Photo Gallery 2005 Tonga

Today is our last day in Tonga. We sent Peggy and Jon off in a taxi to the airport and they are (hopefully) on their way back to the US. Our last dinner out together was at, believe it or not, Tonga Bob’s Mexican Cantina! It was really tasty but apparently they have no access to corn tortillas, so every item on the menu from the chips and salsa to the tacos and enchiladas were made with flour tortillas. Today we are in the process of clearing out of port, packing and cleaning up the boat, and Anouk is cooking up a storm as there is no cooking on a passage – just scrounging in the galley for something to eat. My Tongan cellphone will work today and part of tomorrow, and then that’s it. Don’t leave messages after tomorrow because I will not have any way to retrieve them. The Inmarsat phone will continue to work, as will the email. In Fiji I’ll get a Fijian SIM card for the cellphone and let you know the new numbers there.

We will start sailing to Fiji tomorrow morning (Wednesday in the US) and it will probably take us about two days and two nights to get to our destination some 440 miles from here. Originally we planned to sail to Savusavu, but due to wind direction we are thinking about Suva instead. The watch schedule is set (two hours on, six hours off per person), and Mike and I are looking forwards to our first blue water passage.

Mike has caught Peggy’s cold and it is his turn to cough and sniffle – hopefully he’s getting over it. Not bad – just a nuisance. As a result he has missed the last two scuba dives. My most recent dive was on the wreck of a 423 foot copra steamer, the Clan MacWilliam, which caught fire and sank here in the main harbor in Neiafu in 1927. We descended about 25 meters and swam the length of it both ways, just above the deck. Saw a big lobster but didn’t grab it for dinner – also a really big grouper. The next set of photos (which I will upload in Fiji) will include some wreck pictures.