Goodbye Tropics!

It is with mixed emotions that we prepare the sail off to New Zealand. On this passage, we’ll sail from the Western Hemisphere into the Eastern, we’ll cross the Tropic of Capricorn leaving the warm tropics behind, and we’ll surpass 10,000 nautical miles sailed since departing Seattle. Tonga is a great place and there is still so much more to explore, but we’ve heard New Zealand is pretty great too. Regardless of how much we would like to stay in Tonga, we have to move on to avoid cyclone season in the tropics. As we prepare to leave Tonga we’re splitting our time between enjoying the Vava’u Group and boat work to ensure Surface Interval is ready.

Many of our tasks are as the same as those we’ve done before other long or challenging passages: up the mast for a rigging check; provisioning; topping up fuel; passage meal preparation; laundry; reinstalling the hydrovane; navigation planning; writing a float plan and sending it to our onshore emergency contacts; stowing the dinghy; completing any and all country departure and arrival documents; and watching the weather. We’ve also tackled a number of other projects including fixing the jib foil extrusion for the furler (as described in our last post), tightening the jib leach line, adding chafe guard to the jib halyard, cleaning the fridge and defrosting the freezer, setting out insect traps to confirm we don’t have any unwanted stowaways, renewing our boat insurance, adding a low friction ring to the third reef point on the mainsail and chafe guard to the third reef line, and cleaning the vacuum (as recommended by New Zealand rules). New Zealand has a reputation for stricter enforcement of customs rules than some other countries, so we also did a complete review of all food stores to ensure we accurately declare “risk items” upon entry such as meat, dairy, certain grains, honey, and eggs. New Zealand is also very proactive about trying to decrease vessels bringing in aquatic invasive species. We spent about half a day cleaning our hull. We hope it meets their standards, but at the very least it was time well spent to have a nice smooth hull for the passage.

On the enjoyment side, we’ve hopped around to a few different anchorages in Vava’u and have been diving a lot since returning to Vava’u from Ha’apai. We joined in some cruiser festivities including a dinghy parade (where we dressed as Pirates), a land tour of the main island to multiple lookout points and a botanical garden, meals with presentations from locals, and a pub crawl (where we dressed as Traveling Americans Pretending to be Canadians because the theme was dressing like your country).

We took ourselves diving off the dinghy at reefs near our anchorages, for one last dive on the wreck in Neiafu Bay, and spent one morning with cruising friends on a dive company boat to pinnacles on the north side of Vava’u. One of the most spectacular experiences was off a pinnacle near the start of the dive when a school of more than 70 barracuda appeared from the blue. They swam towards our group, then parted to swim around us as we floated through the middle of them. Overhead there was a whirlpool of swirling barracuda between us and the surface. Magical. We also spotted a green sea turtle who hung out with us for a while before swimming away. Other highlights from our dives included seeing three different species of anemonefish, delicate brittle stars, two trumpetfish biting each other (fighting or courting?), a sand dollar (first since leaving the cooler waters in the US), brightly colored thorny oysters, giant clams, many-spotted sweetlips, juvenile dotted sweetlips, a school of 20+ bigeye barracuda, juvenile pacific sailfin tang, upside-down jellyfish, juvenile yellow boxfish, painted spiny lobster, nudibranchs, circular spadefish, lots of beautiful coral, and a rare ORNATE GHOST PIPEFISH (so exciting!!!!!) nicely camouflaged inside a feather sea star. Diving in Tonga has been a real treat, with much healthier coral than we’ve seen elsewhere this year.

The other exciting step towards our next passage was the arrival of our friend Josh. He volunteered in a heartbeat when we emailed him a few months ago asking if he would like to join as crew for this passage. This passage is known for being a bit rough, so we decided we wanted a third person, and Josh is a great fit. Low pressure systems moving through the southern hemisphere can whip up intense wind and sea state, especially on the approach to New Zealand. With Josh onboard we’re wrapping up passage preparations and enjoying a few more days in Tonga.

Next Stop: Minerva Reef (weather dependent) and Opua, New Zealand