Karl & Kara Go Sailing

  Monday 18 th September (Birthday of Crown Prince Tupouto'a 'Ulukalala), Neiafu, Vava'u, Kingdom of Tonga. It's Rugby World Cup time again, yay!!! The rugby has nicely bookended our trip, we watched the 2019 games in Mauritius, Reunion and South Africa and now we're lucky enough to be stuck in a rugby-mad nation for this year's early games. And, to add extra spice, Tonga are in Ireland's pool!  We're using today's public holiday to recover from the big Ireland - Tonga game yesterday morning, Karl's pulling the forward cabin apart looking for the spare tyre for my bike ahead of tomorrow's cycle down to a nice snorkeling spot, Wednesday we're going for a couple of dives, Wednesday evening is the Former Drag Queen show at Le Galion bar, Thursday is quiz night at The Kraken, Friday we'll be the finish line for the afternoon's racing (big responsibility), this weekend is the start of the Vava'u Blue Water Festival kicking off wi

P hoto by divemaster at  Niue Blue ) Friday 25 th  August, Alofi, Niue. (For those of you who need to be reassured about the disaster bit first go straight to the bottom section that was written in Tonga, then come back and enjoy reading about Niue) We made it to Niue! Known as "The Rock" to the locals. Not the world's easiest trip from Bora Bora. The start was a bit lumpy, then we ran into the calms. I was reading "The Captain's Wife" by Abby Jane Morrell, written in the 19 th century, where she said "If, gentle reader, you have an enemy, you can never wish him anything worse than a calm at sea." - well said. We had to go well north of the rhumb line to try to stay in the wind and Karl's daily weather forecast analysis became known as reviewing the Table of Woe. I joked that Niue seemed to have some sort of forcefield repelling us but then I started to worry that maybe the Niue Forcefield was real and we might never make it. Captain Cook ha