Oops

The last 2 emails have included an E postioner for the latitude (rather than West). Previously there was no indicator but it may well have been East. This is quite important as it puts the ship substantially closer than originally shown - please check out Pangolin for their actual position. It accounts for what looks like a dogleg backwards from their sojourn at Minerva Reef! Anyway, what it does mean is that it is all good progress on the trip home and Sam's bet of 3rd August may be a tad optimistic, but perhaps my guess of the 5th August has a fighting chance!

Sushi & Sailing

Last night while we were all watching the All Blacks getting the Bledisoe Cup back for New Zealand, the crew apparently caught 2 tuna. Sam has taken to sending the messages rather than Russell and they are even more undecipherable because he runs everything into a single word. Tonight's was a real beaut:

swtstks4etacls1900,isy1430aug3
tnasshiawsmsalngtmbsup

OK, so this translates as:
The sweepstake for the ETA (that's where everyone puts in $5.00 to predict the ETA and then the winner puts the money on the bar on arrival for drinks) closed at 1900. Sam says that it will be 1430 on August 3rd. The tuna was made into sushi and either this was awesome, or more likely the sailing is awesome, thumbs up. They are apparently barrelling along at between 6.5 and 7.5 knots so probably awesome sailing.

I think Sam is wildly optimistic with a 3rd August arrival time, probably because he wants to get home and get started on the house and driveway. Our pick is 1000 on 5th August, but we will see. The weather is looking favourable for the next few days so fingers crossed otherwise, it is more likely to be 7th or 8th.

Minerva Reef

Progress has been reasonable with around 20k SE winds meaning that the ship was able to visit Minerva Reef on the way home. They stopped off and celebrated in traditional crew fashion with a drink or three, although if it was that Pirate's rum of Chris's they probably couldn't cope with more than one - don't think it ever saw sugar and only the colouring and label would lead you to believe it was in fact rum rather than raw spirit flavoured with vanila.

They are now on their way towards New Zealand and looking forward to getting home now. Winds continue to be kind and whilst not perfect are at least allowing them to head towards home, and not on the nose as we originally feared. It is Russell's desire to sail all the way home, so fingers crossed fair winds prevail.

Homeward Bound: Tonga to New Zealand

Just got off the phone from Russell and they are preparing to leave - filling up with water and fuel and getting ready for departure. Everyone is looking ward to heading back to sea and getting away from the town. They are a day behind schedule, no doubt due to the delay that was caused by the Royal Funeral. When we arrived on Thursday, everything was shut in preparation for the Friday funeral so there would have only been Monday to organise provisions and paperwork.

The new positioning crew arrived over the weekend. Bob Lourie and his daughter Kate, plus local Russellites Peter Stuart and Bruce Wilson. Sam has also returned from his 3 week break, complete with a new EPIRB. Our last one went off while in port in Rarotonga, the second time it had happened in 3 months. Having an EPIRB go off unintentionally has major ramifications (like search and rescue parties, Airforce Orions and Navy vessels heading in your direction) and so we decided to dismantle the unit to prevent further problems when we left Raro, while we got a replacement unit ordered. He had to pick it from a dark alley in Ponsonby hidden under a water tank in the middle of the night on his way to the airport. The taxi drivermust have thought it was really dodgy heading to the airport with a suspicious package!

Winds for the return leg unfortunately don't look that favourable (mostly South Easterlies) so it looks as if it may be several tacks across the Pacific in order to get home. But the voyage will be tracked on Pangolin as usual.

Rarotonga to Tonga:

We set sail for Tonga on Tuesday 5th around miday with a plan if possible to stop off at Beveridge Reef and hopefully Nuie. However the winds weren't favourable for us and progress was fairly slow with us hoving to at one point for 18 hours as we were going backwards! However we made it to Beveridge, arriving at 10.00 pm at night. Fortunately there was a full moon so we had Manton and Chris up in the cross trees spotting the outline of the waves breaking (and the gap where we could pass through). Russell and Mark were glued to the radar where the water crashing through the gap was clearly visible and I was at the helm. Everyone else was up on deck with eyes peeled to spot the gap and in we went.

After anchoring up, we all had a celebratory drink before retiring for the first night not bobbing around on the ocean. Truly it was a bath tub in the middle of the ocean! Calm, warm gentle waters, beautiful coral and fish. Half the crew went snorkelling off the reef and another party went to investigated a wrecked boat at the edge of the reef. They discovered a newly wrecked New Zealand fishing vessel complete with most of her longline gear and even New Zealand Women's Weekly magazines in her lockers (doesn't sound like the kind of reading material fisherman would normally read so go figure). We took the opportunity to adjust our dateline and timezone back to NZST to ensure fairness among the watches, losing the 9th July in the process.

After the pleasant 12 hour interlude it was back out to the high seas, by this time a day late against our schedule, and off to Vav'au with an anticipated ETA of 13th July - a further 380 nautical miles and probable 3 days assuming fair winds. A double strike of tuna shortly after leaving the reef prompted the unusual action of throwing them back (BAD mistake, they were the last fish of the trip as it turned out) and the winds came round in our favour for some great sailing.

We reached Va'vau on the morning of 13th and as we headed in, we heard Kate Martin who was waiting to join the ship at the port of Neiafu call us up on the radio. Where were we? She headed off to the customs and MAF and called us back with instructions and we tied up at the container dock at 2.30 - although we subsequently discovered in fact that in Tonga it was 3.30 pm! Just time for a clearance, a quick change and down to the Mermaid Bar to celebrate after 8 days at sea.

The following day we set off island hopping with a plan on Sunday to visit the Spanish restaurant in Te Pania. Russell had been there in 1992 and although it was quite pricey, we decided damn the expense we would have a night out. Sunday afternoon the weather wasn't great so we played Mafia (Chris learned this game in Nepal of all places!) and then donned our best party finery and bling before setting off in the zodiac for dinner.

As we arrived, we saw the paella in the oven and realised it was veritable spanish banquet with tapas to start and desert. Fish pate, cheese croquettes, gazpacho and tortilla were all served and then to our surprise, the guy cooking the paella arrived in a beribboned black cape, a Guadia Seville hat and a guitar and proceeded to dance on the floor - we presume to honour the incoming paella - which was in fact delicious. After desert, Maria offered us an assortment of percussion instruments so we could all make lots of noise to accompany the floorshow of music. Much drink was consumed by all, including those playing the music and we staggered back to the ship very late. Suffice to say some people (no names will mentioned here) had great difficulty being woken up to do their watch! A word about the toilet at the restaurant - it was without doubt the best toilet we encountered in the entire Tonga group, and that included Nukualofa.

Unfortunately we had to head down towards Nuku'alofa on the Tuesday as the wind yet again wasn't favourable and 5 of us were flying out on Friday morning at ohgodearly o'clock. We fortunately had time to have a quick break at the Ha'apai Group, probably some of the nicest snorkelling and beaches we encountered. Here is where we started to encounter a number of whales, a shark and some dolphins. Not to mention the enormous fish that got away....

And finally on to Nuku'alofa were we had the day to kill before leaving for the airport at 0100.

The best laid plans of mice and men!

After a good sail back from Aitutake, the ship then hit bad weather. We were due to meet them at the Port on the morning of the 29th, but a quick look at the other vessels in port the previous night gave us no confidence we would see them there in the morning. We were right. We collected Russell's daughter Chloe from the airport with her friend Kate the night before, and the next morning we set off on the anti-clockwise bus that went round the Island. We got to the South side just by the Rarotongan Hotel and lo and behold spotted a tall ship, looking for all the world like a sigh from the previous century, battling just outside the reef. We had our VHF with us and made contact. Turned out that the port was closed and they were bobbing around until the weather improved. However two crew needed to come ashore - Sam because he was flying out that night, and poor old Chris who had a bad tooth and a dental appointment. We managed to established they were sending the Zodiac ashore at 1230 and we went back to the beach to meet them. Chris had her tooth extracted and Sam came back to our hotel. It was a lot more pleasant there by the pool that battling the surf outside the reef.

Finally the next morning we made contact again via cellphone. The port had improved sufficiently for them to come in. However in the meantime, they had blown the lower tops'l and also need repairs to the windless which was broken on the reef. They finally made it to port around 1300 on Saturday 30th, so there was no chance of leaving before the weekend.

Today is Monday and the shops are now open. Repairs are being made and and laundry has been done (managed to use our Hotel's industrial laundry facilities for a modest donation - saved heaps of time) and we are just doing the clearance paperwork. We expect to leave tomorrow morning first thing.