Division II: Last two weeks in Vava'u

After a couple of extra weeks hanging out with our friends in the Ha’apai Group in Tonga it was time for us to move north, back up to the Vava’u Group. We left at 2200 on a Thursday night with a full moon and had a lovely sail with so much light we even had shadows in the cockpit from the moon. We arrived in Vava’u at first light, which was as we had hoped and then tacked our way through the main channel up into Neiafu, where we got onto some internet access, did our interisland customs clearance and stocked up at the market during the day before heading back out to quieter anchorages. We spent another couple of days with our friends on Elcie, even having the fun of rafting up on the Saturday night as it was really settled weather, before they headed on to Fiji. We snorkelled the Coral Garden and Coral Wonder and visited a small island called Lape, which has set up their own small craft and food market. We spent a few days at one of favourite places, a small island called Nuku, where we met a boat with a couple of young boys on board called Galatic. Much time was spent in the water, snorkelling, taking photos and relaxing/playing. Rylee even ran an early morning workout on the beach, where we had to swim or paddle to the beach, go for a small jog then do all the exercises he set out for us. Later that day we headed back into Neiafu for another internet hit and because it was Friday Paige was really keen to enter the Friendly Friday night yacht race, so she went to the race briefing at the local cafe/yacht club and sorted extra crew to join us for the fun. We had light winds but nailed the start, unfortunately our tacks let us down (maybe due to the helmsman’s racing inexperience!) and we came in second. But being a friendly yacht race meant we still had 6 bottles of beer to collect, which Paige, being skipper for the night, duly collected for those of us that were able to drink them.
After another market stock up we headed out the Blue Lagoon, an area surrounded by four islands at the south west of the group. We anchored up in the shallows in front of an island inhabited by goats. Rylee set up a rope swing, and we took an adventurous trip around the island checking out the other beaches. Galatic was also there, so most afternoons were spent playing on the beach. I also managed to do a major clean on the bottom of the boat as when the tide was low I could stand on the bottom which made it much easier to scrub. At the end of the second week it was time to head back to Neiafu to sort paperwork for heading further north. This was very frustrating for Dan as he was told something different by each customs officer he talked to, but we got our coastal clearance to be able to go to Niuatoputapu, which is what we needed. While there we briefly caught up with some friends we hadn’t seen since 2010 and we met some new boat families over these couple of days. It was a real shame to only see them briefly as we were in the process of leaving, but great for the kids all the same to make new friends. We enjoyed Sunday breakfast with Sophia and Cameron who we had met the previous afternoon, had a morning coffee with the Galatic crew before heading up to Niuatoputapu at 1100. We were hoping for a 24 hour passage, as the distance was 170nm but after eating through our food for the past three months, and not being full with fuel or water Division II flew up towards Niuatoputapu at an average of 8.9 knots and we arrived off of the Island at 0500, where we downed sails (we had reefed down during the night to try and slow ourselves down to no avail) and waited until the sky started lightening before entering the lagoon entrance. We dropped anchor at 0730 ready to explore the first new place we had been to this trip so far.