So many islands, so little time.

The Vava'u group in northern Tonga contains some 61 islands, most of them tiny, emanating southward from the primary, which by far the largest. I've been here for ten days now and yet for whatever reason I haven't managed to visit more than two anchorages: Port Maurelle, named for a Spaniard who landed there, I think... some white man in any case; and Neiafu, the main city, if you could call it that. I've had good reason for my lack of variety, I suppose. Mainly I just don't mind hanging for a while in one place, especially if it happens to be gorgeous and contain several of my friends.

This was the case for Maurelle when Ardea first puttered past all the gargantuan green rocks and into the island group. Sailing in was a treat, as the space of water within is quite large, but so well protected that it's like a lake. Those that have traveled in Indonesia and southeast Asia make comparisons to those places. I arrived with my crew from Niue on a Saturday afternoon, so there was no need to go up to Neiafu yet, as it would be impossible to complete the immigration process until Monday. So I sought to find some of the amigos that I hadn't seen since before that whole engine thing.

Someone has taken the time and energy to set up numerous vhf repeater antennas all over Vava'u, so, in spite of the hilly islands, one can make radio contact all across the island group on channel 26. This is both a blessing and a curse; since it thus makes sense to monitor vhf 26, one is exposed to an incredible and unceasing amount of radio traffic. In no time at all, though, I was able to get a hold of Saltbreaker, to my great delight, and catch some coordinates to their anchorage, which was, of course, Port Maurelle. We pulled in and set the hook. It turned out Gypsy Blues was there, too. The joy I felt at having finally picked up where I had left off during my three-and-a-half week engine hiatus was striking.

I pumped the dinghy up and left the Euros to bask while I promptly rowed over to Saltbreaker, where Matt from Gypsy Blues was already hanging out, to catch them up on my saga and to hear about theirs; and to drink some rum, of course. I eventually returned to eat with my crew and, after dinner, my old salty friends came over for a few more snifters and a lot more revelry.

Sunday saw what would be the first of many bonfires on the beach as I made plans to hit Neiafu and drop off my crewmembers before returning to Maurelle. Alas, a Finnish boat that I had not seen since they intervened when Ardea dragged her stern anchor toward Bombalero in Nuku Hiva, Marlileu, had pulled in. I had been in contact with Helena and Cary some time before in an attempt to organize a meeting in Tonga; Helena is a PADI dive instructor, Cary her tank-filling slave and resident joker. I was sort of shocked that it worked out, but sure enough, Maurelle would be a great spot to do the course and Matt, too, was in. We were told that it would be made cheaper if we could fill in four spots, so we immediately set about trying to convince Saltbreaker to stay, even though they had checked out of Vava'u several days prior.

I left Matt to the negotiating while I headed to town to take care of the officialdom. After about three hours of mostly waiting around for the various folks to wander by and give us paperwork, we were cleared in. I then had only to write an “official” letter to the immigration office clearing the crew from my vessel; this was, naturally, a page torn from a spiral notebook with hand-sprawled non-sense to make it seem more proper (I had had to talk my way out of being made to type it and find a printer). It all worked out and the Euros set about town to figure out their logistics while I cleaned up Ardea. We had planned to meet for lunch, but the former didn't show up (or, rather, were walking to while I was walking home), but I ran into the folks from an English boat, Oyaragh (OY-rah). I had met them briefly in Niue and ended up sitting with them. After describing my plans, Calum, the son of the couple that owns the boat, was keen to join the PADI course. The next morning I sailed back to Maurelle with Calum on board, his parents and girlfriend to follow in a day or so.

Saltbreaker had decided to stick around. Alex would do the course with us, so we had the four we'd needed; Nick and their friend David, who'd joined in Aitutaki, would spent the next days setting snare traps on the island while we dove.

We typically spent five hours or so diving and talking through the theory and what not; mid-afternoons we were released with Helena beckoning us to study the books. We usually went right back to the water though and spent a few hours spearfishing. One afternoon I had managed to get three decent-sized parrot fish and a nice goat fish. I made poisson-cru from the former and we roasted the latter on a fire on the beach along with some squirrel fish shot by Calum. That would be our last spearfishing excapade in Port Maurelle, though, since, on the following day, Nick, who had remained diligent in setting and baiting his traps, snared a pig.

While we were diving, they had gone ashore to check the snares. One of them, a simple rig using just a piece of rope, a small piece of fishing line, some twigs and a log, had snared a sizable sow, well over fifty pounds by their accounts. They killed it, gutted it and hung it from a tree to bleed out before rowing back to the boat for a stiff drink. The process had shaken them up, which explains their long faces while we, having just come up from a dive, clapped and celebrated the forthcoming feast.

We all headed in to begin the long process of butchering and cooking the pig. That first night we cooked over an open fire one of the legs, a side of ribs and a hind quarter. It was a delicious meal, but my body was not used to digesting meat anymore and in those quantities I paid for it the following day. Nonetheless, we spent another night eating pig, this time cooked in an earth-oven in the sand lined with palm leaves. One dish was slathered with loads of the fine mangoes that are found all over these islands and the other a juicy pot roast type dish. Both were grand and it took a number of cruisers to finish them all.

This brought us to Saturday morning. We had all passed our PADI exam the day prior and so set out on our final dive before being certified open-water divers. It was certainly the best dive we'd had and, as was often the case, I had to be stopped from proceeding to greater depths and the lot of us had to be coaxed to the surface at the end.

We had all by then spent so much time in Port Maurelle that we knew we had to get going. Saltbreaker took off for a southern anchorage from where they would set off for Ha'Apai; Matt, who had been crashing on Ardea to allow his parents the freedom to roam while he took the dive class, caught a ride with Oyaragh to Lape Island, where Gypsy Blues was now anchored, and I set off for Neiafu, where I would check-out of Vava'u before working my way South.

Naturally, I got hung up in town for a few days as La Luz, Caps Tres, and a few other yachtie friends are around and beer and pizza are relatively cheap. Today I head out. I'll pick a couple of spots on the way down, needing to wait for a low pressure system to work its way East before I leave anyway. Then I'll make the short (sixty miles) hop to the Ha'Apai group, the central island group in Tonga. I'll spend a week or so there before heading to Minerva Reef, another 250 miles South. There I will wait with Saltbreaker and whomever else is around for a weather window to New Zealand. I doubt if I'll see wifi again before making landfall in Opua, but at some stage I should come back into range of a winlink radio station. If I don't update, worry not; chances are I've just delayed my departure from the tropics for all of the obvious reasons. Until next time...