We are currently in Tonga, but I thought I’d back up and bit and see if I could get the blog caught up alittle since I last posted from Bora Bora.

Sorry about this, but this post comes with some extra credit reading.

Before you continue, follow a couple of the links below or do a little googling of your own on Palmerston Atoll and/or William Marsters.

Downtown Palmerston Atoll

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palmerston_Island
http://www.cookislands.org.uk/palmerston.html#.Vntd4hV97Dc
http://www.palmerstonisland.net/

The history of this little Atoll is pretty interesting.

As you read…or actually most likely did not read…lazy bastards, the history of this little Atoll in the absolute middle of no where is pretty unique.

We arrived at the island in the middle of the night and waited till day break to approach the mooring field. There is no anchorage and the family on the island would rather you take a mooring ball instead of anchoring on the coral.

The island is part of the cook islands, but they sorta run them selves. We were told to remain on the boat until customs and immigration came out to clear us in.

All went fairly well. We felt pretty bad for the health and welfare lady, she got violently sea sick when she came aboard to “inspect” the boat. The inspection lasted about 3 minutes until she went back outside to vomit.

The moorings are owned and ran by Edward Marsters, who also may or may not be the sheriff of the island. He also was our “host” while we were there. They do not like you to come ashore on your own. So your host will come out in the morning and pick everyone up and take you ashore. Their custom is to host you and feed you while you are there on the island. And that is exactly what they did. Every day around 10am, Edward would come out and pick us and the other 3 boats that were there up and take us to shore to his house and feed us a big lunch.

LUNCH!!

Ed Marsters and one of his sons John. Entertaining us after lunch

The rest of the day we would wander around the little island and visit with other families or check out the school. There are about 60 people living on the island. 30+ of that number are school aged kids.

The little school house

We had been hauling around some school supplies with us since we left Panama. So Tawn gathered them all up and donated them to the School. The principle was very appreciative and gave Tawn a Tshirt from the island and a card that all the kids made for her and signed. She also asked Tawn to give a little presentation/talk about her old job to the kids. They were all amazed since they were familiar with the american TV show CSI.

We ended up spending about a week there. Everyone on the island was very nice. They don’t get very many visitors, only about 60 or 70 visiting boats stop there each year, and only 3 or 4 supply ships make a stop. So it’s a bit of a deal when people do make it there.

Checking out the town.

You can just barely see our boat anchored just outside the reef

The little village in town is just picture perfect. Someone is out raking the “streets” every day. Every were we went on this island, the roads and paths were soft sandy walk ways. There are no cars, just a couple of ATVs and scooters.

John, our tour guide.

Picture perfect little town

As we were checking out the town and talking to everyone, I ask how they got internet access. They pointed me over to the “phone company”.

Internet!!

Just step up to the window and pay the guy a few bucks and he’ll hook you up with some island wide internet access! Seriously, the future is NOW!! It’s slow…but it is now.

Server room at the Telecom

One last picture before I end it.

Yup, seems just about right.

Palmerston island is one of those places in the world that is almost impossible to get to. So to be able to have gone there on our boat is very cool experience and one we will remember for a long time.

Wheeeew….we are typically pretty bad at posting regularly….but this has gotten out hand! Problem is, the internet sucks out here on the fringes of society. I can’t even upload photos to the blog. So now we are back in town, I downloaded some picture resizing software and a collage program to make my huge camera photos small for the internets. Hopefully we will get caught up soon.

We have been in Tonga about a month and a half. Most of that time we have spent traveling around the anchorages in the Vava’u group. We figured we are going to be in town for the next 3-4 months, so might as well see what we can now.

Basically, Tonga is amazing. Some of the clearest blue water I have seen. The fish are extraordinary and colorful. The beaches are white crushed coral and the blue skies go on forever….except right now…the years first cyclone is passing north of us and bringing with it some seriously shitty weather.

The locals here are shy, but very friendly. In town there are numerous expats from NZed, America, Canada and Australia. They own and operate a variety of really cool restaurants and bars. Life here is slow and easy, and we find it very appealing.

The Vava’u group is made up of tons of little islands, bordered to the north by what locals call the mainland, to the east by fringe islands and open to the south and west (where the tiniest and most exposed islands are). The shape of the group, and the fact that the main north island has high mountains makes this a very protected area for hiding from cyclones. Above you can see the differences in the coastlines. From reef protected flat water to a craggy mountainous exposed shoreline beaten with surf…Vava’u has it all.

The sunsets here are amazing and often lead to impromptu bonfires.

Pigs are abundant here, infact they are pests. They tear up the land and eat everything in site. It is not odd to see a whole family of pigs trekking through town. Nobody owns them, so when the need arises, ya just go outside and wrangle you up a pig to roast (I think this is a lot harder than it sounds). This piggie roast was on Hunga Island. The traditional oven is called an umu and starts with a fire in a pit that is left to smolder. Then it is covered with palms and the piggie is placed on top, covered with more palms, covered in dirt and left to cook all day. The meat is as tender as u can imagine….and goooood! Whew…I love a pig roast.

This is the beach at our favorite anchorage, Kenutu. Nobody lives here, the area is usually not visited by other cruisers, so its just u, the wildlife….oh, and the bats.

Kenutu is on the rugged eastern side. Just a short walk over the headland and the peaceful flat water gives way to the raucous swells of the Pacific. You can hear the waves thumping up into the caves on the windward shore.

The reason it is our favorite is because there is a pure sand cay just outside the anchorage. At low tide, the cay is exposed and waist deep water surrounds it for half a mile. It is the perfect place to learn to kiteboard.

CB getting his ride on. We both finally stood up and rode here. The place is pefect because u are anchored in the lee of the island and just past is the open ocean with the trades blowing in.

Sometimes, when the weather is calm, you can anchor in the middle of the blue. This is Fahua One One (pronounced onay onay), one of the tiny outlying islands. To anchor here you have to drive right up to the hard bits, drop your anchor in 7-10 feet and let out a bunch of rode until you are over the shelf. 30 feet off the beach it is over 100 feet deep. When anchored like this you relly hope the wind doesn’t shift.

The top photo is in the Tapana anchorage. This is the Ark gallery…the lady and her husband who live there are ex-cruisers and they sell art and run a mooring field. Due to the extreme protection this bay gives, cyclone moorings are set up so people can leave their boat for the season.
The red supply boat visits the group 2x per week bringing food, fuel and pretty much anything you could think of from Nuka Alofa (the government seat 170 miles south).
The other two photos are resorts in the area.

On Tapana island there is a spanish couple who own a restaurant called LaPaella. We heard it was amazing and we had to go there for the experience. The family are reportedly Basque and built the restaurant to resemble a rustic cabin high up in the mountains. They cooked everything over a wood burning hearth. You start out with 7-8 tapas…one of them were goat cheese stuffed dates wrapped in bacon😰…followed by a huge dish of seafood paella and dessert. It was probably the best food I have had in I don’t even know how long. The goat walked in and sat down right about the time everyone arrived…he continued his centerpiece presence until the band got started, when he huffed and promptly left….I think he was on the clock.

For now I’ll leave you with this…with the promise of more posts to come soon!

This post falls under the full disclosure category. I figure it’s only fair that if I post all these stories about how much fun we are having and all the awesome stuff we are seeing and doing. I should also, from time to time tell you about the not so awesome stuff.

I’m just gonna give you the ending right up front. Bit of a spoiler, I know.

But the short story is that we ran aground a couple weeks ago. Oops!

The long story is:

We had been here in Bora Bora for about a week. Decided to head around the island and check out some of the anchorages on the North side of the island. It is very beautiful over there for sure.

We followed the charts and advice from other boaters and got to the spot we intended to go. But another, closer look at the charts and a read through some of our cruising guides showed another anchorage a little further up. Granted, the cruising guide said that unless you draw less than 6 feet, do not attempt to get in there. The pass through the coral is narrow and very shallow.

We draw just over 6 feet. So despite all the warnings, we thought we should give it a go.

As we were approaching the small pass in the coral, Tawn was on the bow giving me directions on which way to go. I was looking at the charts and thought I should be more to starboard, but Tawn was insistent that I go more to port and get as close to the channel marker as I possibly could.

There was a good current running through the little pass against us and the wind was on the nose, so as I was turning more to port we were being pushed a bit sideways and next thing I know…..Bump, bump, bump.

We stopped moving.

The wind and current pushed us abit more up on the coral. Tawn dropped the anchor to stop us moving in the bad direction.

I tried reversing off, but we were stuck hard.

Luckily we were towing the dinghy. We grabbed our stern anchor and put it in the dinghy and I ran it out to port into deeper water to use as a kedge to hopefully pull the bow around and off the reef. But the wind and current was just too much. We were stuck and stuck pretty good, and heeling over avbit.

A few tourist boats came by and waked us pretty good, which was shitty, but it’s what they do best.

As we were planning what to do next, another cruiser came over from the anchorage in his dinghy and offered to help.

We decided to pull up the kedge and re-run it off the back of the boat, which should pull us back the way we came and into deeper water. Tawn raised the first anchor we had down. Then ran back to the cockpit to crank in on the newly re-positioned kedge anchor.

The guy that came to help, used his dinghy to push the bow of Palarran into the wind and to prevent us from getting even more stuck now that the front anchor was up.

With him pushing on the bow, Tawn cranking the stern anchor in on the winch, I put the engine in full reverse and…..slowly…slowly we started backing up. Then poof, we were off the reef and in deep water.

We had to drop the anchor line in order to keep backing off the reef. The guy that was helping us retrieved our anchor for us,

We changed our minds in trying to get into that anchorage. :) We to another close by to dive on the boat and check for damage. Other than some scrapes in the bottom paint and a few very small chunks of fiberglass missing from the bottom of the keel there was no damage at all.

All told we spent about 20 minutes stuck. Maybe half an hour.

All is good and we were back to business as usual in a couple hours.

A couple days later we rented a couple bikes and rode around the island. It’s only 32km(which is Canadian for 19.8 miles) all the way around the island.

We stopped and took a picture of the spot we got stuck. No way in hell we were taking pictures at the time.

We were headed from left to right as you look at the picture, and any of my SoPac mates can probably clearly see where the channel is in that pic. Right were you see the channel end on the right is were it goes from 14 feet to 6.5. Which is fine, but I should have hooked it more left and hugged that marker, which would have kept me in 6.5 feet of water…instead I went more straight and ended up in 6 feet of water…which was no good.

Here is a pic to get us all back in the right frame of mind.

One of the things the Tuamotos are famous for are their black pearls. Way back in the day they used to grow white pearls naturally. Many years of harvesting, however, and the white pearls were gone. The Chinese realized that it was a perfect environment for pearl production and brought in pearl farming. These pearls would be black pearls and were manmade by artificially implanting a small plastic bead into the muscle of the oyster. It is still a lengthy process, as a good size pearl would have to be replanted into a larger oyster year after year to produce the perfect pearl. It could take up to 8 years to produce a high rated black pearl! But with thousands of farms most of the worlds supply of black pearls come from the Tuamotos. Farming is not as prevalent as it used to be, but there are still some massive oyster farm fields floating out in the atolls. Some friends and us got to visit one of these farms and see the process behind the scenes.

This particular farm was owned by a German and his wife who was local.

Pulling up a oyster basket to show how the implantation process works.

Instruments used to pry open the oyster to implant the graff that holds the implant. The pearlescent comes from inside the shell

The German guy who ran the place gave a very extensive, but interesting explanation of the process. He opened up an oyster and dissected it to showed all the parts involved in the implantation. By the end the poor oyster was just bits and pieces…then this happened…

This is our friend Darren of s/v Gratatouille, he likes to eat….anything. He seemed to be concerned about the oyster bits going to waste and asked the owner if it was okay to eat it. The owner was sort of slack jawed, but recovered and replied “well, I guess so, no one has ever asked before”. So, he showed Darren the edible part and down the hatch it went. While we all stood by in horror/amusement, Darren was declaring it “deeeelicious”. Hmmmm…

After that we all went up the the pearl shop where you could buy loose pearls or those turned into jewelry by the owner and his wife. Our friends bought loose pearls as gifts for family and to make jewelry. I found a really cool necklace for my mom.

Owning a pearl farm is a pretty lucrative business, and you can’t beat the view while you are working.

Maybe my next venture should be to become a pearl farmer?