Exploring the Vava'u islands and maintaining the decks

We've been out in deserted island anchorages for the past few day in the eastern side of the Vava'u archipelago. Our current position is 18 deg 41.27 min south, 173 deg 57.43 west for those with a few minutes to spare on Google Earth.

 

The pristine sandy beaches and palm-tree islands here are beautiful so we'll post some photos when we get back to the main town in a few days' time. As always, though, it's not all swimming and sunbathing as we've taken some time to do a few boat jobs. The main one has been some maintenance of the teak decks.

 

For those not familiar with sailing yachts, Maunie, like most boats, is built of fibreglass which is a relatively maintenance-free material. It needs a regular clean and polish to keep it looking shiny but otherwise is very tolerant of the wear and tear of normal use. However, many owners don't like the look and feel of fibreglass decks (they can be slippery and dazzlingly white) so opt for an expensive additional layer of teak planking for a more 'traditional' look; when new it looks fabulous and provides really good grip for bare feet and sea boots whether the deck's wet or dry. So Maunie has a teak deck (now, like the rest of her, 14 years old) and the downside is that it's another maintenance project; neglected teak decks look awful and can result in expensive repairs.

 

Someone once told us that the worst boat to buy would have a dark blue hull (terribly difficult to keep shiny and it gets very hot in the sun) and teak decks. Maunie had both!  The first issue we dealt with via an expensive but lovely paint job but the teak decks remain as a challenge. We were lucky that the relatively light use that Maunie had under her previous owner meant that the decks hadn't been scrubbed vigorously as it's very easy to wear them down in a quest to keep them clean and a nice brown (rather than a neglected grey) colour. If you have teak patio tables and chairs you'll know the issue if keeping teak looking attractive. However, in between the individual planks of the deck is a line of black filler called caulking which allows a degree of expansion and contraction between the planks but which, most importantly, also stops any water ingress to the fibreglass deck below.

 

Our caulking is beginning, in a few places, to show signs of old age. Our regular deck care regime is to swill buckets of sea water across them – the salt helps to preserve the teak and will deter any mould spores that makes it turn black, whereas fresh water just encourages them. Every six months or so we also use a solution of something called Boracol (boric acid is the main ingredient) which does the same thing but also chemically cleans and preserves the wood – it's great for timber decking in the garden, by the way, to get rid of slippery moss and green slime. However, we noticed that a few patches of the deck along the caulking remained wet for a while after its salt-water bath which is a sign that the seal between caulking and teak was beginning to fail – it would be really bad to allow water to seep between the teak and the fibreglass deck below. The only fix is to cut out the offending sections of caulking with a sharp knife and small screwdriver, clean and sand the teak groove that has been exposed and then apply new caulking, using a sealant gun. Lots of masking tape and care is needed to make a good job of it and Graham spent about 4 hours in the hot sun doing this yesterday. In the longer term we'll probably have to do the whole deck (not a fun prospect) when we get back to New Zealand this November but for the moment we've sorted all of the immediate trouble spots.

 

The timing of this job was perfect because today we've had very heavy rain and have put rags in the scuppers (drainage holes along the side of the boat) to direct water off the deck and into the water-tank filler on the port side. So far we've harvested about 200 litres of clean rain water which would have taken the water-maker about 8 hours of continuous running to produce so that's very pleasing.

 

 

 

 

 

Off to Church

Catholic church, Neiafu

Yesterday we went to church in Neiafu - we picked the biggest one (Catholic, though there are plenty of denominations to choose from) and were the only white faces in the congregation of around 300 people. The Priest gave us a special welcome in English and even did an English version of his sermon (on Love) delivered directly to us and we were given a special blessing in English at the end. The rest of the service was, of course, in Tongan.

However the main reason to be there was to hear the singing and we were not disappointed.  A choir of about 40 sang wonderful unaccompanied four-part harmonies but the rest of the congregation joined in with enthusiam (and without hymn books) so the sound was almost overwhelming. The music was lovely.

Religion is a vital part of Tongan life so whole families attend, dressed up in their finest. Both men and women wear the Ta'Ovala, a ceremonial waist-mat made  of woven pandanus leaves that is unique to Tonga. In Tongan society the Ta-'Ovala is equivalent to a jacket and tie and wearing it shows respect to 'God, King and Country'.

Sunday Best

The view across the anchorage from the church

Ta'Ovala plus random dog tail

We'll be back out into the islands over the next few days - some more unsettled conditions are forecast this week so we'll find some sheltered anchorages and enjoy the snorkelling. Meanwhile we have a few boat jobs on the list, as ever!

The chance to rebuild the farming sector in Ha'apai

We mentioned the other day that we'd been finding out about the re-building process in Ha'apai so here's a brief outline of what we discovered:

The Ha’apai islands are off the beaten track, both commercially and for all but the most adventurous tourists (who mostly come for the annual Humpbacked Whale migration from July to September).  62 small tropical islands, only 17 of them inhabited, are home to around 8,000 people (about 7% of Tonga’s total population) and time, very broadly, has passed them by. Unknown to most of us in the west, apart from a few keen naval historians who would, of course, point out that this is where Captain Blight and 18 of his colleagues were unceremoniously dumped into a longboat by the mutinous crew of the Bounty, Ha’apai suddenly and briefly leapt into the world’s headlines on January 11th this year, thanks to the unwelcome attentions of Severe Tropical Cyclone Ian. Ian packed a fearsome punch with winds of up to 280km/h cutting a narrow but devastatingly destructive swathe centred across the most populated island, Lifuka; more than half the houses were badly damaged or destroyed, one woman was killed and 2,600 people made homeless, whilst the power of the storm ripped foliage from the normally dense vegetation and felled trees and telegraph poles with violent ease.

We dropped anchor there exactly 4 months after the event and the damage to buildings and livelihoods is still very obvious, even after the initial challenges to restore power and water and to sweep up the debris have been met. A significant international disasters-recovery aid programme has been operating successfully but a surprising number of people are still living in tents, or shacks made of the remnants of their destroyed houses. The next stage of the relief programme – the building of new and hopefully stronger houses – is yet to come, in the next few months. 

Shocked at the scale of the damage on the ground, we were, though, keen to find out if the local people have an active part to play in the restoration of their shattered island or whether (as we westerners, with a touch of disaster-appeal weariness, might be forgiven for thinking), the cash promised doesn't quite reach the really needy people and the locals get side-lined whilst international organisations-who-know-best set about their work programmes and then leave.

Salesi Kaitu'u in the EU-funded nursery

By chance we met Salesi Kaitu’u. Wearing one of the several hats at his disposal, he came aboard our yacht as the Government Quarantine Officer, responsible for ensuring we were bringing nothing with us that could harm the local flora and fauna through disease or infestation.  Disarmingly, he brought his 3 year old daughter with him and, formalities completed, he told us a little of the challenges the islands face; it transpired that his main hat is actually that of Officer-in-Charge of the Ministry of Agriculture Food and Fisheries for Ha’apai , managing a team of 19 staff. To learn more,we spent two hours with him a couple of days later and he outlined his vision for food and farming here in the aftermath of the cyclone which, to all intents, had wiped the ground clean for a fresh start. He’s an engaging man and well educated, with a degree in Agriculture and time spent in Samoa and Fiji. Before his posting to Ha’apai last May, he spent six years as an agricultural research officer in Tongatapu Island, 80 miles south of here, which is the seat of government and the centre of pretty much everything else in Tonga. 

Salesi is optimistic that the portion of foreign aid that’s been targeted at agriculture will be the lever he needs to make sustainable change from the almost-subsistence levels of farming that existed here prior to Cyclone Ian. He plans something that will feed the people better and, at last, give Ha’apai an opportunity to export valuable crops such as vanilla rather than accept the current one-way traffic of often poor quality and unhealthy imports. In the immediate aftermath of the cyclone his team set up a nursery, with EU financial support, to grow and distribute 40,000 vegetable seedlings so locals could start their own kitchen gardens and the next 40,000 now growing in the nursery will go to the islands’ schools to get the youngest generation actively involved. The first tranche of financial aid from New Zealand (about £100,000) has resulted in the arrival of an old but serviceable tractor, plough and fuel from Tongatapu to prepare land for bigger-scale cultivation; the first crop (200 acres of sweet potatoes) is in the ground now and a trial of Irish potatoes is about to follow, whilst the tractor is currently making a slightly precarious tour around the outer islands on the deck of a small boat. 

Salesi’s vision for the future of Ha’apai agriculture is clear and he has the Governor (the King’s representative, a man not to be trifled with) on his side. Even before the disaster, the Governor announced a plan, last December, to move all agriculture in Ha’apai to an wholly organic system; after all, reasons Salesi, the outer islands have managed without chemicals and fertilisers forever and so the farmers and growers on the bigger islands just need to relearn the traditional methods of maintaining the rich fertility of these volcanic soils. His enthusiasm is infectious and, though he acknowledges the significant challenges he faces, you can’t help share his positivity. ‘In the long term’, he says, ‘despite all the damage and hardship we've had to live with, we’ll come to regard the cyclone as the best thing that could have happened to Ha’apai.’

We met Salesi the following day and gave him a selection of old yacht ropes to distribute to local farmers; with any fences, such as they were, flattened by the cyclone, the ropes will be very useful for tethering animals. Salesi and his wife Muni invited us for supper that evening and we were treated as honoured guests with a full Tongan feast with a spit-roast pig as the centrepiece; it was a great evening.

A very substantial supper!

More photos from Tonga

We are so pleased to be here - in this morning's radio net one boat reported winds of 55 knots last night and Stormvogel 'like being in a washing machine' with 30-35 knots and 3-4m waves. Heidi and Pete should reach a calm anchorage in Vanuatu later today and sound as though they are ready for a rest!

Anyway, a few more photos from Ha'apia follow:

Tonga Development Bank, in need of some re-development

Secondary school children at lunchtime

Even the bed was damaged

Still living in a tent, but proud

One of the many pigs wandering around the village

Dairy farming, Tongan style

Another pig at the Ministry of Commerce, Labour and Tourism office

Moving up to Vava'u

The weather forecast for this weekend looks as though it might be a bit challenging.There's a 'convergence zone' low pressure system heading right for us which will bring lots of rain and, possibly, some very heavy rain squalls.

So we set sail from Ha'apai (where sheltered anchorages are few and far between if the wind goes around to the north or west) last night and had a brilliant sail up to Neiafu in Vava'u. We were here last October and the main anchorage is very well sheltered so it's nice to be back. Compared to Ha'apai, Neiafu is a bustling metropolis (which we thought very basic last year so it just goes to show your viewpoint is based on the last port!) so plenty of options to eat out and to take a large sack of laundry ashore! Interestingly our friends of Kiapa who cleared in at the capital in Tongatapu are also heading here to avoid the bad weather so  it'll be good to see them.

The plan now is to spend a few days sitting out the weather (and rig water-catchers to take advantage of the rain) and then we'll head back to Ha'apai to continue our explorations. 

Photos to follow.

A few photos from Cyclone-torn Pangai

We've spent a couple of days exploring Pangai and the neighbouring island of Uoleva. Here are some photos (if the very shaky wifi in Mariners' Cafe works!).

The fish market, its roof peeled off

A new hardware store with the flattened remains of a house in front of it

After 4 months, there are still families living in emergency-relief tents

The well-funded (and  tructurally sound) Mormon Church survived the storm and was a place of refuge for many villagers at its height.

The  Methodist Church wasn't so lucky 

One of the many fishing boats wrecked

This morning we spent a fascinating 2 hours interviewing the head of the Ministry of Agriculture Food and Fisheries on the island who sees the cyclone (and the aid that has followed) as an opportunity to revolutionise a previously very small scale agriculture system on the islands. He's led the drive to adopt organic systems. Graham hopes to get some interest for a newspaper article (watch this space!).

NZ to Tonga - final day and a vote of thanks for Bob

The last 20 miles of sailing into the anchorage off Pangai, Lifuka Island, were lovely. We'd expected to have to motor into wind for the last 3 hours but a helpful wind shift allowed us to make our intended track close-hauled as we sailed past tiny islands and the white water of submerged reefs. Our nervousness at the potential inaccuracies of our electronic chart were allayed when we did a radar check: we can overlay radar onto our chart screen so that radar images from solid objects show as pink splodges and these pink splodges were exactly aligned with the islands shown on the chart.  Well done to Captain Fielding and his chaps aboard HMS Penguin back in 1898, and to those unsung heroes who've updated his cartography to align with GPS positions since.

 

At 13.30 local time,  8 days and one hour after we departed Opua, we anchored off Pangai. The 1,136 nm passage was completed at an average of just under 6 knots  which was very pleasing, considering we'd had some slow sailing in the first couple of days and the decision to leave last Wednesday proved to be a good one. A goodly amount of credit for this goes to our weather router Bob McDavitt in Auckland – you can find out more about him and what he does on his website www.metbob.com He gave us (free) weather outlooks every 2-3 days in the week or so leading up to our departure and indicated that Wednesday might be good if we were happy to motor at the beginning. We then asked him for a detailed weather routing for the passage which came as a table of figures, confusing at first glance, which gave us our expected position (a 'waypoint') each day and the wind, waves and surface air pressure at that point; it gave us a best sailing course and our expected speed to navigate the fastest route through the weather systems.

 

Each day as we were sailing, we'd compare our arrival time at the daily waypoint with Bob's prediction (we were generally a few hours ahead, thanks to better than expected speed in the light-wind zone) and noted the actual weather conditions as we arrived and it was immensely reassuring to find they were very similar to the forecast. We sent a quick update email to Bob every couple of days and he would send a 'quickie'  (free of charge) reply to 'carry on' or, towards the end, to alter course for a more direct route as a possibly troublesome weather system had safely passed to our south.

All in all a brilliant service which gave us the confidence to leave Opua when several people (who are probably now wishing they'd joined us as they are still there) were shaking their heads about the possibility of a nasty low pressure system; it cost us only about £40 which was money very well-spent. When we arrived, we sent a final email to Bob who replied, "Thanks for your report and well done on your long voyage , you have the privilege and bragging rights of being the first cruising boat of the new season that I've helped get to the tropics."

Our attempts to clear-in yesterday were thwarted by no answer from the Port Captain on vhf so we dinghed ashore to find his 'office' (a small room in a sort of public waiting room at the ferry quay) open and empty. The town is still a mess after the cyclone - though we suspect it looked almost as messy before. Industriousness and civic pride don't seem to feature strongly in the Tongan makeup so, as well  as the  buildings with no roofs, there's lots of general litter and  untidiness. There is evidence of foreign aid – shiny yellow earth-movers in fenced compounds not doing anything. The locals seemed nonplussed at the arrival of, probably, the first foreign yacht of the season. Like the people we met in Vava'u last year, they are happy to chat if you make the effort to go and start the conversation but otherwise look as though they hadn't really noticed you! We'll look forward to trying to get to know them – probably easier on the smaller islands where the villages are just a few houses.

 

Hopefully we'll be able to complete the formalities ashore this morning so can legally explore ashore!