Tonga...

Welcome to our Blog. Our latest entry always comes up first... 
Click this link if you want to start at the beginning:
FIRST BLOG ENTRY
If you want to start at the beginning of our trip:
START OF TRIP
If you want to see the story of our trip from South Carolina
(where we bought the boat)
 to Lake Ontario Click this link:
  SOUTH CAROLINA

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
After a 48 hour passage we arrived in the Kingdom of Tonga.   on the way we caught 2 more Tuna!

We are getting far enough south that it is getting cool sometimes...

BIG following seas...

The Kingdom of Tonga, is a Polynesian sovereign state and archipelago comprising 169 islands of which 36 are inhabited. The total surface area is about 750 square kilometres (290 sq mi) scattered over 700,000 square kilometres (270,000 sq mi) of the southern Pacific Ocean. It has a population of 103,000 people of whom 70% reside on the main island of Tongatapu.

Tonga stretches across approximately 800 kilometres (500 mi) in a north-south line. It is surrounded by Fiji and Wallis and Futuna (France) to the northwest, Samoa to the northeast, Niue to the east, Kermadec (part of New Zealand) to the southwest, and New Caledonia (France) and Vanuatu to the farther west.

Tonga is comprised of 3 major island groups.  Vava'u in the north, Ha'Apia in the middle and Nukalufa in the south.  We checked into Vava'u at the end of August and spent just a week in the Northern group.  This is a place where many cruising boats congregate.  The towns folk seemed a little resentful of cruisers, so we did our provisioning and moved quickly to an outer island called Port Marell.  

We met up with our friends from Starry Horizons and Red Thread and spent a day snorkeling and diving two really interesting caverns.  The pictures we took simply don't do these places justice.  They were simply beautiful.

Neil from s/v Red Thread

David from s/v Starry Horizons

We will be leaving here in a few weeks to make our way south to New Zealand and have decided to spend most of our time in the less inhabited Ha'Apai group.  So after a CRAZY 13 hour sail into the wind with the seas crashing over our decks, we settled here a few days ago.  

This is much more to our liking...  We re-connected with Lanny and Ginger from s/v SwiftSure and expect to see Rijnhard and Lisa from s/v Enchanter soon.  Over the next few weeks we hope to get a bunch of diving in and see as many whales as possible.  The other day we had a big male breach beside us and didn't have the camera set properly so missed those great pictures...  Hopefully before we go we will get something worth showing.

Anyway, not much internet here so will keep this post short...  More soon....

Cheers!