404: 250 Miles to Tonga and an Infamous Customs Dock

Last week we explored the beautiful island of Nui, both above and below the waterline. But a brewing storm and approaching westerlies forced us to leave long before we were ready. So this week we cast off the mooring lines and point our bow west toward the kingdom of Tonga. After weeks of watching forecasts and adjusting our plans around the weather, we're looking forward to reaching a place with true all-around protection. But first, we have 250 miles of open ocean between us and our next destination and a customs dock that is infamous in the South Pacific. Goodbye Nui, hello Tonga. Oh what a special stay and obviously going to be etched in our minds forever because of our three-day passage to nowhere. But this is just such an absolutely incredible island and well worth the hassle and troubles. We're so excited about this trip to Tonga because when we get to Tonga we're out of the dangerous middle which means that we're gonna have plenty of time to just stop and rest and relax. Like right now we just can't ever do that here because we're constantly worried about the weather coming in and making sure that there's there's no issue related to weather which is almost constant here because Nui's just in this position where it's just getting nailed by all the storms. So part of the rush of leaving today is on Thursday a big storm's coming in and it's going to bring pretty bad winds and waves so we want to be out of here and then just after that it turns west again and we definitely don't want to have a second trip to the Southeast Yacht Club so we're we're taking off. The cool thing about this trip is we are going to pass through the international date line which means that we lose a day. We literally jump forward 24 hours so we're leaving today it's a Monday probably halfway through Tuesday we're going to hit that international date line which means it is going to be Wednesday with a snap like that it goes to Wednesday so we have lost a day but it's a 240 nautical mile trip which at five knots it'll take us 48 hours. We think we're going to be averaging a lot more than five knots which we already are so that's good so we should get in maybe on Thursday morning. There are a lot of cruisers that are getting in on Thursday because of this storm that's coming through so we would love to get there in the morning get cleared in and then get on a mooring ball before this whole thing hits and before a lot more boats come in. Never a dull moment on the boat that's for sure. So far very low winds for us I'm sure it'll pick up once we get out of lee of the island and hopefully we'll be sailing in a little bit. Well it took a little while but we were able to finally turn the engines off. We are under full sail which is awesome. It's a downwind direction which is not the best so we're sailing a little bit off of downwind to be able to keep wind in the sails but the sea state could not be better. This is incredible so no complaints and if we've got to sail a little bit off course we'll correct that at some point. All right guys it is six o'clock and it's almost time for Brown to take over for night shift. It is completely cloud covered but I am looking at radar and there is nothing on the radar so that's good. I'm kind of actually a little bit surprised. I was thinking that we were going to have a lot of squalls and storms on radar. We are a bit slow at the moment but we will speed up because the wind is going to pick up tomorrow because we really need to be averaging about five knots and we're doing about four, a little over four. Otherwise we're going to get in really really late. It's our first night at sea. The wind has died. We really thought that the wind was going to be a bit stronger but it is not and it's directly behind us so Brown did a great job trying to keep us from going too far off of our rung line but we're six miles off and there's no wind so the sails are flapping so we drop them. We're going to motor till morning and then reassess. It is the early morning shift. Our final night at sea. Yay. So excited to get to Tonga today. Still very little wind. It's getting a bit more consistent with nine knots. We are about 60 miles out and arrival time is probably going to be around 4 p.m so if we put the sail out I might actually get some extra speed which means we could clear in before the end of the day which would be really good so I'm going to do that now. Well things are definitely getting a lot more frisky. The wind has picked up quite a bit. Doing six and a half knots. We've been six and a half and eight. Now we had 19 knots of wind so we're going to hit the north part of Tonga at about 10 30 and then I think it takes about two and a half hours from there to get all the way into the port. Quite a distance from the top of the island but we're making good progress. Welcome to the kingdom of Tonga. We're on the protected side of the island now which is really nice but it's about a 10 mile journey from out here all the way in and around to the port. Oh it feels good to cross the two Tonga out. The last one we've got is to Fiji unless we go to almost to the end of the passages for the season which is fantastic. I'm so glad we're not going to Australia that would be way too far for us. I always wonder what this is going to look like. You know it looks really cool. It kind of in a way reminds me of Sunblast a little bit. A little postage stamp island. We're very happy to be here but the best part about this is there's a big system coming in this weekend and we don't have to leave for it. We have protected waters here which is the first time in about six weeks that we've had that so. We've been so exposed so just on defense. On defense for sure. Losing sleep over it and just having to make decisions based on not what we want to do but what the weather's doing. You know what's going to be really interesting is this place as it stands on its own it's called the kingdom of Tonga and it's not affiliated with the French. It's not affiliated with New Zealand. It's its own deal. My 92nd country, Brown's 52nd country so we're ticking them off which is pretty cool. This will be really interesting to explore it because we know nothing about it. The customs dock unfortunately is renowned. It is poorly maintained. It has metal excursions. It's got a four foot tidal difference but it's not a floating dock. It's a wharf so everyone has said put out every fender you have and be prepared for it to be ugly. So we've got to go on to that dock and clear customs, bio, and health and then get on a mooring ball. So I would say for the whole passage this is probably our our hardest part is getting on and off this dock without destroying the boat. Q flag is up. We always have to put that up before we come into a new country to let them know that we have not passed customs yet. We have just tried to call port control and they are not responding so we're going to go in and hope that the customs dock is empty. If it is we'll just tie up and hail them from there. If it is busy we'll just grab a mooring ball and figure it out. This is the arrival dock in Tonga. It is really not good. Sketch in every way and really hard to tie up if there are two people in wind and we had a lot of winds. Two high schoolers came out and helped us tie up. I don't know what we would have done without them. It would have been a little bit more complicated. So we're here. That's the good news. Waiting for customs to check us in. We just had customs and immigration on the boat and bio and they finished their work but hung out for about 45 minutes just chatting. Drinking coffee and just having a great time. Anyway now we are waiting for the person from the health department to come finish and then when he's done we can get off this dock. Almost to the mooring ball. Cannot wait. There's our friends on Queen's Dream. Our friends on Luna. Two hours from the point where we got on the dock to getting our mooring lines set. This is a new one for us. We've never seen this so we've got split lines. Hopefully no matter what they hold. That's all that matters. It's our first morning here in Tonga. We have finally gotten a good night's sleep which has been wonderful. Last night we slept 13 hours and today we're gonna just slowly tackle a few things because some things are more urgent than others. The first is we've got to defrost our freezer. It is full of ice which is not good. We've let it go a lot longer than we normally would because we just didn't have any time. And then the second thing is Brown very diligently checks our sail drive oil and our engine oil and we've got a little bit of water in our sail drive after two and a half years. That's pretty good. So he's gonna go ahead and change that out and get us some new sail drive oil. Hopefully we can minimize the use of that engine until we haul out at the end of November. But if we had to haul out here we could actually do it. Not that we want to. We're in a really good place that has a lot of facilities and it is very much the boating world here so we've got great opportunities to get things fixed and maybe start on some projects before we head over to Fiji which would be a good thing to minimize our list over there because we've got a lot of things on that list. So anyway first things first. It's the scramble to get out of here this morning. It is eight o'clock and we have heard that they have lettuce and some some limited fruits and vegetables down at the market that starts at 8 30 but I've heard that before 8 30 the lettuce and vegetables are gone. This is our last opportunity before Sunday. I don't even know if they have the market on Saturdays. We're going to find out today but we are pretty much out of fruits and veg so we need to pick some of that stuff up. Freshies! We need freshies! Our first day in town and we'll get to check it out. Wow look at the cat and the little ensemble. Oh yeah we've got the tropical sunbloss palm tree silhouettes. We're on Tongan soil officially. Well I guess not it's a dock but this is the Kraken. It is a famous restaurant that the cruisers and everyone loves so looking forward to eating there. Oh these are beautiful docks. I love that the Kraken keeps them here for us. Yeah it's a pretty true business man. Yeah all right up we go. So we are opting to leave the dinghy here at the Kraken because the town dock we have heard has a lot of fishermen that come in and out and the wakes and all that stuff it's oops not that great for your dinghy. I hope we can get out. Yes we can. It's really unusual here just looking at downtown and the merchants. Here we are from the bank. Eileen's going to the ATM machine. Tonga is kind of its own ruler. It doesn't have any strong affiliations so it seems like the void of that strong western influence has brought on quite a few Chinese merchants and the stores have Chinese people working for them. Don't speak any English. It's really interesting. I don't know even if they speak Tongan but it's just really this whole place has a different vibe than like Atataki and Niue because of that. I was told before you get here don't count on really going any grocery stores and finding anything good because most of the canned goods come from China and it's just not that great of quality compared to like Atataki has a strong New Zealand influence so they have regular boats going back and forth for New Zealand and just the quality of the goods is much higher so that's my little takeaway for this morning. After getting some cash we wandered down to the fresh food market and stumbled upon a cultural performance. It was our first time seeing Tongans dressed in traditional attire. Saturday morning market. Fruits and vegetables. This is amazing. Little baby bok choy, lettuce. Fantastic. I gave you some extra here. Oh thank you. This one's from my cousin. Oh thank you Lily. That's so sweet. Thank you. We just scored at the market. Ron's carrying a watermelon that was about $1.50 which is incredible. Hopefully it's good but we got a ton of fresh veg. Prices were decent compared to French Polynesia. Cheaper. So that's good. It's a wonderful experience being able to speak English to the locals and understand them and they understand us. That's a nice change from French Polynesia but we definitely miss a little bit of that French influence too.