered a generous chunk of Wahoo from Griffon 2 who’d also just arrived. They’d caught a 36lb fish and had too much for themselves. That was turned into a delicious curry for the evening.

    Right now I’m downloading the day’s weather forecasts while I wait to go ashore with John from Sea Mist to get our lobsters and mangoes.

  • Uonukuhihifo

    Try saying that with a mouthful of biscuit crumbs.

    We decided not to stay at the last stop setting sail mid-morning. The wind was up around 20 knots and I decided it would be a good day to give Ben and Helen some sailing practice. Although there was a pass that would make the trip to Uonukuhihifo somewhat simpler I decided to go the long way around the reef forcing us to make more turns and put in a lot of tacks to recover the distance we’d lose against the wind. I more or less told them to work out how they would work together to bring the boat to the anchorage and stood back to keep an eye on things. It was a good exercise as by the end both had noticeably improved on their handling of the boat. With the big and challenging trip to NZ ahead of this we’ll need more of this.

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    Arriving at Uonukuhihifo we discovered we were the only ones there. This was not to last as Sea Mist had the same intentions – we’re both using the same guide book and hence are choosing more or less the same anchorages. Ben and I went ashore and walked around the island scouting out possible places to go lobstering and somewhere to have a fire in the evening. Uonukuhihifo turned out to be too exposed to the wind for a fire so we went over to Uonukuhahaki and found a good spot and spent some time nearby collecting firewood.

    We invited the Sea Mists ashore for company around the fire and around 6pm we lit up spending a pleasant few hours chewing the cud ashore. Ben, Ian and I had agreed to come out at 6:30am on the reef to hunt lobsters. However, when I woke this morning the continued trades have picked up the seas on the outer reef making the prospects of snorkeling there less than inviting.

    We’re probably going to head west today to the island of Ha’afeva. Sea Mist have the same plans so we’ll be in lockstep for a while still.