Rugby World Cup in the Kingdom of Tonga

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 with a Saturday afternoon bbq at the boat yard and Sunday is the much anticipated Ireland – South Africa game. So we're being kept occupied.

We've installed the flag at our local.

The island's rugby clubs paraded through town ahead of Tonga's first RWC game.

A pretty big crowd at Mango for the Ireland-Tonga match. The Irish contingent consisted of us and the crew of Kumo of Strangford Lough Yacht Club.

Still friends despite a solid defeat for poor Tonga.

The Kingdom of Tonga, population 100,000, is an interesting little country known to Captain Cook as The Friendly Isles. It's a smattering of about 170 small islands stretched over about 500 miles of ocean. It's really mostly water. It's unique in Polynesia in never having been colonised – they made a deal with the British promising to play nicely in return for maintaining independence as a British Protectorate. They do seem to have received a heftier dose of missionary zeal than the other islands we've been to so far, and that's saying something. Surprisingly Tonga was a Sovereign Monarchy all the way up to 2010 when the first parliamentary elections took place. Vava'u (population 14,000) is a small, rural island with small villages and lots of dogs and pigs and chickens. Saturdays here are dedicated to an entire day of rugby matches that the whole island seems to attend and Sundays are dedicated to church. On Sundays there is complete silence apart from the sound of singing coming from the various church services. All in all it's a lovely spot.

Port of Refuge (how apt for us) and the town of Neiafu

A lovely island to cycle around.

Talihau Community Police

And sometimes on cycles you end up at somewhere like the Tongan Beach Resort for lunch.

And our little forestay issue? We're getting there. We've been here almost three weeks now, practically locals. First we escaped the evil customs dock and found ourselves a great mooring out the back of the field with lots of space around us. Then we took a couple of days to catch our breath, do some research and figure out a plan. Karl enjoyed an arrival bbq in conditions so completely still that the stars reflected as perfect pin pricks in the water and we listened to my favourite programme (Subterranea) on the Brisbane radio station 4ZZZ. A nice reward. And then to work. We started by looking for a rigger on the island. We got a lead that Mary, the chef at Le Galion, had a husband who was a rigger but it turned out he was busy crewing on the whale-watching boats and was unavailable. We managed to find a rigger in Fiji who could repair our furler and make a new stay if we could get our parts to him. The official option was to send the stuff via Fed Ex from Vava'u to the capital Nuku'alofa (only on a Thursday), then to Auckland and then to Fiji costing a gazillion dollars. We tried cycling out to the airport to see if we could convince any staff to bring a package on the regular direct flights from here to Fiji. No luck. Then we struck gold when a Cairns boat, Tanuki, was leaving for Fiji and happy to take the package for us. Yay. Big hugs to Tanuki. Meanwhile we had to get the headsail, extrusions, furler and forestay down so alas it was back to the evil customs dock. We were ably assisted by the crews of Amae (Swiss) and Mac (Aussie) and by Sione, the security guard at the dock, and his mate. Very usefully the crews of Amae and Mac are taller than average and Sione & Co., being Tongan, are stronger than the average human so we coped admirably. Great relief all around. And as of this morning our rigger reports having repaired the furler and that the new forestay is all set to go. However, Fiji had a big win against Australia this morning in the World Cup so we suspect that there will be little work done anywhere in Fiji today.

Sitting forlornly at the evil customs dock waiting for the officials when we first arrived.

Step one: we got the sail/furler/stay combination off the boat and onto the dock.

Sail off, stay out and some extrusions taken part. A good day's work.

Back on board determined to get the rest of the extrusions apart.

Yes I did!

And while we've been here two other boats (one of which, Dance Me, was also on our HF net) have arrived in having been completely dismasted. Two! Plus us and Sea Wind losing our forestays (which could very well have meant a dismasting if we weren't both cutter rigs). And both Amae and Tranquility have found damaged stays that they have to replace. All around the same patch of ocean like some weird Bermuda Triangle of the South. Or maybe it's the bump when you hit the dateline.

As well as trying to sort out that mess we've had plenty of opportunities for fun. All the boats who took the northern route from French Polynesia through the northern Cook Islands and Samoa have now joined back up again with those of us who came straight across to Tonga via the southern Cooks and Niue so it's quite a sociable anchorage. Our performance at the Thursday night trivia has been steadily improving each week. Neiafu has turned out to be a lovely little town where you can pretty much find anything you need (apart from a rigger or a freight agent for Fiji Air). It has a lovely busy-relaxed atmosphere, a good veggie market, a few grocery shops, laundry, sources of good Tongan coffee beans and an impressive church for Karl. On two separate occasions when enquiring where something might be bought we were told "at the Chinese shop". "Which Chinese shop?" we countered (there are several). "Any Chinese shop!" was the answer. We've made a second home at our local Mango Cafe. They have a dinghy dock, two nice Tongan beers, Tiki (pretty good) and Maui (very good), and two big TV screens just begging to be filled with Rugby World Cup matches. Karl saved the day at the opening France – New Zealand game when the cafe's local internet connection turned out not to be up to the task and Karl got the game streaming via his phone and laptop to the big screens much to the relief of the Kiwi and French sailors and Adrian, the owner of Mango. Since then Karl has been official tech support for matches in return for breakfasts and we've been kindly allowed to store our bikes in the Mango yard. We've settled right in.

Trying a star apple at the market, apparently there's only one star apple tree on the island.

Karl's little bike waits patiently outside the grocery shop.

Quite specific distance signs.

Church and dog.

How many men does it take to get a rugby game showing on the TV? Just Karl in the end.

And we went swimming with whales! It's the thing to do here. The humpbacks who come up from Antarctica to have their babies tolerate people swimming around them so that's become the big (albeit still pretty low key) tourist draw in Vava'u. There are controls and rules in place – only four people and a guide are allowed in the water at any one time and you can't approach whales in a boat or swimming without a guide. Small boats take eight people each and scatter over a wide area in search of whales. The aim is to find a mum and bub because the baby has to breath frequently so the pair will stay close to the surface. We went out for the day with the crews of Mac (Brissie boat) and Sea Wind (broken forestay boat) and had three swims with three different pairs of whales. There were also male "escorts" around. It was an amazing experience. To state the obvious: they're ENORMOUS! And they were right there!!! Close enough to touch if you were feeling foolish. And one of the calves in particular was really small and cute and adorable. We also saw a "heat run" where several male "escorts" were trying to outrun each other in their bid to get to the prize. They were very big, they were very fast and they got very very close to the boat. Our guide was all for getting in and swimming with them too but in the end we (phew!) couldn't get into quite the right position.

Spot the snorkels - this is how close you get to the whales.

And if you want more of that the crew of Sea Wind put together a 8 minute YouTube clip of the trip.

Saturday 23^rd September, Neiafu, Vava'u, Tonga.

(Sing to the tune of "Here We Go") The stay's arrived, the stay's arrived, the stay's arr-iiiiived. The stay's arrived, the stay's arrived, the stay's arr-iiiiii-ived. The stay's arrived, the stay's arrived, the stay's arr-iiived. The stay-ay. Has arr-ived!!!

Hurrah!

Yup. The new forestay is here, delivered this morning by a lovely French couple who were accosted by our rigger when they innocently phoned up to enquire about sourcing some line. Thank you thank you thank you to them and to Bruce Vasconcellos of Westside Rigging and Wire. Now we just have to get the whole contraption back up again but at least that's a bit more under our control than trying to get parts back and over between Tonga and Fiji. An exciting few days ahead then of boatwork while we fit in the various events of the Vava'u Blue Water Festival and prepare to get going to New Caledonia ASAP (weather permitting), hopefully before our friends turn up there on the 7^th October and our new crew on Friday 13^th.

I can also report that we climbed a hill, enjoyed the drag queens' performances, hit the local night spot, had a couple of lovely dives including a really interesting wreck dive and finished in second place once again at trivia night. If the forestay doesn't work out we can probably survive very happily here until next season.