Regatta Vava'u

The day after Dan flew back into Tonga after helping with a boat delivery to Fiji we were into Regatta Vava’u festivities.
The regatta consisted of two yacht races, a street fair, a Cornhole tournament, a kid’s day, a pub crawl, full moon party, pot luck lunch, tridecagonathon and prize giving party. As well as all this there were daily talks from Port Opua and presentations from Whangarei Marina Group as well as meet and greet with Yacht Domain Boat Brokers. Phew, what a lot of stuff to do.
The Division II crew signed up at the street fair and enjoyed walking around the stalls and talking with friends and meeting lots of new people. We talked to the guys from the Vakas, the two hulled waka that were built in NZ and sailed from there in April to various places in the Pacific. Two of them are now based in Tonga, doing Whale watch tours and they have hybrid electric motors! I talked with the Vava’u family health staff on their stall. They provide a wide range of service to the community, mostly based around child and family health, but also looking at sexual health and safety also. They get international funding to provide contraceptives, condoms and pregnancy testing. They go into school and communities for education sessions and health clinics. All of their funding is filtered through from Nukualofa, but they are trying to get their own direct funding so they have more control of how the money is spent, as they have a vehicle to try and maintain, and they find funding the outreach to isolated communities difficult.
There were lots of food stalls from the local restaurants and craft stalls also. I tries octopus with a coconut sauce served on manioke all for a huge $3 TOP and Dan had a Tuna Burger which he said was great. The kids enjoyed the homemade ice cream with flavours like banana, coconut, papaya and watermelon. They were also very wise not to get their faces painted until after their ice cream.
Part of the regatta was having a “passport” which you got stamped at various businesses and for attending events, so we were off to a great start getting our book filled with marine themed stamps. The stamps earned you points and at the end of the regatta prizes were awarded accordingly.
Also at the fair I was approached by a lady complementing me on the dress I was wearing that day. This was Helen who was there with her husband Wayne from Yacht Domain, a boat broker based in Bundaberg, Australia. They were a great couple and ended up joining us on Division II for the Friday night race as well as meeting up at several of the other events. So a wee plug for them, if you are thinking of selling your boat in Australia, get hold of Wayne as I am sure he will do his best for you!
On the Thursday was the Cornhole Tournament, which we didn’t take part in but was about throwing beanbags into small holes. It was a knockout competition and from what I heard, lots of fun. That evening we went to a presentation from the Whangarei Marine Promotions group, which was a fundraiser for them for a local kindergarten. Dan's boss from Norsand was there, so we invited him to join us for the Friday night race, if he didn’t have another boat to go on. The presentation was an opportunity to ask questions about trip planning and weather for Tonga to NZ as well as answering enquiries about customs and immigration in NZ. We didn’t stay long, but did enjoy our complementary beer and BBQ food.
On the Friday was the Kids Day. The kids took part in creating costumes out of all sorts of colourful things. Making ribbon banners and shakers to create as much noise as possible for their parade in the afternoon. Dan and I were kept busy helping make juggling balls out of balloons and sand, decorating the area and helping the kids on the stilts. The kids all helped to paint part of a mural just down the road in the market area. The organiser led some games and taught the kids a short skit to perform and after lunch we were joined by local children from a couple of schools for the parade into town and some performances from all the children in the street. By the time this finished the kids were really tired but there was no time for a break as it was straight back to the boat to get organised for that evening’s race. Dan headed over to the skippers meeting and to pick up our crew and we ended up with 13 people on board. This was Division II first race ever and it was an experience for all. We stalled on the start line, in amongst the moored boats but got underway about second to last over the line. At the end of the first leg we had an impromptu haka from the men on the Hinemoana Vaka, which stirred us up and on the second leg we started passing other yachts. We had our friend Geoff on the helm so that Dan could be Tactician and I did as I was told. We had a backpacker Andrew from Australia on look out and the others were on childminding and rope/winch handling. Coming up to the second mark we had just past two other yachts but again completely mucked up the gibe and ended up using a moored boat as our mark instead. The commentator came on the VHF and asked if we were even in the race. This didn’t matter two much as we did manage to pass them both again. At the finish line we just went on the wrong side of the line but put in a protest of being distracted by Pedlar throwing water bombs at us. All in all a fun hour and not a bad effort for our first time out among so many other boats, both moving and moored! A quick drink on Div II then on to the prize giving, where we were second in the multihulls and got a free Norsand T-shirt!
On Saturday was the Vava’u Cup race/regatta, which was from the harbour around to Tapana Island, about 12nm. They organised the start for the three categories of yachts to be starting ten minutes apart, so we were off to a flying start at 1120. We had a much improved beginning and we excited to be the first multihull to the first mark. On board we only had one extra, Murray from Norsand, so he took the helm for us at this point so that Dan and I could raise our ‘new to us’ Spinnaker. This did us proud and we soon caught up to the tail enders from the 35’ and over class, whilst holding off our competition from a 50’ St Francis Catamaran. Around the corner at Swallows cave, down with the spinnaker and into the wind. This was really cool for us as we were able to stick with the monohulls, past quite a few more of them and had really good angles, which meant only one tack and on to the finish line, first multihull and third overall. Our advantage over the other multihulls was that we could point so much higher than them without losing speed.
After a couple of hours rest we got our selves organised and dressed up as pirates for the Full Moon Party. This ended up being a bit of a logistical nightmare for the organisers as they had many more people turn up than expected. The plan was for us to park our dinghies at one beach and be ferried to the Party Beach, as this was not a safe place for lots of dinghies to be due to the reef, but because of all the extras it took a lot of time for everyone to get from A to B. We were lucky as they did start putting on extra boats and picked us out of the line because of the kids. Unfortunately they were very tired even before we got there and after a quick look around decided that they wanted to leave again. We were not ready but friends of ours with younger children also needed to go so very kindly took our three as well. This was a real treat and we ended up dancing and catching up with friends until the wee small hours.
Sunday was a rest day so we slowly made our way back to Neiafu after lunch stopping at a couple of places to take our photos for extra points in our passport. On the Monday they had the tridecagonathon, which was a fun day of 13 different events including the limbo, egg toss, five legged races and pie eating competition. We didn’t take part but had a great time watching all the bribery, corruption and cheating going on between the 6 teams and the “Judges”. On the Tuesday we went to a presentation about the Humpback Whales which was really great and included some amazing video footage of these fantastic animals. That evening was the Prize Giving where we got a couple of vouchers for our efforts with our passport and our carved wooden hook for our first place in the Vava’u Cup.
All in all we had a great, but exhausting, time and I am really glad we hung around to experience it. We met lots of new people and had a great time taking part, so if any of you are thinking about being in the area next year, look up www.regattavavau.com info.