Which way is starboard again?

Hi all,

Photos from Tonga are now up on facebook. The public link is here:

Hi all,

Just a quick note to let you know we have arrived safe and sound in Fiji. We’re waiting for customs and a health inspector to come prowl around the boat (I hope we are healthy enough!) It’s 30 degrees with 73% humidity and we are pretty much melting at the moment but I’m not complaining since I am guessing it is pretty chilly back in NZ! I’m really looking forward to having a good look around here. It sounds like the dive and snorkeling spots are pretty amazing! There is a blog on Vava’u and lots of pictures on the way once we find a decent internet connection.

Hope you are all doing well back home,

Lots of love,

Anna and Paddy xx

(photographic evidence to come)

Last week I got excited about a new laundry bucket. A couple of days ago I baked bread. Yesterday I actually asked a neighbour if I could borrow a cup of sugar (okay, it was baking soda, but it was still just as scary!)

Anyone who knows me well will see what is wrong with this picture.

I am not a domestic goddess in the way a fish is not a mountain climber. When I first moved out of home I had to call my mother to find out how to boil potatoes. When I was working as a journalist and living alone with my cat my weekly groceries consisted of microwave dinners, cheap wine and Whiskas. I only do my laundry when I run out of socks and undies and I don’t separate my whites from my colours.

Living on a boat however has forced me to learn a whole new raft of skills. My descent into domestication started slowly with cooking on passage (when I stopped being too queasy to eat). Then, on discovering that getting laundry done in Tongatapu cost $8 a kilo, I decided it would be prudent to give washing in a bucket a go. When I became excited about a plastic tub with an inbuilt washing board that we discovered in a junk shop, I knew something was seriously wrong! The prohibitive cost of laundry meant that most of the fleet chose to DIY, making most of the boats resemble floating washing lines. One of our fellow stragglers even coveted my washtub and got one for herself.

Another thing about boats is that, because of the confined space, they can get quite messy quite quickly – especially when there are more than two people on board. It has been a bit of a challenge for me to remember to pick up after myself (anyone who has seen my room or my desk at work can attest to this) and I still find myself putting things down, getting distracted, and forgetting to pick them up again, but (with the help of a little nagging form the skipper) I’m getting there.

My culinary skills usually consist of sauces that come in packets and things with the word ‘instant’ written on them. Ready to eat meals are great when you are on passage and don’t fancy spending much time in the galley while the boat is rocking around, but it is a waste of food when you have 50kgs of tuna on board and ready access to markets that sell lovely fresh produce at reasonable prices. This means you need to be a little creative and actually do some ‘real’ cooking. Fresh bread is also a little scare in the island, with most places having only one bakery that opens sporadically – so baking bread is another thing it is best to do yourself. Those of you who were unfortunate enough to try my chocolate pudding with salt instead of sugar (neither of them had a label okay?!) are probably shaking in their shoes at the thought of me baking but – to my intense surprise) it was actually quite edible.

The recipe came from Diane – the wife of Fergus who came with us from Wellington to Auckland and Auckland to Opua. Both she and Fergus are crewing with us now and will be heading round Fiji with us, which should be good fun. Diane is great. She’s like the Yoda of cookery and is full of little practical tips to make life on the boat easier. She and Fergus have been sailing around the world for years and live on a boat of their own in Auckland. I am taking notes and hopefully some of it will stick!

We even made a banana cake the other day. The cheapest way to buy bananas around here is in gigantic bunches which you hang on the back of your boat. The only drawback of this is that they tend to all ripen at the same time, so I have a feeling there will be a few more cakes in our future! We were three-quarters of the way through making said cake when we realised we either didn’t have or couldn’t find any baking soda (this was a little irritating because I had put together a stowage plan so we knew where everything was. This meant I had to get on the radio and ask if there was anyone nearby who had any. Summer Soul (one of the rally boats moored near to us) came to the rescue and we sent Paddy over to pick it up and back again later with some cake for their troubles. Yachty neighbours are great – you can pretty much always find someone willing to help you because they know that next time it could be them!

Paddy thinks my new-found domesticity is fantastic but I have warned him not to expect me to morph into the perfect housewife when we get back home (thought I might be a slightly better cook!) We don these things on the boat out of necessity and because of that it is kind of rewarding to be able to do something practical to help. I am also picking up more sailing skills and (though not 100% comfortable) I do feel like I can be more of a participant and less in the way – which hopefully means I can stave off being made to work the plank just yet!

It’s hosing down with rain today – serious tropical rain. The type that floods the dinghy, fills the water tanks in half an hour and soaks you to the bone if you so much as stick your head outside the cockpit. Unlike Wellington though, the rain here has the decency to fall downwards instead of diagonally and it’s not exactly cold (26.5 degrees) so we can’t really complain. Internet connectivity is still a little iffy out here but I am making slow progress with the facebook album. I will let you guys know when that is all finished and captioned before I start on the pictures of Tonga itself. I am able to email blog entries from the boat via the radio though (I will write about that sometime because it’s a pretty cool set-up all run by volunteers) but can only send text.

I decided to break the Tonga blog into two parts because there is so much to say and I didn’t want to bombard you all with a giant chunk of words.

DISCLAIMER: I am also pinching quite a bit of this from the observations Paddy has made in his email updates to friends. (There – now no-one can accuse me of plagiarism!)

In so many ways Tonga is a great, glorious contradiction. It is deeply conservative (women have to have their shoulders covered, men can be arrested for not wearing a shirt in public) and also deeply religious (you can pretty much walk past three churches in a single block) – it is also vibrant and tolerant in ways which can be surprising. One that particularly tickles my fancy is Tongans’ acceptance, and even celebration of, homosexuality and cross-dressing (which is I guess the closest Western term) as part of their culture. The fakaleiti are the Tongan version of Samoa’s fa’a fafini – men (sometimes gay, sometimes straight) who choose to dress as women. Traditionally the practice came about when Tongan families had too many sons. The mother would choose a son to be raised as a girl to help with the ‘women’s work’ – thought I doubt this is still the case now. Before the feminists jump down my throat, I am not saying raising a boy as a girl is a good thing or that there is such a thing as ‘women’s work’ – but I believe what stemmed out of it (a relatively open and tolerant attitude towards gender and sexuality) is definitely a good thing. (In saying that, public displays of affection are a no-no whatever your gender or sexuality.) We have seen fakaleiti around town, working in shops and they even have their own beauty pageants. Too often people use the bible as a tool for persecuting those who are different and don’t fit a particular mold – yet here we have a very conservative, very religious culture celebrating those differences (although it is very male-centric – I am unsure whether there is a similar attitude towards homosexual women. If it is it is very much underground.) I also particularly like the Tongans’ attitude towards death. Graveyards are not grey and sombre places. They are bright and vibrant and festooned with artificial flowers and fairy lights in all the colours of the rainbow. There are pigs and dogs running through them (and also sadly quite a bit of litter in some). Overall though, it seems to be a celebration of who the people were and many of them even have a lovely ocean view! I have been inspired by this and have decided that when I die I want orange plastic flowers and fairy lights, good luck trolls, a couple of pink flamingos and a garden gnome. In other words, I want to completely lower the tone of the cemetery!

Sadly though, some of the contradictions in Tonga aren’t so colourful and the other side of the religion coin is one of them. The churches have huge power in Tonga. There are only two government run schools in the country, the rest are owned by churches – you name the denomination and it has a school here. This is not necessarily a bad thing in that they bring resources and opportunities to the community – but it’s where those resources come from that is the problem. When we did our tour of Nuku’alofa our guide Wesley spoke to us about the huge number of churches. One village alone houses seven of them. That would be fine but the level of poverty in these villages and the comparative affluence of the churches, speaks volumes.

Tonga is an incredibly poor country and things here are mostly priced out of the reach of locals. Petrol is $3 a litre and diesel $3.13. Any form of food with protein in it is an unbelievable price (ie $18 for five chicken drumsticks) and even basic books in the local book shop are $40. The interest rate at banks is 14% and if you qualify you can get a “special” rate of 12% from the development bank. Given the low incomes and high interest rates most people are condemned to a kind of subsistence living. Tongan citizens each receive a family block of land to farm and much of this produce is sold in the local markets. The markets are definitely the place to shop for fresh food with everything from eggplant and fresh beans to watermelon and pineapples at about $3. I would also like to add that I have been doing my bit to support the local economy by purchasing lots lovely shell jewellery!
Paddy also bought me a beautiful necklace (a bone carving of a stingray) from a local chap who rowed out to the boat for ‘a cup of coffee’ – we reckon that it’s good to support people who are going out and making an effort. Tonga’s food, crafts and tourism keep things alive here – but a large amount of the country’s income also comes from relatives overseas sending money back to their families. Despite that people don’t seem unhappy – they just seem to get on with life and try to be as enterprising as they can. You can definitely spot sales pitches designed to lure money out of unsuspecting tourists but there doesn’t appear to be any real malice or bitterness in it. In our experience so far theft doesn’t seem to be too big of a problem here either.

People here seem to focus on the stuff that matters to them. Family is a hugely important part of the culture and this is very apparent. People also seem to concentrate on just living life – which can be a bit of a shake up to Western priorities.

Another thing that is taking a bit of getting used to is island time – which is a pretty fluid concept around here. Opening hours for places are pretty much just a guideline and things take a lot longer to happen. A classic example of this was when we went to fill up with diesel and water in Tongatapu. It took from 8am to 2pm and involved waiting for water to dribble from a tiny hose into our tanks. It was an old garden hose with about 20 joins in it where leaks had been fixed. This, combined with the already low water pressure made it a pretty slow affair. You can’t get impatient though. What we have discovered is that, while Tongans take their time with things (ie serving a person in a shop) when they do deal with them you get their full attention and they will bend over backwards to help you – so you get a much more enriching experience than a quick five seconds of a busy person’s time. The flip side of this is that many projects start off with a hiss and a roar and then never get finished, which is a shame.

We too have been affected by island time and have found ourselves starting to do things like going in to town to do the shopping and forgetting both the shopping list and guide book to find the ‘supermarkets’ – and the other day we went geocaching (a geeky pastime I picked up from my Dad – google it if you want to know more) without the gps. We are starting to find the balance between being uptight and being too laid back now though!

Politically Tonga is a rather alien place. It still bears some of the scars of the pro-democracy riots (buildings and shops that haven’t been rebuilt or are a shadow of their former selves) and – despite the fact their new king seems to spend more time in the UK than in Tonga – there are plenty of ‘long live the king’ slogans about. Most people don’t seem to be overtly political and I think sadly this may be because many are too busy concentrating on living from day to day. When crowned king George Tupou V voluntarily surrendered his powers “to meet the democratic aspirations of many of his people” – whether that happens will remain to be seen. While an estimated 40% of Tongans live below the poverty line, the equivalent of a third of Tonga’s yearly aid budget was spent on the king’s coronation – which may give a bit of a hint as to priorities. Relations between Tonga and Fiji are also strained to say the least. Both countries are in the process of squabbling over who owns Minerva Reef (officially it is part of Tonga) and at one point some Fijian gun ships turned up there in a bid to scare the tourists off (that happened before our lot arrived there.) Local sentiment appears to be just as fractious – Wesley was adamant that, despite the Fijian army being 10 times the size of Tonga’s – the Tongans could kick Fijian butt whenever they wanted to – according to him, “The Fijians might be big, but they are not smart”. There is also immense pride in the Tongan “navy” which recently sailed to Fiji in little more than a dinghy to pick up a Fijian military defector. It will be very interesting to see the other side of the coin when we get to Fiji.

Anyway – I broke the blog into two so wouldn’t hit you guys with a huge slab of text, and I turn around and do exactly that. The next one will be shorter, I promise!

These are just my thoughts on what we have seen the short time we have been here though so please don’t take it as gospel. On a trip like this you really only get to dip you toes into a culture before you are off to the next destination – I think we’d need a couple of years here to get an idea of what was really going on!

Bye for now xxx

Have discovered it’s much quicker (when the wifi behaves) to put photos up on facebook than WordPress right now so here’s the public link to the album – am working on getting more up soon xxx

Over the past week we have watched a ship sink, swum in an underground pool in a cave filled with stalactites, got two flat tires and were offered drugs.

The ship was sad. It was one of four fishing boats (Chinese apparently) that were tied up together not far from where we were anchored in Pangimotu harbour. One of the boats nearby radioed and told us about it. There was noone on board and it was still attached to the other three but it was going down fast. We called the local port authority (as did a couple of other boats) but nobody seemed to hear or care and in 15 to 20 minutes we had witnessed the death of a ship. (I got some photos of this which I will show you guys once we end up somewhere we can actually upload the things!) We are guessing there was a pretty big leak there somewhere but don’t know any more. Since then nothing much has happened, but strobe lights have turned up on the other three!

The drugs were funny. We were filling up with diesel at the dock in Tongatapu when a chap asked Paddy if he wanted some “good stuff”. Paddy got rather excited about this, thinking he meant good quality diesel (ie without water or other contaminants). When the man mimed a toking gesture Paddy got the picture, was a little disappointed and politely declined. We figure he must be finally unwinding if he’s got that stoner look about him!

We decided to stay in Tongatapu for a bit longer than the bulk of the ICA fleet – partly because we had a few things to fix up on the boat but also because we wanted to unwind a wee bit and have a look around. Cruising in company has been a great way to get to know people and we’ve had a lot of fun but it does seem a little bit rushed. It seemed to be one round of activities after another before rushing off to the next destination and, while it’s great for families with kids, we just wanted to chill out for a bit. There is a small motley collection of likeminded cruisers that we have dubbed the stragglers club who remained behind as well. They are a fascinating and lovely group from all walks of life – including a teacher, a basket ball coach about the same height as me, a former West Coast fisherman and a Christchurch fireman taking a well-deserved break after working in ChCh and Japan after both quakes.

We took a tiki tour around Tongatapu together and had a great time. Our guide, Wesley, took us to some lovely beach spots, Tonga’s version of Stonehenge and an underground fresh water pool where you could swim among cathedral-like stalactites in the dim glow of generator lit lamps while bats swooped about. It was utterly stunning and I could have stayed there all day.

We did however have a couple of setbacks on our trip – though they didn’t dampen anyone’s spirits. We got our first flat tire early on in the tour. Tongatapu’s roads are in the process of being sealed by its Chinese inhabitants, but in the meantime there are many that have more potholes in them than road. When jokingly we asked Wesley how many spare tires he had, he answered “two” (which was a good thing because we got our second flattie a few hours later!)

There is an awful lot about Tonga that is very third world but it’s also a place in a world of its own (which is the subject of the next blog).

The stragglers club also took part in a Tongan feast which included traditional entertainment and some of the most amazing fire dancing I have seen, inside an open-ceilinged cave in the side of a cliff on the beach. The food was incredible too – and there was so much of it! One thing the Tongans do particularly well is eat! Some of our fellow stragglers were invited to a feast at a school they had donated uniforms to and were amazed to see a man eat about a kilo of taro and six sausages before polishing off an entire chicken. I have no doubt that if we were to stay in Tonga for any length of time we would definitely end up the size of a Tongan!
The feast was also memorable in that certain members of the stragglers club took it into their head that it would be hilarious to tell the organisers and band that Paddy and I were getting married (don’t get too excited – they were making it up!) This of course meant that we were covered in flowers and forced to get up and dance while the rest of the stragglers cackled and took photos of us. I am plotting my revenge as we speak.

All in all we definitely feel we gained a lot more that we lost by sticking around for a bit longer.

We are now in our next destination (Vava’u) and are looking forward to discovering the places and the people here as well.

Hi all, sorry for the delay in blogging – the mighty kingdom of Tonga has one internet server for the entire country, so things are a little hit and miss. I have a heap of photos – including evidence that we actually did catch a fish that was ‘THIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIS big!'(insert exaggerated arm gesture here) – which I will try to post in a separate blog, but it looks like I will have more luck in our next stop Vava’u.

The NZ to Tongatapu leg of the trip was something else. I lost count of the amount of times Paddy tried to tell me that sailing ‘wasn’t always like this!’ Basically what I have learned is a) don’t leave when the wind is blowing in the wrong direction even if the forecast says it will change and b) weather forecasters are lying bastards.

For the vast majority of the trip the wind was blowing in pretty much exactly the direction we wanted to go. This meant we had to motor into the wind to get anywhere. This is called heading to windward or beating into the wind – and it sucks. At times we had to tack away, sail in completely the wrong direction and then tack back to get anywhere at all – this also sucks. There is something quite soul destroying about discovering you have spent the entire day sailing away from your destination.

I would love to say I took all this in my stride with Stoicism and grace, but I must admit I had my moments. Pretty much as soon as we left NZ we started getting hit with 20/30 knot winds and yucky, sloppy swells. One of our crew, Karla, who is used to racing boats in Auckland was horribly seasick because her body just wasn’t used to such prolonged, horrid motion – it was heartbreaking because I knew exactly how she felt! I on the other had was a mixture of queasy, scared and in utter disbelief that my sailing experience so far had been so miserable weather-wise. Speaking to experienced sailors afterwards most said they had never struck conditions like we had. It wasn’t dangerous, just uncomfortable and it was pretty much unheard of to have head winds or no wind for the entire trip. Even the Pacific’s trademark southerly trade winds had decided to go on holiday for the season.

The first night was the worst. The swells weren’t any bigger than those we faced in Cook Strait, but they were breaking over the bow and making big thumping noises. Every time the boat lurched I was convinced we were going under, even though the rational part of my brain knew we were completely safe. I think a big part of it was the noise. Wildflower is pretty much our home and when the house suddenly lurches from side to side and makes a tonne of creaking, groaning and banging sounds, it can be a little unnerving! A book I am reading about storm tactics says to remember that noise can’t hurt you. When I read that while on dry land I thought it was a ridiculous statement – of course noise can’t hurt you! Noise takes on a whole new dimension in the middle of the ocean though and I actually found myself repeating that phrase in my head. Paddy was great too, explaining to me what all the creaks and groans meant and now I know what most of the scary noises are I’m feeling a lot better about it all.

Lynn from the Island Cruising Association told me that when the conditions were crappy I needed to think that the crap couldn’t last forever and she was right (though it felt like forever at the time!). I had one beautiful night watch when we actually got to sail and I was able to lie back, listen to music and watch the Milky Way. I saw two shooting stars as well, which was awesome – then it was back to windward again.

Time started moving incredibly slowly too. It seemed like every day we were ‘four or five days away’ – when we reached day six, the wind was still coming from the north east and we were still ‘four or five days away’ I have to admit I lost it a little. I wanted to go home, I wanted my cat, and most of all I wanted off the damned boat! After that little episode I was fine and feeling a lot more Zen about things – I think I just needed to get it out of my system. Paddy says the only thing you can really control when you are sailing is when you leave. Once you are out there you just have to take what you are given. It puts me in mind of that old rhyme: “Whether the weather be cold, or whether the weather be hot. I’ll weather the weather, whatever the weather, whether I like it or not.” I bet that one was written by a sailor!

The rest of the fleet was pretty much in the same boat (s’cuse awful pun) and our evening radio roll calls (skeds) were a real comfort. Hearing from people who were in the same situation as us made me feel a lot less isolated and hearing from boats up ahead that had better conditions was really reassuring. Instead of counting the days as we zig-zagged our way to Tonga, I started following the distance we had traveled instead and every day we were getting a little closer.

We didn’t end up stopping at Minerva reef like some of the fleet because our crew had reschedule flights back to NZ that they had already missed because of the delays. They got there in the end though and managed to get a few extra days in Tonga to unwind which was nice.

On about day 6 we had a particularly exciting morning. I was doing the 2 to 5am shift when the wind changed twice on me. Once in the right direction and then back to the wrong one again. The wind got up and up until we were looking at about 35-40 knots and it all got a little interesting. In the end we decided to heave to (basically this is a way of setting the sails up so you pretty much stall the boat but leave it in a comfortable enough position to wait out the weather) which meant we all got a bit of sleep while it blew over. I had read about this in my storm tactics book and it was really good to see how it worked and great to know that you can just put on the brakes in the middle of the ocean like that.

Our crew, Tony and Karla, had more experience on boats than me, but I think we were all getting over it by the end. Having to wrestle your way from one end of the boat to the other to go to the loo (only to have the toilet seat fly off on you when there is a particularly big swell) starts to wear thin after a while. I have so many bruises I look like an elderly banana – you could make a cake out of me. In the final days of the trip we had no wind at all and, while it wasn’t so great in terms of diesel consumption, it was a blessed relief not to be living on an angle for a little while. We also managed to reel in a couple of reasonable sized fish during that time – followed by a 50kg monster of a yellow finned tuna on the last day (he gets his own blog with lots of pictures!)

We had a hitch-hiker as well – a gannet that we couldn’t agree on a name for (we settled for Gary the gannet if it was a boy or Janet the gannet if it was a lady). Undeterred by the noise of the engine starting or the flashes on our cameras and only slightly grumpy about a couple of rain showers during the night, Janet/Gary parked up on our solar panels and refused to budge until morning.

We also saw a small pod of whales as we got closer to Tonga which was amazing, so all in all it was a pretty good trip in terms of wildlife spotting.

In the end it took us 12 days to get from New Zealand to Tonga and I feel I have grown quite a bit during that time. I went from scared out of my mind and sick of being at sea to being only mildly nervous and proud that I’d made it through. Tony and Karla were great and helped me sort out the things I need to work on and practice and I definitely feel ready for the next leg.

Our next stop will be the Vava’u archipelago, which is only a couple of days sailing away. Paddy has been there before and says it is beautiful. We plan to settle in there for a wee while, do a bit of diving and generally chill out. I can’t wait! Apparently they have better internet access too, so I might have more luck with the photos.

Next blog will be about Tonga itself which, while most definitely third world, is a lovely, welcoming and at times quite hilarious place.

Thinking of you all back in NZ

xxx

Just a quick note to let you all know we have finally arrived in Tonga!
The trip took a little longer than anticipated (12 days) because the weather forecasters are lying bastards. We either had wind blowing from the wrong direction (the one we wanted to go in) or no wind at all.

We’ve arrived now safe and sound and are just waiting for customs. Stay tuned for a more detailed blog which will include lots of lovely photos and a 50kg yellow finned tuna we caught!

In the meantime we’re having a beer and just about to go for a swim – jealous much?

xxx