| At anchor, Port Maurelle, Kapa Island, Vava'u Group, Kingdom
of Tonga Tuesday, October 7, 2003, 9:00 a.m. Dear friends and family: I last wrote you as we were leaving Niuatoputapu, where we holed up after a rather rough passage from Western Samoa. Fortunately, the passage from Niuatoputapu to Vava'u was just the opposite: extremely calm. So calm that the wind never exceeded 5 knots and we motored all the way. We saw a few whales in the distance (which was the highlight of the trip for Cori, who has been waiting for six weeks to see whales!) |
 Sunrise, during Cori's 5 to 7 am watch, just before we reached Vava'u. |
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 Vava'u is quite different from anywhere else we have seen in the South Pacific. It is a jumble of small volcanic islands, with lots of bays, inlets and fjords. It reminds us strongly of the San Juan Islands and Canadian Gulf Islands (ignoring, of course, the palm trees). Some of the islands have limestone cliffs with caves eroded into them. Cori and Jens have been in the Swallows Cave (full of starlings, not swallows) and say it's magnificent. (photo left). We're waiting until the sun comes out again. Also awaiting us is Mariners Cave, which has an underwater entrance. We've all been practicing diving under the boat so that we feel confident we can swim down 8 feet, and through a 14 foot long opening. We'll let you know! |
| Gathered here are nearly all the boats we've encountered on our travels
across the South Pacific. We've spent a couple of evenings with Steve and
Iretta on Rigo, and we've seen some other boaters whom we've not seen
since the Marquesas. There's been some discussion of a
Tahanea reunion, with
the arrival yesterday of Neva, and today of Vesper. The capitol of the Vava'u group is the little town of Neiafu. That's the headquarters of the local Moorings organization, which has 12 boats for charter here. They're friendly to other boaters as well, and they rent mooring space, and put out an excellent guide to the anchorages in these islands. Their booklet and chart list more than 40 different anchorages, and all the boaters tend to refer to the anchorages by number, rather than by name ("we're going to number eleven tonight...") |
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| Neiafu is where most of the people here live. There is a fresh fruit and vegetable market, and a few sparsely stocked grocery stores. The two banks have ATM machines, but the internet connection to the rest of the world is so fragile that the machines are often down. That having been said, there's a boat in the harbor that rents out radio modems which actually provide a fairly good connection to the internet during non-business hours. We rented one of these modems last weekend, while we were close to the base in Neiafu, and all of us got our fill of web surfing for awhile. |
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We have a personal connection with Tonga: Sisilia Holani, who helped with the care of Craig's mother during the last year or so before she passed away, is from Neiafu. We planned from the beginning to visit Sisilia's family in Neiafu. We were indeed welcomed by Sisilia's mother, Melania, who invited us to lunch at her new house. The old house was destroyed in a hurricane in 2001. Sisilia and her brother (who is also in the United States) purchased building materials and shipped a container to Tonga so the new house could be built. We met Sisilia's daughter, and a large number of other grandchildren of Melania's. It turns out that Melania and her husband (who passed away last year) worked many years for the Moorings as cook and skipper respectively. So Melania regaled us with many stories of her work on Moorings boats, including entertaining the King and Queen of Tonga, who came with two Japanese businessmen to check out stories of oil deposits somewhere in these islands. (Fortunately, the decision was made not to do exploratory drilling!) |
 Before we went to lunch at Melania's house, we went to the Catholic
church for Sunday morning mass. The church officials (except the priest)
were all dressed in white shirts, black slacks or tupenus (like the Samoan
lavalava), and a ta'ovala pandanus mats wrapped around their middles. Most
of the women attending the mass were dressed in Sunday best, plus a belt
woven out of pandanus, with streamers hanging down. Some of these were
natural pandanus (straw) color, and others were dyed various other colors.
Melania wore a red dress, with a belt and streamers of black, hung with
colorful glass beads. When we went back to her house, she took off the
belt and put it away -- obviously it's only for church. |
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| About a half an hour before the mass, we heard about ten minutes of
complicated rhythmical drumming. Then came the usual bells. Then came the
children's choir, which was somewhat of a disaster, musically speaking. A
cantor started out, then all the children joined loudly on random pitches,
finally coming around to some sort of togetherness in two part harmony,
which gradually (or not so gradually) drifted flat as they continued. There
was no obvious conductor or director. The adult choir was much better,
although the director was working pretty hard to keep up with the singers,
who had a mind of their own. The whole congregation sings -- in four part
harmony -- and the effect is pretty impressive. Probably 75% of the mass was
sung. The priest gave an impassioned sermon about the sanctity of the
family. (The 10 minute sermon was given a three sentence synopsis in
English for the benefit of the tourists.) We reflected afterwards that the nearly empty European cathedrals ought to be magically transported here -- both for the coolness of the stones and for the huge crowds that would fill them. Religion is very important here, and the buildings seem pretty fragile. There's no air conditioning, and it's REALLY HOT and HUMID! When we sat down in the last row of the church, a rector directed us to get up and move immediately under one of the ceiling fans. |
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Well, that's about all the news from here. We hope to see a couple more interesting anchorages before Jens and Cori leave us on Friday, to continue their trip on land, in Australia. Best wishes to all our friends and family! Craig and Barbara Johnston S/V Sequoia
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 All photos in this segment, except those with date stamps, are by C. Neunteufel and J. Kosyna |