Maninita (Vava'u Group, Tonga)

[Kyle]From Kenutu, we sailed way down to Maninita Island. The Vava’u group is shaped kind of like a jellyfish. Neiafu is inside of the bell of the main island. Maninita is at the furthest tip of the longest tentacle. Not only that, but it is past a lot of other islands with no safe anchorage, so it feels even more way out there.

Maninita - way at the southern tip of the Vava'u Group of islands

Maninita's anchorage isn't particularly great either, but at least it has one. To get there, we had to cross the Fonua Unga gap, which is a break in the fringing reef protecting Vava’u from the open sea. The chart in that area has lots of areas labeled “Blind Rollers” and “Breakers”. The sea had not calmed down fully, so I was pretty nervous about transiting the area. It turned out okay, but we did have a couple of waves roll us a little more than we would have liked. We were glad to get back behind the reef again.

The anchorage at Maninita is accessed by a winding route through shallow reefs. Once inside, there is just enough room for one or two boats over the sandy patch. Since the wind was up and since we were planning on spending at least one night there, we put our anchor down on one side of the patch and stretched it over as close as we dared to the other side. When we were done, we had breaking surf hitting the reef just over a boat length behind us and to one side. The noise and sight of it was a little nerve-wracking when it was high tide. At low tide, the reef broke the surface and the water was nice and smooth.

I had a swim to make sure our anchor was well dug in and to check for obstructions within our swinging arc. Then I swam over to the island to do a lap on foot, just in case we didn’t get a chance later. We were both too nervous to leave Begonia unattended until we had had a chance to watch her motion for a while. Maryanne elected to stay aboard while I was ashore.

Our first coconuts of 2019!!!

It didn’t take long to circle the island, collect a couple of coconuts and confirm that there were definitely no other humans on the island. I must’ve come too close to the nests of some Blue Footed Boobies, though, because a few of them came down to get a really good look at me. I was walking downwind, so they were able to fly right down and look at me face to face. They would stop and hover there for four or five seconds before moving on. They weren’t being aggressive or dive-bombing me, just having a look. They were close enough that I could have reached right out and touched them if I had been fast enough and so inclined.

I had another good look around on the swim back to double check our anchor and swinging room again. Double is the minimum number of checks in my opinion. On second thought, I decided to go for a third look before I got out of the water.

We studied Begonia’s motion until a pre-determined decision time, which would have allowed us enough daylight to move on if necessary. We agreed that we would be safe to stay the night.

What a night it was! The sky was gloriously clear. We lounged in the breeze on the trampoline marveling at the spectacle of the night sky undiminished by light pollution or the need to stop periodically to keep an eye on where we are going, like we do while on passage. The trees rattled in the wind and we could hear the birds making ever softer chatter to each other as they roosted for the night and fell asleep.

In the morning, we both left the boat for a long snorkel among the reefs and a walk together around the island. We found many more booby nests, but few seemed brave enough to approach the pair of us as they were for just me, so Maryanne missed out on the great face-to-face encounter I got. Too bad. She would have liked that.

Snorkel about the reef all around us!

We swam the long way back to Begonia on a different route. She was still safe and sound, but both the wind and the strong currents sweeping around the island seemed determined to nudge us closer to the reef behind us than we liked. The wind was supposed to swing slightly the wrong way over the next day or so. We had a better handle on how we were swinging, so we decided we would sleep a lot better if we moved the anchor to a different edge of the anchorage’s sand patch.

After further discussion, we agreed we’d sleep even better if we left completely and went somewhere where there wasn’t a giant reef right behind us topped by breaking waves. That cut our stay shorter than we had originally planned, but we were happy we had pretty much seen everything at Maninita.