The Crew view on sailing from Vava'u to Savusavu.

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“And by the way” says Doug at the end of his presentation in the Aquarium Bar in Neiafu, “I’m still looking for crew to sail to Fiji!”; I look at Henry, Henry looks at me. To hell with the flight to Sydney - we want to be sailors! Five minutes later Doug sits down at our table and tells us all we want to know about his plans. He leaves us with his number and a date for a trial. Needless to say that we don’t have a clue about sailing as we’re from the south of Germany and the only thing we know about a ship for sure is to locate the front and the back. “How crazy is that guy”, we asked ourselves. “Taking two greenhorns on a passage from Tonga to Fiji??”



Our trial on Hakura is both, relaxed and exciting at the same time. There are really important crew-rules we have to learn first: 1. Doug drinks his black tea with milk, no sugar and brewed with boiling water!!! 2. Don’t you dare to eat all the bices, otherwise he gets really grumpy 3. If you want him to throw you overboard, best thing is to do is leave the fresh water pump on the whole time. We spend our trial snorkeling, eating, drinking tea & learning about knots, nautical miles, charts, sails and a whole lot of new words. We couldn’t be happier and really looking forward to our departure for Fiji.



Over are the days of relaxed laziness. Hakura, Captain and her crew need to be prepared for the big trip. Shopping, fresh water, fuel, customs and a whole lot of paper work needs to be done before we start our first ever sailing adventure. By the time we’re ready for departure we’re so excited that we forget to take our seasickness-tablets. And the result in all this is too obvious: SEASICKNESS. How can we ever be happy again? How in the world will we survive the never ending wobbling of the boat? Will we ever feel healthy again? How the hell should we fill in the log bock if we’re not able to spend 1 second under deck without nausea? Somehow we thought sailing is a romantic activity. When your boyfriend is constantly throwing up next to you, it’s time to realize that an ocean passage has absolutely nothing to do with romance at all.



We really envy Doug who eats a lot of bices, read one or two novels (under deck!!!) and sleeps as a baby while we’re spending our shifts in despair and squint yearningly at the horizon (interrupted from hanging over the railing of course). “You’ will be all right” is all he says and despite the fact that we don’t believe him, he will be right. The last to days of our passage are truly wonderful. Great starlit sky, beautiful sunrises & sunsets, breakfasts on deck, bioluminescence at night, sunny days, calm sea, still enough good winds and most important - no seasickness at all!!! The greatest part of the whole journey was the first glimpse of land. We haven’t been that happy, relieved and thankful for a long time.



We’re also very thankful that Doug took us with him. Thanks to his patience and thanks to the fact we had enough bikes on board he didn’t throw us in the open ocean (which would had been justified at times). For us it was one of the unforgettable experiences we had so far on our journey around the World. And though we are not going to miss the seasickness so much, we surely will miss our leisure time with Doug, his biceps and the most beautiful sailing yacht in the world :-) Hakura.



‘Fair winds Doug! And don’t forget the to put a jar of peanut butter and a few undies into the grab-back!’

Your German wanna-be sailors

Henrik (Blossom) & Mona (young lady who jumps into the water while wearing a black cocktail dress)

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