After an unplanned stop in Papeete for 10 days to have some essential repairs done on my mainsail, I had a fairly uneven crossing to Vava’u in Tonga – periods of no winds followed by 4.5 meter waves with 8 second intervals and 30-35 knot winds. To take a break from these conditions I heaved-to for a while and let the boat drift westward.
Wind and rain greeted me as I finally maneuvered through the outlying islands of the Vava’u group into the narrow channel that leads to the main town of Neiafu. After tying up to the commercial dock to spend a couple of hours going through the Customs and Immigration clearing-in process I was faced with finding a place to put my boat. Neiafu is located on Refuge Harbor, a well-protected but fairly deep harbor with abundant coral heads making anchoring there a tricky proposition.
To accommodate the many yachts that come here, a few companies have installed a number of moorings. Moorings are basically very heavy weights, like a big block of concrete, sitting on the bottom. The blocks are attached to heavy duty lines with loops that are pulled to the surface by a buoy or float of some kind. Attaching the mooring lines to the bow cleats on a boat provides very secure holding even in strong winds, assuming the mooring is in good condition (they need periodic maintenance).
I faced a couple of issues after clearing-in. I contacted the 2 companies by radio that have essentially all the moorings and both told me they were all taken because last week was the Vava’u Blue Water Festival and a lot of boats showed up to participate. The second problem is that it can be difficult to pick up the moorings lines when sailing solo, especially if it’s windy. I have to maneuver the boat as close as I can to the mooring buoy, then leave the helm and try to fish the mooring loops out of the water with a boat hook while the boat is now drifting way because no one is at the helm. Of course, after grabbing the mooring loop you have to be ready to quickly get it tied to something on your boat. Just trying to pull on it with your boat hook is good way to lose your boat hook. I have a clever hooking device I can put on the end of my boat hook with a line attached that solves that problem, but not the problem of the boat drifting away. I’ve always been able to grab a mooring with the boat hook eventually but it may take several passes with the boat to get it – a very frustrating process.
Fortunately, some long-time friends I had never actually met solved both problems. I’ve followed a Swedish couple, Lars and Suzanne Hellman, on their boat Sea Wind for more than 18 months after I first spotted them going to Antarctica in 2022 and wanted to keep track of where they anchored. Since then we’ve traded many emails and I’ve followed their posts on Facebook and YouTube. I knew they were already on a mooring in Neiafu so I sent them a quick email asking if there were any open moorings near them. Lars immediately came back and said he was headed in to town in his dinghy and would look around for open moorings on the way. 15 minutes later, as I was pulling away from the commercial wharf, Lars came along side in his dinghy and said he found a great mooring very close in to town that just opened up. He not only led me to it, but when we got there he fished the mooring loops out of the water and put them around my bow cleats. The boat was hooked up and secure! Lars and Suzanne are amazing, helpful people who assist many cruisers, organize events, etc.. I had them over to my boat that evening and opened a great bottle of red wine I bought in the Algarve I’d been saving for a special occasion. They had preceded me to Puerto Williams, Antarctica, and Puerto Montt so we knew a lot of the same people in these places and had many stories about similar experiences.
This morning, Sunday, October 1, I was relaxing in the boat’s cockpit with a cup of coffee when I heard music coming from the nearby Catholic Church. The beautiful voices of the choir had found their way across the water to me and Phywave, a wonderful start to a peaceful morning and my first full day in Tonga.
