Tonga, Fiji and Vanuatu

The Friendly Isles as Tonga is known, lives up to its name in every way; the people smile and giggle at you in a way that is nothing short of infectious.

There is no hidden agenda or ulterior motive – they are simply very friendly and happy people, devoutly religious, family oriented and traditional in the way they live. Of course, we only visited Va'Vauau, but I believe all the regions would be similar.

The islands themselves are rich and green with jade coloured clean water lapping gently at their shores. The town itself dusty and with an air of crumbling elegance about it. A few shops, mostly Chinese, but hey the beer was cheap. We met some lovely people there, especially the kids at the wharf who, when offered a lolly thrust their hands into the offered jar and took great fistfuls! But their smiles and laughter made it easy to forgive. The people still wear traditional dress, which includes a straw mat tied around their middles – which for some reason indicates a gesture of respect to the King. Also worth a mention is the amazing singing heard on a Sunday from the churches – spine tingling. A beautiful place and one that we both agree needs revisiting one day.

Next up was Fiji; now I have to say that we only actually stayed in Suva harbour, hence my opinion of Fiji as a whole is a tad coloured by that experience. I should have known better than to have been optimistic after we saw a sofa floating towards us in the approach channel. I'm almost certain that Suva harbour is where old rusty fishing boats go to die.

The first night we were there, the wind got up and of the eight yachts there, seven (including ourselves) dragged anchor at two in the morning, quite an impressive ballet to behold, with lots of horn honking, yelling and maneuvering going on. By morning the wind was joined by driving rain which lasted two more days. Customs and Quarantine payed us a visit during this weather, arriving alongside in a tender, four huge Fijians and one tiny Indian climbed aboard (and the men were wearing skirts) one of them placed a sandeled size twelve on our lifeline and * snap * there goes a solid stainless steel shackle........which they found hilariously funny but Mike didn't. Cut a long story short, we were then cleared to go ashore which we did as soon as it stopped raining. A taxi ride into the city – about 5k away costs AU$2.30, not a bad deal! Suva itself offered very much more westernised shopping than we had been used to for a while, there is a huge Indian population there which made for interesting retail opportunities, however I personally found the noise and the in your face-ness of it all overwhelming. Generally speaking the overall noise was like a cross between a parrot screeching and a four year old throwing a tantrum.

Back at the boat, the sofa had appeared again accompanied by several 44 gallon drums, a couple of pigs and an ironing board.

I don't want to come across as being a negative person so I shan`t say any more :-)

Vanuatu was lovely – a very gentle people and beautiful scenery. The yacht club there (which isn't really a yacht club) are very helpful, and we spent a great few days there, along with our great friends, Christien and Josienne of the French yacht Asterie. The overwhelming feeling was that we were so close to Australia now – and I think that hurried us a bit.

The passage from Vanuatu to Townsville was probably one of the consistently worst we have done so far, with big seas and swell and big winds all from the wrong place! However, our FiFi looked after us as always and safe passage was made.

The emotions we felt when arriving in Townsville will be the subject of a future posting, suffice to say it was pretty full on – stand by for an in depth tell-all at a later date.

Whilst in the `ville as they say here, we had two lots of special visitors; a family member and partner flew out to join us to celebrate a birthday, then Miriam, a dear friend from HYC joined us for a few days. Unfortunately, due to our windlass biting the dust we were just in the marina both times, but I don't think anyone minded too much. Some photos of Townsville and our visitors are here

All from me for now – we will be leaving for Darwin as soon as the weather looks good enough for long enough. Mike has written a good piece below this, please read it, he writes very well.  I'll take this opportunity to say thanks to all those who read my ramblings, and we appreciate your comments more than you would imagine xoxox

Picture shows us relaxing on Magnetic Island

Townsville

We arrived in Townsville on 30^th July, tired but very relieved to have crossed the Pacific Ocean. But then sad that that part of the adventure was over and cruising friends made on the way may never be met again.

Coming thru the barrier reef at night in 30-40 Kts winds and 3.5-4.5 Mtr swells was no walk in the park. The AIS had stopped working 3 days out of Vanuatu, thus we had no info on the ships we encountered.  This I fixed after finding a fuse block badly corroded in the rear Lazerette and replacing it.)
Arriving at the fuel jetty in the Break Water Marina in Townsville for clearance formalities, we were granted temporary import of the boat by both Customs and Quarantine. Customs were very good and helpful, forms were filled out and we were generously allowed 30 days to come up with the 10% duty needed to import her. As there was a considerable amount of paper work involved with this we had a local import broker handle the import for us. Quarantine wanted us to have a full termite/bug inspection done as there is a lot of wood on her, this she passed with flying colours and we can now report that she is a fully imported Australian yacht!!

Our windlass gave us some concerns when we last used her in Vanuatu. Deploying the anchor here in the Townsville pen we noticed that the motor got extremely hot in 15-20 seconds then tripped the 70 Amp CB!! Initially worn brushes were diagnosed but is soon became obvious that the whole windlass was well passed it’s used by date!! So as with most things these days, the same one can’t be bought anymore, so a replacement Lewmar unit  was bought and is at this moment is being fitted. Once this is sorted we plan to depart for Darwin hopefully before the end of August.

Coming home has had mixed emotions. While here we had our Daughter and boyfriend come stay with us so we could celebrate her major Birthday milestone (never a good idea to mention a Woman’s age is it??!!) We also had a dear friend from the yacht club come over for a week. This was very nice but made us even more home sick for Perth.
Jan & I now have iPads, mine has GPS installed so I have downloaded Navonics charts for the whole of Australia and will be using it as a back up to the chart plotter. These things use far less power than the E120 and we met several cruisers who use them as their primary navigation display. There is a company in New Zealand that make a little black box that interfaces with Sea Talk and NMEA to wirelessly transmit all that info onto a iPad, so radar overlays and AIS info can be displayed just like the chart plotter, neat. Check out    http://brookhouseonline.com/imux.htm

We were also shown Chart books covering different parts of the world, very handy to have all charts in 1 large book....Check out http://www.tidesend.com/

So now we are heads down checking charts and tides for the leg to Darwin. Initial inspections show this to be an extremely challenging leg thru the inner Barrier reef, but at least we will have shipping lanes to follow and 24/7 weather forecasts on the internet and SSB.

More from me in Darwin...Mike

Fiji and Vanuatu photos

I uploaded some pics of the two islands today - enjoy and stand by for some editorial content soon - thanks for your patience - I am indulging myself at proper shops :-)
Here are the pics: 

I love a sunburnt country

Pleased to report that after the passage from hell, Fully Involved, Mike and Jan are all safely in Townsville, Qld, Australia!
I will endeavor to post a little on Fiji and Vanuatu later this week after I have finished compensating for being retail deprived for so long.
Of course, this isn't the end - we still have over 2500 nautical miles to cover before we are truly home - but for now we are enjoying a well earned break in beautiful Townsvile.
Stay tuned!