A brilliant passage race

Yesterday was the first passage race from Neiafu harbour out to the islands inthe east of the Vava'u group - about 12 miles, but with lotss of tactical options as to which sides of the various islands to pass. At one stage we almost grazed the rocks of one little island as we fought for a good line to windward.

We were sailing aboard Stormvogel, with Graham as race skipper, and good a pretty decent start in the fleet of about 35 boats. There was some very close-quarters racing and we held off a much bigger and racier boat called Zoomax until the wind increased and she lived up to her name. We finished in the top 7 monohulls (we think - the results will be announced tomorrow evening) so were pleased with how we did.

The racing over, all the boats achored off the Mandala resort and there was a cracking 'Almost Full Moon' party so this morning there were a few sore heads around. We headed back to Maunie after Peter dropped us off at the old harbour pier (about a 20 minute walk from the main town) and we'll return to Stormvogel in the morning for the return race. Peter took some great photos so we'll copy some of them onto the blog in the next couple of days.

A few photos from Tonga

In the hope of better internet connections at 11.00pm, here are a few more photos of life in Tonga (all from  the island of Hunga):

 Semi-wild pigs are to be seen on the beaches and in the villages

 One of no less than six churches in a village of 380 people

 The well-kept and well-funded Mormon church

 Traditional dug-out canoes are still in use; this is Vaha who brought us vanilla and coconuts

 Views from the windward beach

 A Hermit Crab

 

Foreign Aid and Electricity

Above: Island Village house with new solar power

We are now back in the main anchorage at Neiafu for the Vava’u Regatta which started last night with a fancy-dress pub crawl. It was a fun event! Photos to follow. The first race took place this evening, a short round-the-cans race in the habour with only about 13 boats taking part - the rest, sensibly, put off by the almost complete absence of wind. We ghosted around the course, chatting to the other boats but eventually had to abandon when the wind disappeared altogether. Quite a contrast from the middle of last night when a front came though bringing a huge rain squall and over 35 knots of wind!

The harbour is full of boats now so the internet is completely overloaded so we’ve just a posted a couple of photos from the villages. There has been a big push from Japan to bring solar power to individual houses in the islands which has just been completed. Being slightly cynical, one feels that the rush of offers for aid from China (significantly) and now Japan is linked to bigger political aims such as fishing rights (Chinese fleets are suddenly hoovering fish up here) and pro-whaling votes.

Will hope to add more photos when the internet is less busy (middle of the night, probably!)

The lesson plan that came to naught...

Volcanic rocks on the windward side of Hunga

 

Whilst we were in Hunga we met Merji, one of the primary school teachers outside the little school. She and her husband are government-appointed teachers who are sent to the island schools for up to 3 years at a time; on Hunga there are 39 children from Year 1 to Year 6. The Year 6 (10-year olds) take an exam to get into secondary school – which is in the main town of Neiafu – and the exams were taking place as we met her, so the rest of the kids had two days off. She showed us the Science paper which looked pretty challenging – a two-hour exam with thirty pages and lots of questions on climate change, soil erosion, basic physics and biology and so on.

 

We asked her whether they would be interested in us coming to talk to the older children (who learn English from Year 3) about our travels and Merji was very keen on the idea. We went back to Maunie and put together a little lesson plan, with photos from England as well as from the voyage, plus maps and our inflatable globe, to go back into school on Thursday morning. Unfortunately we then received a message that both teachers had been called into a meeting in Neiafu on Thursday, so the kids had another day off and we had to move on so we didn't get to deliver what we think, modestly, would have been a very good lesson! Ah, well.

 

To make up for our disappointment we had a cracking sail to windward, up through the islands and are now anchored off Kapa Island. The snorkelling here is great and we're told that the locals in the tiny village here will supply fruit and veg so we'll go ashore to explore. Mind you we have several papaya aboard, all just turning ripe so we need to eat them;  now that we have discovered the trick of halving and de-seeding them and marinating them in the fridge with a tot of Bundeberg Australian rum, they are our new Favourite Thing.

 

We've a couple more weeks here in this wonderful cruising ground and will take part in the Vava'u Regatta at the end of next week – a mixture of racing and socialising which usually attracts around 70 boats. It's not all playtime, though, as we are taking very seriously the prospect of the 1100 mile passage to New Zealand at the end of the month. This will probably be our most testing voyage for quite a while as we'll be breaking out of the tropics and meeting the SW prevailing winds at the end of the NZ winter; there's a very good chance of meeting a gale on the nose. We are therefore planning storage in the boat to prevent things crashing around if we meet big seas with the wind ahead of us and this morning got out the bright orange storm staysail (unused and pristine since it was made 15 years ago) and hoisted it to make sure we can do it relatively easily in 30 knots of wind with waves crashing over the foredeck!

 

We are out of range of wifi internet here so can only add the odd photo via the satellite phone but we'll add some more once we get back to town next week. Do send us any questions, comments or news to maunie (at) mailasail.com in the meantime.

 

British Seagull found in Tonga!

Above, Maunie at anchor in the Hunga lagoon and British Seagull - rust in peace

 

We have moved to the island of Hunga to the west side of the Vava'u archipelago. It's an ancient volcano so we are in the sheltered lagoon, accessed via a scarily narrow and shallow pass on the western side, anchored off the village that's home to about 300 people. The volcanic soil is rich and dark so the plantation next to the village is very productive; yesterday we traded a t-shirt and cap for some papaya, coconuts and a local leafy plant which we cooked like spinach.

 

As we walked around the village we came upon the remains of a British Seagull outboard motor which brought memories flooding back for me (Graham). These iconic machines were produced in Poole, Dorset, for about 60 years to a design that didn't really change very much in that time. Anybody who used a dinghy tender in the 70's will probably have used a Seagull and probably will still bear the scars; these were the days before the arrival of fancy Japanese engines with their namby-pamby, user-friendly features and smart, noise-reducing covers. British Seagulls were a challenge and the successful mastering of their idiosyncratic ways was an important life lesson. My first encounter was aboard the Wayfarer sailing dinghy belonging to a great family friend, Keith Hodgson, as we motored noisily around Fleet Bay in Scotland in search of mackerel when a flat calm descended upon us and I've dealt with a few since then; we had one for the dinghy on Dad's boat for a while.

 

The chief outputs of a Seagull were, in descending order: Noise; Smoke and (coming up a rather distant third) Locomotive Power. Starting and stopping the beasts were challenges that tested your manhood (these motors were definitely Not for Girls) and there were plenty of opportunities to inflict injury upon yourself. Even carrying the things from the car to the dinghy was tricky. The old press adverts for British Seagulls had a drawing of a jolly sailor, duffle bag in one hand, Seagull hoisted onto a, presumably well-padded, shoulder but the reality was that there were lots of knobbly and sharp bits to dig into your flesh and the engine would inevitably have a general coating of sticky black oil which would spread itself onto clothes and sails if you weren't careful. They also weighed a tonne.  The engine in the advert must have been the Forty Featherweight which, admittedly, a strong man could probably lift unaided but the bigger engines – the Forty Plus, the Century and the Century Plus – were definitely two–man-plus-block-and-tackle affairs. The quaint names gave no clues to vaguely useful information such as horsepower but I remember that Keith's Century model was incredibly heavy yet managed to push the Wayfarer along at no more than 5 knots.

 

The Seagull designers obviously took inspiration from steam locomotives, using lots of cast iron and brass, and they didn't believe in hiding the moving bits from view and out of harm's way. Most obviously there was a completely unguarded spinning flywheel at the top of the motor. To start the engine you took a 3ft length of rope with a knot in one end and a round plastic ball in the other (Keith used a Clacker confiscated from a child at his school – if you don't know what a Clacker is, ask your parents), put the knot into a notch at the top of flywheel, wrap around 6 turns of rope and prepared to pull as hard as you could. First, though, you'd adjust the shiny chrome throttle lever to what you though would be the optimal position, flick the choke flap into place, stretch the muscles in your shoulder and mutter a dark threat ("Now then, you bastard" was my favourite). Your first to 13th pulls would result in nothing but a belligerent chug from the recalcitrant machine so you'd repeat the process, fiddling haplessly with the throttle and trying to judge when the carburettor was about to become flooded (this was the moment to flick the choke flap open). Finally, just after you'd uttered the immortal phrase "That's it, the bloody thing isn't going to start, get the oars out" a final pull would see the motor suddenly burst into deafening life.

 

The next phase of the Seagull challenge would immediately be upon you. The things had no clutch (unless you owned for the monstrously heavy Century Plus) so were always in forward gear; the unexpected ignition would see the boat immediately surge forward. If you were really unlucky, the knot of the starter cord would get stuck in the flywheel and the cord, plus Clacker, would whirl viciously around the engine, making it impossible to get at the tiller or throttle without being whipped painfully.  In any case, stopping a Seagull at the best of times was an art in itself since there was no off-switch;  you just closed the throttle and hoped it would die. Usually it would keep going with a lumpy 'tickover' of about 100 rpm and I have seen brave people adopt a Sumo Wrestler stance and grab the spinning flywheel with both hands. A safer method was to put the palm of your hand over the trumpet-shaped air intake to the carburettor; the suction would leave a circular mark on your flesh (that would wear off after a couple of hours) but it at least starved the beast of oxygen and the sudden quiet that descended over the boat would make you aware of the ringing in your ears. Honestly these engines would have a modern health and safety officer run screaming into the trees. An environmental officer wouldn't like the Seagull much either. It was, of course, a 2-stroke engine so you mixed oil into the petrol to lubricate the moving parts. Our new Tohatsu 9.8hp outboard uses a frugal 100:1 mix (1 part oil to 100 parts petrol) but the Seagulls needed 10:1 so your progress would be followed by a haze of blue smoke to add to the noise pollution.

 

As the quiet, light, efficient and clean Japanese competition gained a stranglehold on the UK boating market, British Seagull belatedly attempted to modernise its designs with, shock-horror, the addition of a recoil starter and a noise reducing cover but fundamentally the works beneath remained unchanged so the additions had all the effectiveness of a whale-tail spoiler on a Morris Minor. The brand died and today all around the world there will be the remains of these engines lying unused. They won't rust, due to the years of oil leaks, so they remain as a testament to British over-engineering and under-development. I'm sure that there's a society for the preservation of old outboards somewhere in the UK who keep a few of these old motors going and I believe that Keith's eldest son Nick has kept his dad's old Century – polished and chromed to the nth – as an ornament. Half a gallon of 10:1 mix, a few well-chosen words and no more that 20 pulls on the Clacker would probably see it burst into life once more.

 

A note from Di: if the above blog has gone right over your head, you're not alone. The only detail that woke me up was the mention of Clackers. Yes, I remember them being banned so my pair sadly ended their life hanging on the handle of my wardrobe door as I wasn't aware of their value to Seagull owners. For slightly younger readers, well you don't know what you've missed and you should regard today's blog as a history / engineering lesson!!

 

A Tongan Feast on Lape Island

A Lape Island house with very old solar panels wired up (by visiting yachtsmen) to power the island's only refrigerator

 

We left the mooring at Neiafu yesterday for a lovely sail between the islands and anchored off the tiny island of Lape (18 degrees 43 minutes south, 174 degrees 05 minutes west). The enterprising and very friendly villagers invite yachties to a Saturday afternoon tour of the village followed by a Tongan Feast.

 

Lape has a tiny village of just 7 families and a school which currently has 11 children attending. The villagers are pretty self-sufficient, growing sweet potatoes, bananas and taro roots as well as coconuts and they produce traditional craft work such as tapa (a stiff fabric made from the beaten fibres of the hiapo tree bark which is then decorated with ink), woven baskets and mats made of pandanus leaves, dried in the sun. The mats are used on the floor for eating and sleeping upon but a finely-woven version is made as a ta'ovala, wrapped around the waist as a decorative skirt (worn by both men and women); it signifies respect to 'God, King and Country'.

 

The Tongan feast was quite an event.  It involves an 'umu which is an underground earth oven – a fire is built in a pit lined with stones and, when the fire dies down, the hot stones slowly bake vegetables and meat, which are wrapped in banana leaves, with earth piled on top. We also had a pig roasted above an open fire and all the delicious food was served on 'plates' made of the bark of banana trees, after a Tongan prayer led by the minister and a wonderful unaccompanied hymn sung by half a dozen locals.

 

The donations they receive in return are used for village projects - for example an impressive new landing jetty was completed recently - and they are looking to start a little kitchen producing taro and sweet potato crisps to sell in the Neiafu market. Very enterprising for a village of just 7 families and 28 people!

 

Our brief time in Tonga so far has given us a better insight into the country and its people. The Vava'u group of islands (the apostrophe features frequently in Tongan – it signifies a brief pause, so Vava'u is pronounced vah-VAH-  oo) are beautiful and in most other parts of the world would have lots of expensive resorts and hotels, with rooms perched on metal stilts above the clear waters, just as we saw in Bora Bora. However in Tonga all land belongs to the crown so land can only be leased for limited terms. Add to this the slightly random nature of internal flights from the international airport at the capital Nuku'alofa 150 miles to the south and it becomes clear why the tourist facilities are pretty low key. Visiting yachts constitute a major portion of the palangi  (westerner) visitors and the rest are mostly back-packers and eco-tourists.

 

The Tongans themselves lead pretty simple lives. To our eyes their homes are pretty impoverished, with open floors devoid of furniture and cooking is often done outside on open fires. Most houses have pigs running around the gardens. On our first night in Neiafu we were taken to a local house in the village for a traditional meal, served in multiple dishes on floor mats whilst we sat, uncomfortably crossed-legged, and tried to ignore the flies (at least each dish was covered in cling film as it was brought in). It was quite a culture shock and our western eyes struggled to adjust to the scruffy surroundings and worrying standards of food hygiene. However the family were charming and it was explained to us that social etiquette, personal dignity and respect are valued in Tonga before material wealth. There are very low crime rates, virtually no begging and no homelessness here – no one goes hungry as goods or money earned are often shared with the wider community and the churches play a very central role. On Sundays work is forbidden and no sporting events take place and Tongans act and dress very conservatively at all times – men will be fined if seen without a shirt in a public place and women are expected to cover their shoulders and wear long skirts or trousers.

 

We're looking forward to learning more about the place – at last we've found a part of the Pacific where western standards and values are tolerated but not necessarily adopted.

Sailing a traditional Vaka

We're certainly enjoying some unusual experiences here in Neiafu (18  degrees 44 minutes south,  174  degrees 00 minutes west, if you'd like to locate it on Google Earth). A meal with a family in their house on Tuesday was quite something (more in another blog) but yesterday we went sailing in a Vaka.

A Vaka is a traitional Polynesian voyaging canoe - a catamaran - and these vessels once roamed all across the Pacific, trading and exploring. Over more recent years the ancient navigational skills had been all but lost as people remained on their own islands and relied on commercial shipping for trade, so in 2010 a philanthropic foundation had seven Vakas built in New Zealand, crewed by Polynesians from different islands. The fleet sailed to the Tuamotos (in 29 days) and up to Hawaii, the western seaboard of the USA and back down to the islands. There's an excellent website http://pacificvoyagers.org/the-voyage if you'd like to read more.

The new Vakas are pretty high-tech, beneath their traditional rigs. The hulls are fibreglass (and have comfy, if slighly cramped, bunks for up to 16 crew) with retractable centreboards. The wooden decks (lashed to the hulls with modern synthetic rope) have intricate carvings but a clever deckhouse containing a small galley and navigation station (with GPS and VHF radio) and support a large 2kW solar panel array which provides power to two very funky retractable 10kW electric motor pods to drive the boat in harbour. However they are still steered using a long and very heavy steering oar (which needs up to 4 people to hold it in a blow) and the deck at the helmsman's feet is carved with an ancient star compass; during the voyages the crew learnt to use this to keep a proper course. The vessels are pretty big - 72' long, 21' in the beam and weighing 13 tonnes and the motive power is a distinctive two-masted rig of 1033 square feet. As we discovered for ourselves, they are pretty quick - we were doing over 10 knots in a Force 4 breeze.

'Our'  Vaka, the Hine Moana, sailed with a pan-Pacific crew of Tongans, Fijians and Samoans and her Tongan skipper, the irrepressible Aunofo who crewed on the original voyage from NZ, has chartered now her from the foundation for the nominal sum of $1 for four months. In return S
she has trained a crew of 7 local lads and we were her forth commercial day-trip - we sailed with the crews of Stormvogel and Exit Strategy. We were mightily impressed with the vessel and with Aunofo's skill at handling her - we had some great sailing, with a wonderful reef snorkel as we anchored for a superb lunch.

We really enjoyed our day and here are a few photos:

 The deck 'compass'

 Peter at the helm, with the skipper looking on

 

High-tech electric propulsion