On the Road Again! Sailing from Vava’u to Fiji

Day 31-35 - Monday thru Friday, September 25-29

Monday September 25

We are still in Vava’u today, getting papers to leave Tonga, buying provisions, doing laundry and a whole sundry of other maintenance and repair projects. It’s a lovely day here and I can’t think of a nicer place to do chores as we prepare to set sail for Figi tomorrow (our Tuesday). We are expecting lighter winds and a nice 3.5 to 4 day/night sail to SavuSavu, which will be our port of entry into Fiji.

After our multi-hour processing at customs to receive our exit papers, we headed to a nearby sheltered lagoon to spend the night. We arrived around sunset and, as always, it didn’t disappoint.

Tuesday September 26

We got a leisurely start to the day, pumping the bilge (we still haven’t found the leak) and doing a few chores. Then we decided to go to a nearby famous spot for a morning snorkel. We took a short dinghy ride and landed in the middle of a gorgeous coral reef called “The Japanese Gardens”. There were so many different types and sizes of coral. At one point, Mickey and I saw a huge coral that looked just like a hammerhead shark at a distance. Fortunately for us, it was just a large coral head. There were angel fish, much smaller than ones we’ve seen in other places. There were various kinds of starfish, brownish in color and others bright blue. But by far the star of the show at this reef was the coral.

There was a good chance we would see whales in the channel leading into the lagoon where we spent the night. They are known to be in this area and south. But we didn’t spot any. However, as we left the island group heading back into the open ocean, we spotted a mama and her baby. Our whale spotting count is now 17.

As we depart this idyllic place, you can see island after island after island, reef after reef after reef. It is so beautiful it really takes your breath away. No pics can do it justice.

Wednesday, September 27

We sailed all night, so it was another night watch scenario for the 3 of us. Gotta admit, was a bit out of practice but it all came back to me - watching wind speed, boat speed, course over ground, and radar for other vessels. And we actually saw another boat! It was the first time while sailing that we encountered another sailing vessel. It was about 4 miles north of us and passed us. We could see the sails on the horizon and believe it was a fast catamaran.

As we set sail, Xavier explained that we would have a west-northwest heading even though Figi is pretty much due west. This is due to the wind predictions over the next 3-4 days. Xavier uses various apps when plotting our course, one of which shows quite accurate wind predictions up to 5 days. If we were to sail due west, we could encounter the doldrums, an area of “dead air” where we would lose all wind and speed. To avoid this, we are traveling a bit north and will come back to Savu Savu, Fiji, our next port of entry. 

Mickey prepared a nice seafood pasta dish with a butter and white wine sauce. We are definitely not going to go hungry!

Thursday, September 28

Mickey rigged up his fishing gear. He wanted to try some deep sea fishing off the back of the boat and today is the perfect day. We have much milder seas and winds, almost too mild!

Since the wind is so light, Xavier decided to put up the Spinnaker sail. This is the very large sail that is used in these occasions to try and capture as much wind as possible. We had used the Spinnaker when sailing to Maupiti very early on in our voyage. Some of the lines had gotten tangled and we haven’t had the right wind conditions to try and fix it. So today’s the day.

We got the sail up the first time, but the twists in the sail and lines were wound so tightly that Xavier wasn’t able to untwist them. We lowered the sail, Xavier worked on clearing the line and undoing the twists. Then we unfurled it again and it’s working like a champ. But our speed is still below our expected average, so our arrival to Fiji will be delayed a bit. Such is the life of sailing - there is no schedule!

Friday, September 29

The winds continued to be light overnight, but around 8:00am this morning they really picked up into a very rough ride through the day.  Mickey's fishing rig was still in the water even though the speed increased dramatically.  Then in the afternoon Mickey noticed the rod was no longer bent and sure enough a fish had taken the lure and all the line from the spool.  Time to re-rig!

We sailed into Fiji around 10:30pm and anchored outside the harbor. We’ll sail into SavuSavu in the morning.

Rerouting! Our sail from Ha’Afeva to Neiafu gets derailed as we continue on to Vava’u instead.

Day 28-30 - Friday thru Sunday, September 22-24

We started the morning with the intention of an easy sail day. We were headed north with an overnight stop in Pangai, another village in the island group of Ha’apai. We were clipping along at a pretty good speed. The winds were from the southeast, which provided a good solid wind power. We knew that we’d need to tack and head east to get to the island. The moment we tacked, we hit the headwind and strong current and our speed dropped from 6.5 knots to 1.5 knots. We trimmed the sails and did everything we could to get our speed back up. At this pace, it’d take 4-5 hours to reach Pangai. Instead of fighting against the wind and current, we headed north again and decided to sail all night to reach the Vava’u island group the next morning.

Our sail was quite eventful. The sidewinds picked up to over 40 knots/hour and there were 4 meter swells. Needless to say, we were once again riding the bucking bronco. Everything was covered in salt as the seas and rain continued to pelt over the railings. Xavier says it was harsher seas than he has experienced, except going through the Bearing Sea near Alaska.

Saturday, September 23

We made it to an anchorage outside of the village of Neiafu at around 5:00am. We were very happy to get a few hours of sleep before heading into the harbor. When we woke up, there were cows on the beach tromping through. We’ve seen fishing pigs and now tromping cows. Quite the sight!

Once in the harbor, we moored Kanoa and began our explorations of a new harbor, a new island and a new village. We had lunch at a nice spot overlooking the lagoon (of course, all the restaurants have seating overlooking the lagoon). I thought the way they stuck the napkin in between the fork tines was clever.

The village is similar to Tongatapu, but smaller. But the harbor is much bigger and much nicer.

We met our neighbor, Hugh, who is quite the character. Super nice guy and can tell quite the stories. He’s met everyone in the harbor and gave us the scoop.  Also next to us in the harbor is one of the most famous female sailors in the world.  At age 81, Jeanne Socrates (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeanne_Socrates) owns various records of sailing solo around the world (female, oldest, etc). 

Heading to dinner, we stopped to visit with Peter, a friend of Debra’s (my yoga buddy in Tongatapu). He had been at a festival all day, one we considered going to but arrived a little late to make it. We also passed 2 sailboats that had lost their masts in weather similar to what we experienced last night, but smaller boats. Kanoa is rock solid, no fear of losing her mast at all!

Have we mentioned that sailing is a small world and that once on the seas you become family.  We will run into many of the same boats over the next 3 weeks to New Caledonia as everyone sails to safety for the cyclone season.

We had a nice dinner at a Spanish Tapas Restaurant that had been recommended by Claire, Debra’s friend. Then we headed back to Kanoa for a good night’s sleep since we didn’t get much the night before.

Sunday, September 24

We woke up to no fresh water on the boat - the fresh water pump had failed. (Like I’ve said before, if you own a boat it’s a never ending maintenance and repair project.) Xavier worked on the pump for most of the morning. We decided to take a break and have lunch in town at Mango’s. Then back at it again. 

During dinner last night, we discussed the fact that the cyclone season is predicted to come early this year. And the insurance company Xavier uses for Kanoa has required that he be in dry dock in New Zealand sooner than he anticipated. That means that we’ll arrive in New Caledonia 2 weeks earlier than planned. 

Mickey and I had flights scheduled to New Zealand and Airbnb’s booked based on the previous plan of arriving in New Caledonia on October 28th and leaving for New Zealand October 29th. So we spent the better part of the morning working on Plan B. We have it all figured out and will spend an additional 8 days in New Zealand. (Oh darn!)

We had hoped to snorkel today, but with the water pump issue and the fact that we needed to figure out Plan B for our travels to New Zealand, we stayed in the bay on Kanoa and worked. It’s such a beautiful place to work! Tomorrow, we’ll buy some provisions, get the paperwork ready, get a new water pump and whatever else we need to take care of. We plan to sail to Fiji on Tuesday, September 26th, which will take us 3 .5 days so we won’t be back in touch until Friday September 29th at the earliest.

Till next time….

Whale Attack! Sailing from Nuku’alofa to Nomuka to Ha’Afeva

Day 26-27 - Wednesday & Thursday, September 20-21

Day 26 found us departing Nuku’alofa at 6:15 am for the 9 hour sail to Nomuka.  All went perfectly as we hit the ocean with the wind to our front side.  This meant that with 3 to 4 Meter seas and 25 to 30 knot winds we would be in for a rough ride.

It only took 90 minutes for an extraordinary event to occur… WE HIT A WHALE!!  Seriously, there we were cruising at 8 knots and suddenly the boat went bow first into a wave and we immediately slowed to 2 knots.

Then Carol heard what sounded like a moan off the side of the boat and a whale surfaced next to us.  It even gave Mickey the “stink eye”! It swam away and we saw no blood, so hopefully there was no permanent damage. We don’t know if he/she was playing with the boat and misjudged (unlikely), or if it was asleep, or if it just didn’t hear us.

We immediately concluded our keel must have hit the whale and began to asses any damage.  We saw no signs of water breach and nervously sailed on through the day.

Then as we got within an hour of Nomuka the bilge alarm started going off telling us the bottom compartments of the boat were flooding and there was a leak.  We still saw no evidence of any water breaching the areas around the keel or the hull and Xavier decided it was a leak in the salt water pumping system, and not a result of running into the whale.  We turned off all salt water intakes and pumps and no more water entered the bottom compartments.

Once we finally anchored Xavier dove under the boat and confirmed that everything was perfect.  He saw that the rudder had been hit as it has a built in flexion for impacts of 300 cm but had only moved 20cm.  WHEW!!!

Later that night we think we isolated the water leak culprit to the galley salt water pump and will plan to work on it in the morning.  Fingers Crossed!

Thursday, September 21

We got up early to continue isolating the water leak. Turns out, it was not the galley salt water pump after all. We pumped the water out of the compartments until the pump got clogged and had to finish with buckets and sponges. So glad I got up early to shower and put on clean clothes! That was a bust.

After some work, we decided to turn off all the pumps and sail to our next destination, pondering what could be the problem as we sailed. Our sail to Ha’Afeva, one of the islands in the Ha’apai group, was delightful. We encountered heavier seas out in the channel and a little calmer as we neared some of the many, many islands along the way. The islands provide a little shelter from the wind and generally slows the wind speeds and calms the seas a bit.

We saw 3 whales along the way and 2 as we were leaving our last anchorage. Including the one we hit yesterday (so sorry whale), we have spotted 15 whales so far, several in full breach. So cool!

We arrived at our anchorage at the island of Ha’afeva and actually saw 2 other boats anchored in this remote lagoon. This is our first encounter with other sailboats on anchor that wasn’t in a harbor. Once we settled in, got the sails stowed, made sure the anchor was set and generally organized everything, 

Carol went to our cabin and realized our mattress and bedding was soaking wet. It appears there is a discharge port for the “water maker” (the desalination system). When we are port heeled (leaning to the right and that side of the boat goes into the water) the valve may have allowed water to enter the port. So it was soaking into our bedding. That provided a lovely opportunity for us to haul all of it out of our cabin, wash all the bedding, hang it to dry and remake the beds. If you’ve ever slept in the cabin of a boat, that’s not an easy task. But it had to be done.

While the clothes were drying, we took our dinghy to the island and had a little trek to the village. It is quite small in people population, but quite large in pig population. I suspect they eat a lot of pork.

We returned to the boat and continued searching for the leak that continues to fill the bilge with water. If you’ve ever owned a boat, you know that work is never ending. It just takes time and persistence to figure it out.

Mickey cooked us a wonderful dinner of lamb kabobs and an Irish potato/cabbage/sausage dish called Colcohnan. All I can say is that we’re eating so well with Mickey as chef.