September 25 - I could have slept for at least a few more hours, but Tristan is up at our more or less our usual time of 6:30 a.m. so I get up as well for coffee. Very little wind yesterday once we arrived at Vavu’a, but it’s moderately windy this morning. Arrived here in clouds and rain yesterday although it cleared up around 1:30 p.m. but it’s clear this morning. Do a bunch of small boat projects and then walk around town to check out stores, restaurants, etc. Have lunch at Mango Café. My fish sandwich is just OK, Tristan’s sushi is very disappointing. Have dinner at Kraken next door to the Mango Bar, which is very good.
September 26 - 27 - Do a bunch of food shopping to replace “stores”, check out the chandlery for replacement water accumulator, additional soft shackle, etc. with no success. Very modest inventory. At 5:00 p.m. we are told we are anchored in a restricted zone and we must move. Windlass fails as we weigh anchor (motor detaches from shaft as it did in Cooke’s Baie and Tristan struggles mightily to hoist our anchor by hand. We try to anchor in one spot, but wind and current take us out to too deep water from intended “anchor drop site” and Tristan has to hoist anchor by hand again. It’s dark now and we wind up taking a free mooring far from Town which we know is private one, knowing that we’ll probably have to abandon it the next morning. Tristan fixes the windlass the next morning and we let go the mooring and we are lucky to find a good shallow place to anchor nearby. We do some more shopping and have Chinese takeout for dinner.
September 28 - Finish shopping and get ready to do some local cruising the next morning.
September 29 - We motor to Tapana anchorage. Takes two hours of travel and almost hour and a half to find a place to drop the hook in a reasonably shallow spot with adequate swing room. Anchorage is very picturesque with small beach in small cove in front of us. Wind is up, blowing consistently in the high teens and occasionally low 20's but we are in a total lee from any swell and from most of the wind itself tucked close into the cove.
September 30 - Dinghy to the beach right in front of us in Tapana cove. Walk along elevated path till reach a gate. I walk back the way we came and Tristan passes around gate and walks part of the way back long the ocean facing shore until the beach runs out and he rejoins me on the path. We then dinghy to a long beach on the other side of the bay on which are anchored/drawn up onto the sand a bunch of local boats but we run out of water and have to paddle out to where we can resume using the dinghy engine. We then dinghy across the anchorage to where there is a small restaurant serving Basque Tapas. Turns out it’s only open on Sunday and we return to boat for the afternoon to consider our next step, whether to keep checking out these outlying anchorages or to return to Neiafu to prepare for our trip to Fiji and wait for good weather window. We elect to stay in Tapana for another day. Later in the afternoon when the tide is higher we return to the beach where the local boats are anchored/drawn up on the sand. We are now able to anchor just off the beach and we walk to the closest village, about mile and a half up and down pretty steep hills. On both sides are cattle pastures secured by barbed wire. As we get to the town there are many pigs and piglets running around. The piglets are cute and comical. In town (a crossroads of sorts) there is a grocery store where we buy something to drink on the way back and a very, very small local “police station” which appears abandoned. There are no other stores or commercial buildings as far as we can see, but there are, it seems a different church for every family in the village. There must have been at least five or six in a two block area. On our return to the boat we decide to return to Neiafu the next day to make preparations for departure to Fiji.
October 1 - Wind, although blustery is at our back or on the beam and it’s an easy motor back to Neiafu. Lo and behold, there’s an open mooring right in front of the Mango Bar. We pick it up and marvel at our good fortune, while in my neurotic way I can’t help but fear that someone is going to motor up to us and tell us it’s theirs, even though there is nothing tied to it like a dinghy or float to evidence that it is taken. We dinghy in to Mango Bar for a beer and to “solidify” our claim to the mooring, and spend the rest of the afternoon “chillin’”. Skies are generally gray and wind comes up and then dies multiple times over the course of the afternoon. It’s calm at night although elevated winds have been predicted for the rest of the week.
October 2 - Skies are still cloudy and wind velocity low. Where are the 18-20knt. winds predicted for this whole week? Rains on and off all day. Try the tin of corned beef for dinner that we bought a while ago. Ugh! Never again, but we tried.
October 3 - Take on water at Mango Bar dock. Paul Parks would have been proud of me. Backed Duet up perfectly to a small dock with a sizeable timber protruding from the seaward section that made making a mistake that way untenable. Of course it helped that there was no wind or current and some of the staff from Mango Bar came to the dock to take our lines. For dinner made the frozen raw shrimp we bought using Amy’s Golden Lentil soup as a sauce base, adding can of chopped green chilis, Madras Curry, reconstituted dried Chinese mushrooms (not shiitake), a healthy dose of dry sherry and bit of chopped mild chorizo. Outstanding.
October 4 - Did laundry and made Italian sausage dinner substituting chorizo for Italian hot sausage (all we had or could get). Worked fine. Had a drink at the tiny floating bar/restaurant in the harbor. Underwhelming as expected.
October 5-7 - Did boat chores, did some more shopping, got ready to check out and take on fuel on the 8th and had nice Sunday dinner hosted by Tristan at Harborside Restaurant.
October 8 - Took on fuel at the town wharf and checked out with customs, but went back to Mango Bar mooring to wait to depart next morning.