a selection of emails home

A Selection of our Adventures as Emailed to Mum.
Our Awesome Day. 26th July.

We had about a week in the Vava'u group in Tonga, catching up with several boats from Nelson and Elcie - the large aluminium catamaran that was being finished in Nelson when we were there with the two girls on it. We came back down to the Ha'apai last Friday, and it wasn't a very pleasant trip at all but we had our friends dog that we needed to get back to them and that was the best day in over a week of unsettled weather up here. We had a lightning storm last Saturday night that went for hours! Most of it was sheet lightening but there was one very large forked lightening that was right behind the boat!! And thunder also. It was like trying to sleep under faulty fluro lights! Since then there have been westerly winds here when the wind is usually from the south east so we have had the challenge of finding safe anchorages with the changed conditions, and have gone to some places thinking they would be good and finding too much coral for us to anchor safely, but did find a spot that didn't look too likely from the charts, but was amazing with great snorkelling and very protected so we spent a couple of nights there and last night moved to the next island as the wind was changing back to South East. That island had a village, and the kids had a lovely afternoon playing with the local children.

Now onto our Awesome Day.
This morning when we woke up to amazing colours in sunrise and then as we were enjoying them we could hear whale noises through the hull of the boat, so we knew they were close. We decided to leave straight after breakfast and as we were getting the sail up we saw the whales just about 100m off of the boat. There were two adults and a baby, so likely a mother, her escort, which is usually her sister and the baby. We spent about half an hour sailing quietly with them and watching them before we headed on south. As we were sailing we saw several other whales, breeching and lob tailing and again some getting quite close to us. We even began to think they were following us at times. We caught two large big eyed tuna also on the sail, which was another great bonus.
Once we were anchored we were filleting the fish and cleaning up. We put some of the scraps over the back, and Rylee spotted a black tipped reef shark, we were only in 3m of water! We had a good time feeding it and its friends when they arrived with all the bits we didn't want to keep. Needless to say, none of us have gone swimming this afternoon! As I am writing this the batter is in the fridge, the sweet potato chips are cooking in the oven and Dan is making coleslaw to go with our fish and chip dinner. There are also great colours in the sunset off of the back of the boat.

Email Sent 12th August.
We have decided to stay another month in Tonga and are as yet undecided about whether or not we will still try and go to Samoa.
There are many reasons why we have chosen to stay longer, but the best one would have to be from the other morning. On the day you were setting off to Perth we were woken at 5am with a couple of whales playing around the boat. We were all asleep and I woke to Dan saying whale and hearing a blow and getting wet through the hatch from the spray!! It was so close to the boat Dan could see it without his glasses in the dark!! We all got up and it played around the boat for about 10 minutes, unfortunately we could only get glimpses of it due to the time of day. But that was VERY cool. We also had to make a decision last week as we would have had to leave where we are then to make it North, and our friends from Elsie had only just arrived in the Ha'apai group, so that also helped us decide to hang out for a little longer.
We have been sharing anchorages with Elsie for the past week and the kids have had a great time. They spent all day on a little island on Saturday making a fort and fishing and playing. They even set up an outdoor restaurant for sunset drinks at the end of the day, which was really cool. We had rain yesterday so have caught lots of water, and Dan has been doing washing this morning while the kids and I did school, went for a snorkel and now they are off playing on the beach while I catch up on the computer, but I am sending this through the sat phone again as we still don't have great internet access. (sigh).
Please let everyone know we are all doing great, our tans are coming along nicely and we are enjoying the sun, sea and surf.