Last Stop, Tonga
Paradise. I may have found it after 4 months at sea. Tonga was the image that I had in my mind when I signed up for my Picton Castle adventure, though I didn't know it at the time. Sparklingly clear water, warm sea breezes, deep blue skies. I imagined living in a pair of shorts day after day, and waking up to balmy morning air. Some of these I did experience at various times, but never in the same place together. The Caribbean was hot--too hot--and the air was hazy. The water around Pitcairn Island was blue and startlingly clear, but it was coolish in the evening. And my most recent stop, Rarotonga, had very changeable weather--and not tropical at all--with a cool wind that made sitting outside sometimes impossible. Plus, the water was almost too cold for swimming.
Yet Tonga, just a few degrees of latitude closer to the equator than Rarotonga, had weather that was much closer to "tropical". That is not to say that it was always perfect. The two days before we arrived were very windy and stormy and we just made it into Neiafu harbour in time to avoid a strong gale that shredded the foresail of a 54-ft yacht owned by friends of Mark & Gabe. Our first few days in the Vava'u island group of Tonga were quite stormy, but shortly afterwards the clouds blew over and the sky and sea went from gray to deep blue.
Tonga is geographically quite different from its neighbour countries. Many of the young islands of the South Pacific are "high", which means that they are steep rocks rising out of the sea. Older ones like Rarotonga have a coral ring around them as they sink. But the Vava'u group is a collection of many islands, some large with a long and narrow bay almost like a fjord, and many small and rocky, with a white sand beach on one side. The entire island group is enclosed by a huge coral reef that tames the ocean swell and creates a piece of heaven for people in yachts, allowing them to sail gently between the 40 or so possible anchorages. The natural setting makes it one of the best places in the world for yacht chartering, which explains why two international charter companies have bases there. It also makes it a welcome stop for yachts that are on the "Coconut Milk Run", the path followed by yachts from North America or the Panama Canal, across the South Pacific, on their way to New Zealand.
The annual seasonal cycle herds a group of about 500 yachts across the South Pacific on a schedule that ends in November. That is the first month of the tropical cyclone season and the time when boats must make their way out of the cyclone path, a swath of the Pacific that encompasses all of the islands between northern Australia and French Polynesia. Yacht insurance is nullified if you are caught in those waters after December 1st. Brave souls who don't rely on insurance may look for "hurricane holes", very sheltered bays that withstand most (but not all) wind and sea conditions, or may take their boats out of the water and anchor them onto a cradle on land. Otherwise they head for New Zealand or Hawaii. Boaters on the annual migration across the Pacific see a lot of each other and friendships develop while at anchor. Communication within groups is maintained via daily short-wave radio "scheds", which let all know how everyone is doing, what the local conditions are, and where their next landfall will be.
Through these daily communications I heard about Robbin and Warren, artists who funded their way across the Pacific by making and selling jewellery, Gordon and Helen, successful Scottish professionals who were taking a sabbatical from their jobs, and Jeff and Deirdre, beneficiaries of the high-tech boom in Seattle. Terry and Kathy were from South Africa, and Chris and Julie were from Belgium. We would meet up on each other's boats for dinners, games of Pictionary, or drinks after a day of snorkelling. We also participated in group shopping expeditions, picnics, and dinners at restaurants. This was another difference between sailing on a yacht and on the Picton Castle that I didn't mention in my last post. One's community is not just your fellow crew-mate, but a collection of cruisers that is doing a similar trip to yours. Therefore, there are always stories to exchange about the same destinations, and hints on the best anchorages, beaches, snorkelling, and shelling.
Northern Tonga is just remote enough that its beaches are empty of people, but full of shells. This was a delightful discovery, as walking along the shoreline and stumbling across a perfect cowrie shell is a thrill I had not yet experienced. Robbin and Warren were the master shellers, with Gabe not far behind. I tried to build up a small shell collection over my short time in Tonga, and supplemented my own finds with a few shells that I bought at the local market. I predict that they may become my most evocative souvenirs.
Robbin and Warren's boat deserves some description. It has the most beautiful interior of any yacht that I have ever seen. They purchased the boat and had the interior completely renovated to their design. They are craftspeople who work mostly in wood, and their boat is solid teak and bamboo inside. It is like living in a piece of beautiful furniture. A picture would be worth a thousand words here, but the most important feature of the boat is its name: Cuchara, the Spanish word for spoon. The reason it has that name is because the boat was bought and built on spoons. Robbin and Warren started making spoons from coconut shells and found wood and sold them at juried craft shows across the US. They are quite expensive (around $200), but they sell well, as each is both utilitarian and an objet d'art. Their goal was to sell one thousand of them to buy the boat, and they did. I bought one (at "mate's rates", but still a lot) in order to remind myself that you can live an idyllic existence floating around in paradise by making something as ordinary as a spoon, as long as you make it beautiful.
Helen, from a boat called Mantra, was an interesting character. She gave up life in a very smart flat on the Thames in London for adventure with her husband. She personifies how people can become very resourceful even if they had been used to a life of comfort and convenience before. Every boater makes their own bread, because flour is easy to carry and bakeries are scarce in the middle of the ocean. But Helen perfected other yeast-based recipes. Going Greek tonight? Make pita breads. Indian requires naans or puri or chapatis. They are all variations on the same thing, even though they all have their own technique, and Helen had perfected them all. Boaters become very resourceful and self-sufficient with concerning food. Some even made their own yoghurt and cheese. Gabe and I tried the former and it was delicious.
After 2 weeks of blissful cruising around the islands, Free Spirit returned to the main town and I disembarked for the second time in five months. Mark and Gabe were leaving for New Zealand in a day and I was going to fly directly to Sydney as soon as I could get a flight. My last 4 days allowed me to explore the main town, a very odd mixture of primitive and modern that I have come to expect in that part of the world. Tonga is a much poorer place than Rarotonga, and the village of Neiafu is a few falling-apart buildings and a covered market with a dirt floor. Pigs roam around the streets freely. Here and there are quite nice cafés, laundries, Internet places, and a few newer hotels, only because of one reason: tourists, and especially boaters. The first thing that everyone wants to do after a week or so at sea is laundry. And despite most boats having short-wave-radio-based Internet, long and detailed e-mails must wait for a land connection, which requires an Internet café. An American who came to Tonga and took up residence saw an opportunity and opened a combination Internet café and laundromat. You drop off your dirty clothes and read your e-mail while you wait. It is very successful.
If anyone wants to visit Tonga, I would suggest sooner rather than later. It hasn't been "ruined" by tourists with too much money yet, and the prices are reasonable. I stayed in a hotel that was on the water in the main town. Their best rooms, with a view, were on the order of $100 per night, but the hotel was built to address all sectors of the market. Many travellers are young backpackers, and I found many places on my travels that cater to them, with dorm rooms, and communal kitchens and living areas. My hotel had a backpackers wing and I stayed there, for $15 per night. The facility was brand new and two occupants shared the top floor. We had our own bathrooms, and the hotel had a pool and a very nice restaurant overlooking the harbour. It was a great way to spend my last few days in the South Pacific.
On the day before I left I rented a bicycle and pedalled around the island as much as I could; that is, until the 32-degree heat wiped me out. (The locals gave me strange looks as I panted up the hills; any sensible person would have been inside with a cool drink.) As I took in the vistas of ocean and islands scattered about, I was struck by how much it all looked like a very tropical version of the Gulf Islands near Vancouver. Mark & Gabe and I mentioned it frequently, and so did Jeff and Deirdre (as they had sailed among the Gulf Islands from Seattle many times).
It is too bad that we all see things using references that we find familiar, but in this case the comparison was involuntary. Tonga is a very beautiful place. It is the perfect place to spend a month or so on a boat. I have always loved sailing among the Gulf Islands, and even more to islands north of Georgia Strait, all a day's sail (or two or three) from Vancouver. I had known that I lived near a boater's paradise, but I was struck at how I was reminded of this fact only after having sailed thousands and thousands of nautical miles, down one ocean, across a sea, and most of the way across the largest ocean in the world. Granted, northern Pacific waters are freezing in comparison, and anchorages can be crowded, considering that 5 million people live in the area, but I will never look at the Gulf Islands in the same way, nor take them for granted, again.
The next day I packed up my considerable luggage and bags full of local crafts. I took a taxi to the airport, where I boarded a small plane to the main island of Tongatapu. My bonus during my last experience of Tonga, and indeed my entire South Pacific sailing adventure, was to travel 2 seats away from Her Majesty the Queen of Tonga, and to see the islands and coral below, complete with humpback whales and their calfs frolicking in the stunningly clear and blue water.
A short time later, I took my seat on the Royal Tongan Airlines 757, bound for Sydney. Around me were people who were returning from a holiday. Their skin was all colours of white, pink, and reddish brown, signs of too much sun in too short a time. I looked at my arms and legs, a perfectly even shade of nut-brown. I was a sailor, at least, for a while.
3:31:58 AM 
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