(Hi Meg, I’m writing this for the blog too but I have you in mind as my principle audience, so there are a few details in there that you know already)
Hi Meg,
So good to get your news from home, even if it is absolutely freezing there. We’ve been out of phone and internet contact for nearly two weeks while on passage and in Niuatoputapu. We are now in Samoa and it is really hot – 30 degrees. However the locals don’t think so, we had three Apia residents over last night and they said they were using duvets at night – we don’t even use a sheet!
But let me go back a bit. We had a good sail from Vavau (160 nautical miles) to Niuatoputapu, sailing overnight and arriving early the next day. We had lots of wind so rocketed along at 6 & 7 knots, despite the 2-3 metre swell and moderate sea. At last I seem to be suffering less from sea-sickness; it makes the passages so much more fun. I like the shorter passages too.
You are right, the entrance to Niuatoputapu wasn’t
so bad (the entrance is surrounded by coral reefs just below the surface). We were greeted by the first dolphins we have seen on our trip, then we had to get the sail down, and suddenly we going through the markers. The markers were relatively good (for Tonga) a few bent over from the tsunami, and the leading marks were still there and worked. It was glorious to come in from the rough sea to the calm lagoon. And yes C-map worked up there. (Our electronic chart which doesn’t read correctly for the rest of Tonga as their charts don’t correspond with GPS).The shapely profile of Niuatoputapu as we appraoached from the east.
There was one other boat there who we quickly befriended in true cruiser style. We spent the rest of the day recovering; even one overnight sail (with night watches) is exhausting. The next day we went in to the village, despite not being cleared in. As you go north in Tonga the whole customs thing gets easier and easier. We checked in and out on the same day but didn’t leave immediately.
In the village we met Niko and Sia, two fabulous locals who were to be our hosts for the next 11 days. Because of them we had the best experience of our whole Tonga stay.
Our first exercise was to climb the mountain in the centre of the island to see the view – whose idea was that! It was 30 degrees, straight up and plagued with mosquitoes – but the view was excellent.(Niuatoputapu is Tonga’s northernmost and remotest island. It has a population of about 800, no power except for a few private generators, and gets a supply ship once a month. About 100 yachts visit in the six month cruising season – which is very few when you compare it to the several thousand yachts that visit Great Barrier Island in January alone. Much of the island was hit by a tsunami in September last year))
We could see where the tsunami had hit. Parts of this island were devastated and 11 people killed. These people didn’t have much in the first place but now many are still living in tents waiting for the government to direct aid to housing (as opposed to the nice new roads they built – hardly anyone has a car – go figure!).
David’s first contact on the island was to watch the Tri Nations game in the middle of the night. A week later I joined in for an All Blacks/ Wallabies game. It was the best place I’ve ever watched the rugby. The venue was a thatched hut, the village hall having been gutted in the tsunami. There must have been 50 people in there all sitting on the floor. At the end of the hut was a TV hooked up to a generator. The TV and generator belonged to a local family as the village one- yes - was washed away by the tsunami.
At the front of the hut was large group of small boys, like a sea of puppies, and at the back a group of older men sitting round a large wooded kava bowl. They were a great audience. They cheered every tackle and half the audience was pro NZ and half for the Aussies.
The next day, Sunday, we went to the local Catholic Church to experience the singing; it was spectacular, natural four part harmony, no songbooks and no choir director. We got welcomed by name and the priest even gave us a synopsis of his sermon in English and contextualised it to sailing.
Then the first of our wonderful
meals at Niko and Sia's. We ate at their place every second night for over a week and they never wanted payment (except for the pig – more on that later) so some wonderful trading happened. Because they get so few supplies on the island it was easy to give food them and stuff that they couldn’t get. Also most boats are well set up with tools so between us we managed to fix a few things for them while we were there.This was a typical Sunday feast. I went early to watch the preparation of food before it went into the umu (sort of hangi style). I sat in this sort of outdoor kitchen. Niko and Sia’s house and shop were destroyed in the tsunami but they managed to find the shop roof and Niko found enough debris to build their three roomed shack. So outside this was a tap on a post with a communal toothbrush attached to it. It free drained into the sand. There was a platform to sit in and a table to keep the dishes on. There were two fire pits, one set up to boil things on and the other to act as an earth oven. The ground was littered with coconut shells and puppies.
I watched Sia make what turned out be delicious parcels of baked food. First she laid out banana leaves, and then put taro leaves on top of these. We picked and cut up pele, a green spinach like leaf, put this in a mound and added fresh fish, and in other parcels tinned mackerel, and corned beef. This was finished off with coconut cream, wrapped in a parcel and put into the umu. Niko sat on his coconut grater and quickly made the litres of coconut cream. Pawpaw was peeled, cut up and boiled in coconut cream.
Everyone was involved including their 3 sons. The kids scaled fish, peeled breadfruit with a mackerel can, prepared manioke (cassava) and chewed on sugar cane. Finally it all went in the oven and cooked for a couple of ours. We ate sitting on the floor of one of their rooms which they had cleared. The food was excellent, moist and flavoursome. And so simple. Apart from the tinned mackerel and corned beef, everything else they had grown or caught. My lowest food miles yet!
The next day we walked into the main village to check in and clear out customs. We visited a beautiful spring and had a bath. It was so glorious to be in fresh water. At that stage we’d been short of water and were salty all the time. Now we have the water maker going and had a couple of down pours that filled the tanks to overflowing, we are much cleaner and fresher.
A couple more boats arrived and we formed a tight knit community for about 10 days. Two American boats, a Canadian one and us.
Our next culinary event was a pot luck dinner at Niko’s. I baked brownie which went down really well as they don’t have an oven (or stove). David brought his guitar in and we had a great night singing. David has set out to play in public more and is doing it really well. Niko and Sia enjoyed this as they had lost their guitar in the tsunami.
A couple of days later we had a kava session. I’d heard it was awful stuff, and while it definitely looks like dirty dish water and tastes a bit odd, it has a very pleasant effect. We sat round a bucket and passed the kava around in half a coconut shell. It made me feel very mellow and relaxed. This was lovely combined with being with friends, warmth, being a in a tropical environment and the sunset. Niko and some of his friends and family sang some beautiful Tongan songs in four part harmony.
Next we all chipped in and bought a pig to roast on a spit. Another wonderful night eating and singing.
Mary, a classical violinist, fiddle, harmonica and mandolin player turned up and we had a final concert and potluck. David’s playing and singing was a huge hit. He has quite a repertoire now. He even wrote a song about Niko and Sia and the kids which they loved.
Song for Sia and Niko – to the tune of “The Crawdad Song”
You get a line I’ll get a pole Niko
You get a line I’ll get a pole man
You get a line I’ll get a pole, we’ll go fishing off Falehau
Niuatoputapu people fine.
Wake up now you slept too late kids
Wake up now you slept too late boys
Wake up now you slept too late
School bus has passed your gate
Niuatoputapu boys fine
What’ll become of these fine boys Niko
What’ll become of these three boys Sia
What’ll become of these fine boys
They’ll be grown men with degrees
Niuatoputapu men fine
What you gonna do with all these cruisers Sia
What you gonna do with all these cruisers now
What you gonna do with all these cruisers, feed ‘em up, be Tongan bruisers
Niuatoputapu people fine
Niko took David and some of the other yachties out fishing to show them how it was done. Alas David didn’t catch anything. Fortunately the others did so we had marinated and fried fish that night.
We were sad to leave but the wind was finally in the right direction, and had abated, so we took the opportunity and left. In fact after blowing for a week the wind dropped to nothing and we had to motor most of the first day. But I’ll keep that for the Samoa blog.
The end of another perfect day on Niuatoputapu
This experience of cruising really is extraordinary and wonderful. It has become our reality, it is normal for us to live on our boat floating from one beautiful place to the next. Sure it has its challenges like bad weather at sea, night watches and tiredness, hot nights, sand-flies and boat repairs but on the grand scale of things it really is living life to the full.
Now we are here doing this, it looks so achievable to go on doing it. We meet people every day who have been afloat for four or five years. So maybe we’ll do more in the future. Who knows. Check this space again after our return passage to NZ.
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