Snorkeling in Pt. Maurell

We awoke to gray skies, on again off again rain, and winds screaming at 10 27 knots. But, as promised, the water was relatively calm. It is probably rocky in some other anchorages, and rough in the ocean. Needless to say, it was a lazy day. We spent the majority of the day reading and playing “name that tune”. There are some hilarious quotes from the game, including “This is that girl band, Hansen!” and “I don’t recognize this song. Oh wait”¦ wasn’t this our first dance at our wedding?” The crew of Far Niente, Eric and Gisela, had arrived in the anchorage the day before, so in the evening we went over to their boat and hung out with them.

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Yesterday the sun came out. We were thrilled to see the sun after more than a week of gloomy days in a row. We went snorkeling in Point Maurell bay. The snorkeling wasn’t all that spectacular since a lot of the coral has died, but we still saw some cool stuff. There are a few pretty coral formations, and a lot of mauve coral that almost looks like antlers. There is a plant that tends to grow near the mauve coral that is light brown and fuzzy looking. Continue reading

Swimming with the Humpback Whales in Tonga

Today we woke up to gray skies. The weather forecast was for 11 foot seas at 8 second intervals and 25 knots of wind. We were supposed to go whale watching and we were wondering if it was such a good plan. We had been told that the whales head out of Vava’u when the weather is bad, returning when it is better. We also have been told the whales leave during the full moon.

Tonga and Niue both are visited every winter by humpback whales that come here to mate and bear their young. Both countries allow you to swim with the whales when you go with a licensed professional whale watch company. Both Niue and Tonga strictly prohibit boaters from chasing after the whales themselves. In Niue it is easy to control the boaters since there are so few visitors, but much harder here in Tonga. Since we haven’t had any luck seeing whales on our own, we decided to go out with the professionals. We would have done it in Niue, but they weren’t seeing any whales while we were there.

Our whale watch boat picked us up from Kosmos. We headed through the maze of islands towards the sea. Here we are leaving Neiafu harbor. You can see all the big commercial buildings along the waterfront in the background.

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Tonga Chores, Visitors and Jinxes

Eric spent the entire day yesterday doing boat chores. He changed the pre-filter on the water maker and cleaned the sea strainer, and changed the generator impellor. He also did some good stuff like secure the toaster oven and dish drainer so they don’t go flying when we get hit by a side wave, re-running wires so we could move some of the computer gear to better locations, general reorganizing, and cleaning.

Yesterday was the last day of SCUBA class for Christi. She took her final exam and did three dives in other parts of the harbor. The other dive sites had more life than the site on Tuesday, but were still mostly dead. There were lots more of both starfish and a couple of sea anenomoies. Christi passed the class with flying colors. After three days of being in the sun with her mask on, she has stylish mask tan lines. Continue reading

SCUBA Diving in Vava’u

Tuesday — Yesterday Christi started a SCUBA certification class. This is the perfect place. Warm, clear water. An instructor whose native tongue is English. With the favorable exchange rate, the price is good.

The first day of class was mostly lecture with a couple hours in shallow water practicing basic skills. The instructor chided her when he looked in her logbook and saw the dive in Suwarrow to 72 feet and the one in Niue through a cave to 102 feet.

While Christi was in class, Eric was the social butterfly. He stayed at the Aquarium Cafe for a while visiting with the other yachties, then pulled out a kayak and kayaked around the harbor visiting with various boats. Continue reading

Chimney Dive and Niue Departure

On Sunday we had Keith from the yacht club and his wife, Sue, over for lunch. We had a nice visit with them. They brought us a batch of pineapple muffins, which we were excited about. Muffins make good passage food.

After lunch we went SCUBA diving with Eric and Gisela at a spot Keith told us about. When he first told us about it, we knew we couldn’t go. It is a more advanced dive to 100 feet, through a cave, and totally out of our league. However, Eric and Gisela are certified rescue divers, so when they arrived in port, we asked them to go with us. They also have a nice underwater diver camera. The dive is called “the chimney”. There is a sheer cliff that drops from 30 to 100 feet. Inside the cliff is a vertical cave, which opens up at the bottom. As you go in the cave, you look up a narrow opening 70 feet tall. From the surface, the opening looks like nothing more than a crack in the surface. The mouth of the cave isn’t visible from the surface, but just outside the mouth of the cave is an old jeep that was washed into the water during Heta. Continue reading