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Published: June 10th 2010
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Hi All out there in Blogland, this is about my sailing trip to Tonga on board the yacht Ianthe.
She is a 65 foot (overall) steel motosailor owned by my mate Mark (from Wales) (check out his website http://www.globalquest.org.uk/).
Skipper - Mark from Wales, First Engineer Sam from Wales, Bosun me and number one crew John from Hamilton.
After a lot of very hard work from Mark, Sam, John and several others we got underway on Saturday 10 April at 0300 hours. What was I doing you ask? I had 3 days to provision the yacht for our trip to Tonga (four guys for about 10 days) then for the eight crew Mark was picking up as part of the Bouty Boat reenactment (10 people for 2 weeks) and then Mark and Sam for the months afterwards. That works out to about 40 person weeks.
All was going well until John and I went to the supermarket at 2000 hrs on Friday night. It was closing in an hour and we were only halfway through the list. Holyshite and I had not got any toilet paper. 72 rolls later and after three goes through the checkout, John
and I headed back to Ianthe.
The loading of all the stuff was a slow process as we had to carry all the bags and boxes onto the yacht one at a time. We only lost 1 tin of tomatoes. Not bad as we had loaded 24 tins of corned beef (Mark's favorite), 50 tins of bake beans (another favorite of Mark), 50 tins of spaghetti (Sam's favorite) plus lots of other food and drinks.
The early start was to catch the full tide so as to get Ianthe out of the shallows near the Town Basin in Whangarei. I, of course, was not at the helm as it was Mark's yacht and, being known as Capt Mud for my frequent groundings in this stretch of the river, nobody wanted me to steer.
Our first port of call was Marsden Cove Marine, where we were to clear customs. We berthed easily through the expert skills of Mark. Boy can he drive his yacht. These skills were put to greater use later that day when we put into the fuel wharf.
We pasted through Whangarei Heads at 1800 on the 10th and after clearing the headland headed
east of north for Tonga.
The sea was confused on the first evening (as where the crew) which made steering hard. In addition, due to the extra weight from the fuel, water and stores, Ianthe was low in the water and very slow. We averaged about 4 knots (about 7.8 km and hour) for the first 24 hours, though over the rest of the trip we slowly built up the average speed till we ended with over 5 knots (about 9.5 km per hour).
There was no bad weather to speak off during the trip though this also meant we had little wind so the motor was on for the whole trip.
On the second day in Sam informed us that the freezer was not working thus we had to eat the meat before we could fish. We only lost one lot of meat and that was once we got to Nuku'alofa. Of course we just had to have bacon and eggs for breakfast, mince or steak for dinner.
After 8 and a half days at sea we sighted the southern islands of Tonga. As we arrived off the entrance to Nuku'alofa Harbour at night we
stay offshore till the morning so as to safely enter the harbour past the coral reefs.
Monday 20 April was a sunny day with light winds. Much to Sam's joy, Mark ordered the jolly boat to be launched. Sam's job was to seek out coral outcrops and ensure we did not go that way. John was on the radio with Sam and on lookout for navigational marks while Mark was plotting our progress on the chart and telling me where to go. Me, I was on the helm and going where Mark told me to go.
After about a couple of hours we where off the yacht harbour in Nukua'alofa and following another great display of boat handling Mark had us along side the wharf in Nuku'alofa.
It had been a trip of just over 9 and a half days and 1050 nautical miles (about 2000 km).
A great trip under a great capt' and with a great bunch of guys.
The big downside of our visit to Nuku'alofa was the night visit of some light figured person who stole Sam's laptop from next to where he was sleeping and my laptop from next to
where John was asleep.
Mark visited the Police the next day. He found it hard to convince them that we actually lost the laptops while we slept.
John and I got off Ianthe and headed out to the Ha'atafu Beach Resort (http://www.surfingtonga.com/). A great place to get our land legs back and wait for our flights to Auckland.
I arrived back in Auckland on the evening of 24 April. It was a bit strange remembering that the fight covered the same distance in 3 hours that had taken Ianthe about 230 hours. Though I do feel that the Ianthe was the best way to travel.
How I am working to get my Hakura ready to sail up to Tonga. More on all that in a later blog.
Doug
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