Winding down

Well our mini-adventure/gap-years have nearly come to an end here in Vava'u and we're getting ready to go back home to NZ. We've now sold all of our possessions of any value that we can't take home with us. Things sold really well despite many of the palangis and sailors not being here due to border closures (https://offloop.net/sale/).

We'll hang out on the mainland for a couple of days before we fly out on Jan 7 to Tongatapu. After a week there to finalise the paperwork for the dog we'll fly back to NZ for two weeks in quarantine on Jan 14. Hopefully they'll put us in one of the nice rooms, but really, any room they put us in will be pretty luxurious compared to here. Hot showers, TV and fast internet will be lovely. Spy will be spending his quarantine for 10 days in Christchurch and we'll be in Auckland.

Sam has checked out our container back home with all our furniture, and most importantly, a bed and mattress for when we get home, and everything is bone dry with no signs of condensation from the frosty Canterbury winters. 

We're just getting back into storm season here and the Pacific is sending us a few wee storms to see us on our way. We repaired the storm shutter/verandah roof that blew off unexpectedly, so hopefully we're ready for whatever might come. We will miss the bulk of the storm season though.

Here's the hut with the storm shutter in the standby-for-storm state - we were just putting in a few last roofing screws and checking it all still shuts correctly. It closes down fully and locks in place with blocks of wood and bolts once the storm arrives, and we stow the hoist and pulley under the house.

Pineapple

We picked our first pineapple today to add to our usual daily fruit basket.

Outhouse burns to the ground!

Mandy visited the outhouse this morning to discover it totally and utterly gone - burned to the ground without a trace of the frame, roof, seat remaining. It looks like it was quite an inferno.

One thing I made sure to plan for was a toilet on day one, because needs must, but I didn't think to plan for having a spare toilet. OMG. Disaster!

It's a bit of a puzzle how this happened. We do light a mosquito coil when we use the loo so it seems that might be the cause but I walked past it yesterday afternoon and it seemed fine then, and it was last used yesterday morning so would have had to have been quietly smouldering away for a long time. Judging from the red fired clay inside the hole it looks like there was a good fire going in there, so I guess it's possible it we had a case of spontaneous combustion too.

Pineapples

A couple of our pineapples have finally started fruiting:

We also harvested our first Talo (Taro) a couple of weeks ago.

We've had some pretty impressive bunches of bananas now. One bunch of bananas was "oh, my" sized; about twice as thick as the bananas you buy in NZ and half as long again. You really had to share a banana but they're not always that big...

They come from the same parent stock but it all just depends on the growing conditions at the time they fruit. You might need to eat 8 or so of these ones for a snack but they taste just fine, and thankfully being this small is the exception.

We've had 3 whale sightings from the house in as many weeks. I was awoken to a noise I thought must have been a high-velocity shot being fired and went out to find a whale tail-slapping just next to Nukulahanga Island. It's no surprise they can be heard up to 10 km away - Amazingly loud!

Until now we've only had one whale sighting in the last two years, so perhaps they are finding the lack of tourists, and the lack of being hassled by whale tour boats enough reason to start venturing into the inner bays again.

Manta Rays

I've been told a few times about the manta rays near here but I hadn't actually managed to see them until yesterday - not knowing exactly where they hang out but also perhaps due to season; I don't know. Anyway, yesterday I ran across possibly as many as 50 manta rays frolicking in the sand and reef.

Unfortunately I didn't have a camera and my GoPro isn't charging now, so here's an image that is representative of the ones I saw, shamelessly stolen from https://coralbaytours.rezdy.com/200275/manta-ray-interaction - check them out if you're going to Ningaloo Bay :-)

I'll try to get some photos soon - now that they are here (and now I know where they are) I understand they should be round for a while.

In case anyone wants to find them, I've included a map below. The red route shows the pass between the western islands and the eastern islands, and the red polygon indicates the location of the manta rays (-18°43.87' -173°58.75'). It was about 1 pm, a bit before half way through the incoming tide on August 1 in case any of that matters.

It's only about 2 km from Tapana Island so I'll be checking back there regularly and will hopefully get to go snorkeling with them. With luck it's just the charging cable for my GoPro and not the camera itself that is broken otherwise any photos I get might be a bit stink. These are not your tame Ningaloo rays so fingers crossed they'll play nice with me.

Yesterday the wind was a bit gnarly and I ran across them at the end of a 9 km kayak trip so I didn't hang around very long, but it was pretty amazing anyway. They didn't much like me paddling toward them but didn't mind so much if I went upwind and drifted over them. One of them slapped the kayak as I went past.

Covid in Tonga

We got lucky with covid-19 here. A flight stopped here on the way to Fiji, and a flight attendant and passenger from that flight went on to test positive after arriving in Fiji, so while we did briefly have covid in the country it never managed to get a foothold. Passengers from the flight, fearing what might happen in quarantine spread far and wide into villages and the forest (not that there was was anything set up for quarantine at the time anyway). Because the authorities were unable to contact and test these passengers they had no choice but to lock down the entire country. Lockdown was surprisingly well managed. People were to stay at home unless going out for essentials, much like in NZ. After a few weeks these restrictions were eased to allow some gatherings such as church as it looked like we had dodged the bullet, and so we just remain with borders locked but otherwise life is pretty normal here except for the lack of tourists.

With no tourist spending and few remittances from overseas seasonal workers things are a bit tight here. Many businesses that rely on tourists have closed. There is a programme providing free vegetable seedlings for people to grow more food locally, but the locals are pretty good at providing for themselves without income anyway, so while some are unable to pay for their power they aren't starving.

Air NZ still has a flight once a week delivering supplies from New Zealand and doing repatriation flights on the return leg but I think they return largely empty. We could return home at any stage now really but there doesn't seem a lot of point right now in returning to New Zealand so we just watch most of the world implode through stupidity and selfishness.

My experience with covid is mostly through my covid tracker at http://offloop.net/covid19/ (which over 50,000 people have used now), although I did briefly wear a homemade mask into town during the lockdown. Otherwise it's fairly surreal watching from afar. We made the most of eating in restaurants in town while the rest of the world was unable to.

Fiji was the first to open its borders to yachties who in some cases had been stranded with nowhere to go. Local business owners here had tried to encourage the government to open our borders to them first to capitalise on yacht dollars, but Tonga is not really a proactive sort of place so Fiji has beaten us to the punch.

With about 100 yachts making their way to Fiji now it was no surprise that we started to see the first of those making emergency stops here on the way. Last week two vessels called in here either for repairs or to shelter from the weather. Despite warnings this was going to happen sooner or later the government was totally unprepared and it was all the talk of the town. Would they be arrested and fined? In the end customs made a pragmatic call to have them anchor in a bay away from town, guarded by the army to ensure they didn't land. They were not allowed any supplies and a couple of days later went on their way without a fine and without any contact with authorities. They have invalidated their clearance to go to Fiji now by stopping here on their way so who knows how that will play out when they arrive but they are out of our hair anyway.

Maria and Edwardo from the other side of the island have been stuck in Spain since the outbreak. Villiami, a local, has returned to the island to look after their place, and was also to briefly care for Emma, a dog belonging to some visiting sailors who had to duck home for several weeks. Of course they got trapped by the outbreak as well so Emma has been here all year now gaining her land legs after living on a yacht. Villiami looks after her most of the time but every Friday she appears at our place when Villiami goes into town and usually hangs out for a few days at a time. Nitro, our cat, hates her with a passion.

A couple of days ago Emma flushed a pig out of the forest making for my first visual sighting of a pig on the island - that I have long been seeking. However, this was just a young pig so now we have the mystery of whether there was actually more than one pig on the island, or perhaps Villiami has imported one or more pigs to the island, as he had done in the years before we arrived. They were all (bar the one mystery pig?) removed by the time we arrived so I'm hoping this isn't the beginnings of another pig empire as they really churned up the forest floor last time.

Storms

During my blog absence we had a few tropical cyclones that added a bit of excitement to life. In December we had Sarai, which was a bit of a fizzer here, then Tino in January, which brought quite a bit of damage to Tongatapu as a Category 3 Severe Tropical Cyclone but up here in Vava'u we remained mostly unscathed. In April we had Cyclone Harold hit us. In all of these cyclones we happened to be on the leeward side of the island so although we shuttered our windows we didn't even bother lowering our verandah roof. All the storms claimed a few trees in the forest and a papaya tree or two but otherwise mostly just made a bit of a mess.

This view from the house kinda gives an idea of the winds from Tino on the leeward side of the island:

I create satellite animations of the storms on youtube when they are happening at https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCArkblSqsuHliuWqcUgZD3w/videos and have an animation maker at http://offloop.net/cgi-bin/sat.pl for current weather since we don't have a fancy rain radar here in Tonga.

So the forecast storms were not a huge deal for us, however, just last week we had an un-forecast and totally unexpected storm cell develop and blow past and this time we weren't on the leeward side of the island. It was a lovely calm morning when I visited the loo, but 5 minutes later trees were falling down around me. I made a dash for the house and just as I opened the door our verandah roof was torn off above me and blew away into the forest. If we had any warning we could have lowered the verandah roof but as it was the wind just snapped the support poles, peeled open the hinges and the verandah roof sailed off over the house making a small dent in the topcap of the house but otherwise leaving the house mostly unharmed. It did also tear off the security shutter over the "window" on the front of the house so we had no way to secure a tarp to stop the rain from blowing in. We put a tarp over the bed and put all the electronics stuff into cupboards but the horizontal rain pretty much flooded into the house. But within an hour the storm was gone and after thinking about it for another hour the sun came out so the day was spent drying out and clearing up.

A coconut tree came down near the house and another two large tress fell down next to the house but no harm done there. The tree that our header tank is in snapped off just above the tank but the tank miraculously stayed in the tree:

The shelter over the pizza oven was destroyed:

Our verandah roof (other half just visible on the left-hand side):

We found the verandah roof about 50 m into the forest. It must have flown on a crazy angle like a giant frisbee to get to where it did, dodging trees along the way but finally found a big tree and smashed into two pieces. We will be able to use most of the roofing tin again but most of the timber is broken. The winds have been a bit too high since the storm to tow new building supplies over from the mainland but it should calm down in the next few days and we'll rebuild.

In the harbour 3 boats were sunk in the storm and two smashed on the rocks.

Catch(up)

Well, it's been nearly a year since the last blog post, mostly because I hate bloggers, yet balanced by the fact I love the sound of my own voice, so here I am!

For what it's worth, the house was finished nearly a year ago and really isn't much different to the last photo except with the addition of the verandah roof.

The winch we use for raising and lowering the verandah roof over the front of the house during storms is pictured, but usually removed.

Otherwise life goes on much as you'd expect on a small island. We go into town a couple of times a week for coffee and chat but otherwise spend a very quiet time on the island.

Mandy made a pizza oven using the local clay and layers of coconut husk for insulation. It's keeps cooking for hours once it's up to temperature.

I've got a bit better at catching fish and can pretty much catch skipjack tuna whenever I want, but we just don't want them very much; a very meaty fish but quite dark and not something we really want more than about once or twice a month. They are pretty damn good smoked, mind you, and pretty fun to catch.

I've found some better fishing grounds now and can fairly regularly catch Giant Trevally, Green Jobfish, Coral Breems, Emperors and a few others.

I even managed to hook a marlin from the dinghy as I was speeding around for another pass through a boil-up of skipjack tuna. It was probably a good thing I lost it on a jump out of the water because I didn't have a gaf with me and Lord knows what I would have done with it if I had got it up to the boat. I now have the gaf permanently in the boat. I also hooked a yellowfin tuna but lost it to a shark while I was trying to untangle my gloves from a lure I had left in my fishing bag. Another lesson learned.

Try as I might I've failed to catch a skipjack tuna from the kayak. You really need to be going about 7 knots to maximise your chances with them and I can probably muster 2-3 knots in the kayak. It's pretty hard to even keep up with a boil-up in the kayak let alone run the lure through it but there's always a chance of getting one on the fringe so maybe I'll tick that off yet. I can get up to about 11 knots in the dinghy at full speed, which just puts me in range of the bigger game fish but I don't make it out as far as the good game fishing grounds in my dinghy so those require a great deal of luck.

My filleting knife handle broke so I used some ironwood to make a new handle. It's fantastically hard stuff and I shape it using the angle-grinder. We're using it to repair all sorts of things that are beginning to wear out or rust away here.

For a bit of a lark I put a sail on my kayak. It actually works pretty well and I can point about 25 degrees into the wind. It only does about 3 knots regardless of wind speed, either because the wind is not strong enough or the waves become too high and slow it down, but it still saves a heck of a lot of effort on paddling - although fishing and sailing it is a bit of a juggling act. Obviously it's pretty crude, just made from some scrap timber and the old tent.

We've been harvesting 2-3 papaya every day for nearly a year now so we have way more than we can eat. Just in the last couple of weeks, in the depths of the tropical winter, we've had a few days where we haven't been able to pick one but they should get going again soon I guess.

Not a lot has happened except for the passing of time.

Papaya

Today we picked our first papaya grown from seed:

 

We've always had plenty of papaya from the other side of the island but it's nice to have our own too. We won't be going short anyway. I planted these last year on Aug 12, so it took a year and a couple of weeks from seed to fruit.

They need to be picked when they just start turning yellow as in the photo, otherwise the bats and rats get them.

Produce

Today we got our first bunch of ripe bananas.

We planted the bananas on Sep 15 so only 11 months to fruit. I think this one may have fruited a bit more quickly than normal for some reason but I'm not complaining. None of the other palms are showing any signs of flowering yet.

Yesterday I caught my first skipjack tuna:

 

Skipjack tuna may not be well regarded for eating but I suppose it's a start. It tastes a lot like... Tuna!

In other news, we've installed a shower but largely just gone about life on an island as you would; swimming, eating, walking, foraging, eating, tinkering, weaving, eating etc., and exploring the nearby islands. Some of them are really stunning.