Oct. 8th: Washtubs & Niue

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19 13.01 S
169 45.82 W

Motoring 8.5 knots
Wind: Nuthin
Seas: 1-2 meters

Crew: Cyrus & Peter on deck, Colby doing engine check, Peter & Brett watching bad old movies.. Brooke writing and printing out crew lists


Comments: The last 24 hours could be described as 'change'. From glassy calm seas to confused messy large seas that kept everyone from sleeping much and convinced us we had sailed into a washtub..squalls, calm, torrential rain, rainbows... From orange meteors to a sunrise that caught the high clouds on fire... No wind,too much wind, sailing wind then no wind again. As I typed no wind, it picked up and now we have a head sail out. If nothing else, the ocean teaches you about change. She can literally change moods in an instant. Due to her moodiness of last night, our arrival time into Tonga was pushed into the early night. We cannot approach Niafu,Tonga in the dark, so we either need to slow, speed up, or perhaps.. explore a new island? We happen to be sailing right by Niue. Heeeeelllllooooo Niue! We also see that the wind is supposed to pick up and fill in in 48 hours, so maybe a day at Niue will give us a nice wind to sail AND an arrival time during daylight hours... sounds good to us!

Captain Cook landed at Niue in 1776 and apparently someone was pissy to him as he called this island "Savage Island". The name didn't stand too long as the people are known to be very friendly, but still they find people printing articles on their country and bringing up this awful name in ignorance... hurting their feelings. It even has reached into modern times and the email address are @sin.net.nu (in which 'sin' stands for 'savage island network'😉 pretty funny.

Niue Island is a self-governing country. They speak their own indigenous language which is a Polynesia dialect (closely related to Tonga and Samoa) and lucky for us... English. We are sailing next to it now... a very flat large low-lying island.. made of coral. This is very unlike the past few volcanic islands that rise in deep greens out of the ocean. Niue has no barrier reef and no giant cliffs... there now is much fewer Niueans on the island than ever before. There was 3,580 people in 1979 and the census of 2001 showed only 1,788. A huge decline. Why? Because they have a free agreement with New Zealand and they can find opportunities there. There are about 12,000+ Niueans residing in New Zealand. I just raised our 'Q' flag which is the bright yellow flag that tells the port we need to clear in with the officials and below it.. low and behold, I found a lovely hand-stitched Niuean flag. Cyrus is now at the VHF trying to reach the port to let them know we will be arriving shortly. We knew very little about Niue, then after reading about the 80-100 foot average water visibility and the mile deep limestone caves (many caverns have never been explored), well, it caught our attention... The wind turned and is now from the SE, perfect for the one small anchorage that is here (there are no ports and no real protected areas).. we also cannot arrive in Tonga at night, as I mentioned, so a day here will be good for wind, sailing and arrival times and if Brooke gets to go on a dive... so be it. 😊

Brooke


PS: We have enjoyed wahoo tacos and Brett's twist on the Poisson Cru... amazing! Brett has done an AMAZING job with the fish cleaning (much to his dismay, had me asking him to open the stomach to see what it had been eating... he wasn't very excited about this, but we did find one small remora in the stomach) and the incredible meals! Go BRETT!

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