We're back anchored between Langito'o and Vaka'eitu Islands!
The main draw for the area is a place called the Coral Gardens, which is about a mile to the northwest. The nearby village on Vaka’eitu has a couple of free mooring balls available, which we checked out last time and didn’t like. Langoto’o is considered a backup anchorage in case the balls are occupied. Most vessels don’t care for it because it’s too shallow and there is a bit if roll at high tide. We think it’s just perfect.
Our first morning there, we lowered the dinghy, attached the electric motor and headed to the Coral Gardens. The best bit is on the outside of the extensive reef that connects Vaka’eitu with Nuapapu Island on the side of Vaka’eitu that is opposite us. To get there, we had to land on the inside, walk over the reef to the outside and find a safe spot to put in.
That last part was a bit tricky. The swell was crashing onto the reef as surf. We found a small gully, timed the waves and then jumped in. There was nowhere to sit to put on fins without being washed away, so we did it after plunging into the water. Then we had to do it fast and start kicking to keep from being washed back toward the reef.
The coral there is definitely above Tonga average in coverage and variety in all shapes and colors. There were also lots of different species of colorful fishes, all zipping by in big schools.
Snorkelling the outer reef of the Coral Gardens
We weren’t relishing the idea of getting back out of the water where we went in, so we followed the reef all of the way to the other island of Nuapapa, where we were able to find a slightly calmer spot to climb out. We walked back over to the lagoon side and went back in there for the swim back along the inner reef to the dinghy.
The visibility wasn’t as good on the inside of the reef and there was much more dead coral. The water was a lot calmer, though, as well as warmer. We found lots of nurseries filled with juvenile versions of the fish outside. We also found a few interesting eels and a tiny sea horse.
The inner reef of the Coral Gardens - getting up close to some great critters
When we got back to Begonia, we realized we had been gone for most of the day. We had gone two miles in the dinghy and had swum at least twice that far chasing all of the strange critters of the deep. Before we even had time to finish dinner, it was dark already.
The trade winds gradually stopped overnight. We decided to use the unusual calm as the perfect opportunity to tick the one job off of the list that we couldn’t get done in Tapana.
The sun cover on our jib had taken a beating on the windy passage to Tonga and needed re-stitching. Having no wind made it a lot easier to get the sail off the furler and into the cockpit for sewing. It also meant we could put up sun covers to keep the area cool without having them flapping around like crazy.
Jobs Day... Things took a lot longer than we expected!
We started late morning and figured we would have everything back together in two, maybe three hours. Since we had the sewing machine out, we figured we would also give our cockpit enclosure a little TLC. It has been taking a real beating since Wellington. That should add another half hour or so.
Then we broke a needle. That happens a lot when trying to sew through three layers of canvas and eight layers of sailcloth, all at the same time. Maryanne replaced the needle, but then they started breaking pretty much every time she started the machine. Somehow the machine had slipped out of adjustment and the needles were being slammed into the bobbin.
Sewing machines, at least the one we have, are tremendously finicky to adjust. The needle has to plunge in right after the gap in the bobbin spins into place and leave just before it closes up. Our machine seems to only have about one degree of extra space for this. I would spend ages moving the thing the tiniest amount, testing it to make sure it was perfect, and then having it all go back out of tolerance from the act of tightening the set screws. A few times, we got it to work when we turned the machine by hand, but as soon as we started the electric motor, SNAP, another needle broken. That’s when I learned I have to allow for the slack in the drive belt when making adjustments.
It took so long to fix the damn machine and get it working reliably that Maryanne correctly remarked that we could have done all of the day’s sewing by hand in less time. Yes, but now we’re ready for a seamless next time!
Once all of that was finally done and the big mess put away, we went to hoist the jib and it would just not go. Our roller furler is essentially a long metal tube made out of several lengths of shorter tube connected in sections. The connectors had worked just loose enough to prevent the top swivel, to which the head of the sail is connected, from sliding smoothly over the tube.
So, I got to use the last daylight of an already long day to climb up the mast and sort it all out. At the end, we were exhausted and completely fed up with fixing unexpected problems. Time to lie on the trampoline, take a nice, deep breath and enjoy the stars.
When we got up in the morning, we were still a little paranoid. We made a point of interacting with Begonia’s systems the minimum amount possible before jumping into the water for a snorkel around our private little area.
Except that it wasn’t. Some catamaran had snuck in early and dropped anchor between us and the beach. Then a tour boat pulled up to the beach and disgorged half a dozen passengers for what appeared to be an extended picnic.
Maryanne swam over to meet the people on the cat while I finished up the last of the dishes from breakfast. It was another couple. They had their hands full, though, as they were entertaining four guests in the last days of their visit. We left them to it while we did roughly the same snorkel we had done at the Coral Gardens. We swam to the reef, crossed it on foot and had a swim up and down the outside before crossing again for the swim back to the boat.
Outer reef of Langito'o - most of the good reef is to the eastern end
The Langito’o reef isn’t nearly as vibrant and colorful as the one at the Coral Gardens, but it still had enough to make for an interesting swim. There was much more to see on the lagoon side. We found a giant lobster, who had apparently grown that size by being really good at wedging itself way under the reef where it couldn’t be reached. When it realized it had been spotted, it buried itself in so far that only the end of one antenna gave away its presence. We also found a Longhorn Cowfish, which seems like one of the least hydrodynamic things in the sea. It seemed completely unbothered by my approach, so it didn’t need streamlining. We assume it has some other effective deterrent to being eaten.
The inner reef at Langito'o is mostly dead coral - but some time poking about reveals plenty of gems!
Hiding under Begonia’s shadow was a big family of squid. They may be the same group that stayed with us here seven months earlier. They definitely seem curious about us. They stay just out of reach, but they seem to like to follow us and watch whatever we’re doing. Their visual language is so alien to us that we have no idea what they must be making of us, but they do seem to like hanging around.
Wildlife right under the boat!
Speaking of that, another boat showed up and anchored on the other side of us. We’ve noticed this phenomenon occurs occasionally in sparsely populated areas. A boat will come into the general area looking for an anchorage they had heard about, see us, and decide we must be THE anchorage, even though we’re not really in the spot they thought we would be. If we’re alone, the tendency seems to be to think the anchorage is small and so they put themselves right next to us. A third boat sees two closely packed boats and follows suit. If two boats are half a mile apart, the anchorage looks big and the third boat will pick somewhere toward the middle of the big gap. If the two boats are twenty meters apart, then “the anchorage” must be tiny and they have to get really close. We had this happen most notably at Kimolos Island in Greece. We were the only boat anchored along a mile-long beach of uniform depth and bottom composition, when a Dutch boat came up and anchored practically on top of us. Well, okay, but they turned out to be middle-aged nudists of, shall we say, below average attractiveness. They then went about their extended evening bathing while we were in our cockpit trying to eat our dinner (and keep it down). Had they been a mile away, they would have been two little pink specks doing vague pink speck things. Instead, we had them about a driveway’s width from being in our cockpit with us. Even if we managed to avoid seeing it, we were still close enough to hear the lathering of soap and the fall of every water droplet.
Thus it was for us, minus the nudity, thank God. Our anchorage was small – probably only big enough for two boats – but we weren’t “the anchorage”. That was a mile away in the next cove at Vaka’eitu. We haven’t kept a 365-day vigil, but the three different times we have been to Vava’u, we have never seen anybody anchored in this spot, other than us.
Now we were all packed so closely that we had to speak in hushed tones to maintain our privacy and theirs. At night, we had to cover the windows to keep from feeling like we were living in a fishbowl. We expect that kind of thing at marinas or in crowded anchorages in big cities, but not out here.
Just before sunset, a boat could be seen in the distance heading from the Vaka’eitu anchorage toward Neiafu. Boat #3 then picked up anchor and presumably headed to their vacated spot. The catamaran stayed the night. They were there when Maryanne and I surfaced briefly to watch the sunrise. An hour later, by the time we really got up, they had slipped away without a peep, just as they had arrived.
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