An hour and a half later, I went back to their office to see if anyone was coming anytime soon. "Shortly" was the response.
Not two minutes after I climbed back aboard Begonia, I saw that the first official from Immigration had been a hundred meters behind me as I was walking back. We welcomed him and started the process of handing lots of forms back and forth. The process was straightforward and involved paperwork only, no searches or inspections.
When that was done, there was a long pause, and we were told the next agent from Customs should be arriving anytime now. Then more long pauses.
I had to go back to the offices for the third and final agent, Biosecurity. They seemed surprised by the news that Begonia was at the wharf and explained that they were in a different department. They don't really have much communication with Customs (which was literally in an open building next door within hailing distance). Sigh...
FIVE hours after our first visit to the Customs and Immigration office, we finally received our last stamp from Biosecurity and had completed our entry into the country. Again, there were no searches or inspections, just paperwork, lots of friendly chit-chat, and lots and lots of waiting. We've since met other boaters who have said their processes took anywhere from ten minutes to hours and hours. The main factor seems to not be how complex the case, but how busy the port is. On busy days with lots of boats hovering around to be cleared in, they do ten minutes of clearing boats in every ten minutes. On days like ours, when we were the only boat that arrived, there seems to be no reason not to spread the process out evenly over the whooole workday. They were really nice about it, though. We were never worried that they were secretly stalling awaiting the arresting officers arrived to take us away.
Once we were officially cleared into the country, Maryanne made a quick trip to the ATM to get some local currency. Wouldn't you know it, that's when three new boats arrived, hovered nearby, and started glaring conspicuously at me to leave the dock. Maryanne returned, we hastily cast off, and then all three discovered they were too big for the hole we had vacated after all.
Our next order of business was to find a mooring. One of the boats that preceded us from Niue to Tonga, Far Out, described the mooring situation in Port of Refuge at Neiafu as being, "like The Hunger Games". They weren't kidding.
Port of Refuge is very deep – way too deep to anchor in the middle. There are three narrow, shallowish areas on the edges with some sand, but mostly coral. One is opposite the Customs wharf, one is at the town, which is entirely populated with closely-spaced moorings, and the other is miles from town, way down and on the other side of the harbor. That's where Far Out ended up after several unsuccessful tries at getting one of the town moorings that wasn't so, uh, far out. Their anchorage was probably at least a two-hour row from Neiafu in a Portland Pudgy.
As we entered the mooring field, we found two free moorings. The first was marked "Private" in faded magic marker on the float. The second was marked "Private" by the guy ashore who was waving his arms and telling us it was private with an opera singer's voice.
The mooring supply problem was made worse by the fact that it was Sailing Week, where lots of events were planned for the wave of cruisers going through. We doubted anyone would be leaving before it concluded. Rather than hover around, waiting to see if someone might leave, I pushed the throttles forward and we headed to the nearby anchorage at Mala Island for a few nights.
Once officially cleared in, we withdrew to Mala island for a few days to anchor, sleep, and relax before heading back into the main town
Mala has long views and a big, shallow shelf of clean sand for anchoring. We slept in to reset to a diurnal sleep cycle, spent an indoor day hiding from slashing rain, and had a lovely, sunny day of snorkeling at the coral near the island.
The next morning, Maryanne got a message from Shimshal. They had left their mooring in Neiafu the night before and told her there were a total of five available at that time. Although I doubted we would be able to make it back to town before they were all snatched up by waiting boats at anchor, we decided to at least try to have a look.
All of those moorings were, in fact, occupied. Fortunately, another boat had just left a sixth and passed us going the other way as we entered the harbor. Even better, the mooring was only two rows back from the nearest ones to the dinghy dock at the Mango Café. Rowing ashore would only take a couple of minutes.
Now that we were in town properly, it was time to start "Jobs". Lucky for me, New Zealand has strict enough biosecurity rules that Maryanne was primarily concerned with depleting our supply of unapproved foods, instead of making a new, bigger one. All we really needed was some fresh produce, a data top-up, and maybe a meal ashore.
Neiafu's produce market is large and varied and we were able to find everything we were looking for, and more. We even bought TWO watermelons!
The only Sailing Week event that Maryanne and I were really interested in was a bus tour around the main island to a couple of viewpoints, followed by a Tongan Feast at a restaurant on the beach. That was the next day, but to book it, we needed to go to Happy Hour at the Hideaway Café, which was today's event.
The Hideaway Café is built on a raft in the harbor. It's a lovely setting, the proprietors are nice, and they do pretty good food of the deep-fried variety. We met lots of other nice boaters there, plus the requisite couple of loudmouth drunks. Maryanne observed that there seemed to be nothing particularly special about today's Special Event. The Hideaway Café has Happy Hour every day at this time and anyone is free to come. Getting on the Sailing Week list was really just a way to draw in most of their client base at the same time.
Finding some peaceful moments in busy Neiafu
In the morning, we found the bus tour to be similarly organized. First, there were not nearly enough busses for all the people who had signed up. After a few phone calls, they scared up another and told us that, as long as we squeezed in, we could now leave. The busses were "Bula Style", meaning trucks with open beds. As long as we filled the floor and interlaced legs, we could make it work.
We had a lovely, fragrant, if a little bumpy, ride across the island to several viewpoints on the high cliffs on the north side of the island. Much of Tonga's royalty had homes or retreats here in the past, due to the beauty of the area, the cool breezes, and the ease of defense. The Royal Palace is now on the main island of Tongatapu, in the south.
The viewpoint tour got us out of town via some rather suspect transport, but the weather was glorious and the views worth the trip
After the viewpoints, we then went to the restaurant at our last stop. This is where more confusion ensued. The sign-up sheet had implied that the restaurant was an optional add-on to the bus tour. Maryanne and I had been to this restaurant before, and didn't feel the need for a repeat, so we had only signed up for the tour. It was a good thing, because the restaurant admitted that they thought we were all coming on a different day, so they had not stocked any food. After some back and forth with the tour organizers, they agreed to cook up what they had, split it evenly, and make a whole lot of chips to fill it out.
It didn't really work. Everyone's portion was pretty meager. Maryanne and I were glad we weren't having a share, which would have made everyone else's dishes even lighter. At least someone had thrown a few beers into the fridge when we had arrived, so they were below room temperature. Maryanne and I bought one and a Coke and wandered the beach during the meal. When the whole affair was over, the organizers divided the new, reduced bill by the number of guests present, and then came to each of us for our share. When Maryanne reminded them that we hadn't eaten anything and had never intended to eat anything, the news was met with silence, which, in the extreme cultural politeness of Tonga, is probably as close as anyone would dare to get to a scowl in public. We were told not to worry, they would sort it out, but I think we might have lost a friend in the process.
Our next day in Neiafu was another easy one. After a couple of light errands, Maryanne announced that we had nothing else we needed to do in town. If I wanted, we could have a meal by the dinghy at the Mango Café, and then head to the outer anchorages for some leisure. Yes, please!
For our first stop, I planned to take us to Kenutu Island. It's not far from Neiafu as the tern flies, but the water route is long enough around the intervening islands and reefs to make it way in the back, so to speak. The route is far enough that getting there from Neiafu without motoring would require most of a day of sailing on all points of sail.
It was good to do some fun, get-your-hands-dirty sailing in flat water as a way of passing a day in a pretty place. For the most part, the passages around the Vava'u group are wide enough that once we started heading upwind, the tacks were long enough that we didn't have to stand constantly at our respective winches, but short enough to feel good at being such a practiced team.
The disheartening part was when, while we were doing an admirable and efficient job of being proper sailors, the floating condos went motoring by on a direct course and then disappeared ahead. Toward the end of our day, just as we were getting to where it was going to soon be time to furl the sails, we found four of those boats, plus four that were already there, packed into what we clearly remember as being a four-boat anchorage. Behind us, three more were barreling down on us and would surely pass us before we got the sails stowed and our engines up to speed. We must have missed some memo about a get-together in Kenutu.
Since we didn't want to end up far from that island way outside the real anchorage in lots of coral, we abandoned the idea of Kenutu, took a hard left, and picked our way over the shallows to the anchorage to the south of Tapana Island. It's a little like Mala, with plenty of long views, access to wind for power, and a large area of clean sand for the anchor. Begonia was the only one there. We could even see the boats at Mala in the distance.
A few days at Tapana Island
We were planning on resuming our program of loafing and snorkeling for a while. Then the new forecast said we might be better off leaving a day early in order to avoid an underway day getting drenched. Loafing got pushed down the list.
No worries. We next moved to Avalau Island, where we picked our way past the boats anchored there and onto a very large and very shallow sandbank, where we would have room to put out all the chain we wanted and plenty of room to swing through the coming wind shifts.
Avalau also offered us the chance to get some exercise by doing a walking loop of the island. Later, with the rain imminent, I was getting settled in for my overdue loafing when Maryanne started fretting.
Time ashore and making some repairs at Avalau Island
New Zealand has always had some pretty strict biosecurity requirements for arriving vessels. These haven't changed significantly since our last arrival, but this year a much larger proportion of vessels were suddenly reporting being rejected on inspection, requiring expensive, last-minute haulouts for decontamination. The consensus seems to be that they are just trying a lot harder to fail incoming boats. Even the agency in question allowed that they have better lights and cameras now for the underwater examination, so much less gets by them. Also, anything inconclusive in hard to see areas seems to now be ruled as a definitive negative (and the owner had to prove otherwise). As a result of this, many of the boats that were failed and required to be hauled out were subsequently declared clean after all.
Maryanne and I don't want to have to go through all of that. On reading through the reports and the requirements, it seems almost inevitable, but we have to at least do our best. Maryanne decided she was really only going to feel comfortable if we went down there and had a really good inspection and cleaning ourselves. Her dire reports had me practically pushing her out of the way to be the first in the water when the time came. Our plan was to scrub, inspect, re-clean any suspect areas, and then spend every successive swim keeping on top of it.
We worked as a team for hours. By the time we were done, the bottom was completely free of fouling as far as we could tell, even in the little corners and inside the intake pipes.
The problem is that Begonia's bottom looks like hell. The ablative paint we started with almost two years ago has slowly worn away as it is designed to do. The outer layers are blue (or red for the keels and rudders so that we are not so camouflaged should we flip). The inner, alarm layers are red (or blue). Beneath them, the primer is gray and the gelcoat is white. At various points, each of these layers is the visible, outer layer. This makes Begonia's bottom look like the boxer who lost the fight. It's fair and has no growth, but it hardly looks pristine, like it did when we went into the water in Canada last year. I suspect some agent will decide we need to be pulled out of the water for a better look. Still, when Maryanne and I finally climbed out of the water to towel off, we knew we had done all we could. What's that prayer about letting go of worrying about things you can't do anything about? Now, is it time for some loafing?
Well, not exactly. While studying the biosecurity requirements, Maryanne noticed that they also want photos of our clean, unfouled chain locker. This means that we will need to dump all our excess chain in order to scrub, and then rinse away the thin layer of mud that unavoidably collects at the bottom. Since I am the only one of us with arms remotely long enough to reach the bottom, and even then with discomfort, that got to be my job. Somehow, hauling the buckets of seawater required ended up being my job too. In exchange for this, I have been spared her hours of having to study lengthy legalese biosecurity documents. Oh, here's a new tidbit from her: They also want pictures of our chain. I assume this does not mean the pile after it is returned to the locker, but laid out nicely, so they can see the whole length. Honestly, at this point, I'm surprised we're not required to paint one side of it so they can be sure we're not getting away with something by only taking photos of the side facing the camera. This project and our "final" hull cleaning before the passage took all day.
Before all that, though, it was time for us to move again. The winds after the last rainy spell were making the anchorage at Avalau a little choppy, so we were happy to pull up anchor and move to my favorite anchorage in the Vava'u group. It has everything I like: long views, protection from waves, plenty of wind for electricity, clean sand for anchoring, great snorkeling, and a reasonable amount of privacy. We first discovered it after failing to squeeze into the mooring field at the over-loved Coral Gardens adjacent. Maryanne suggested we "try the sandy patch back there" and since then, we've made a point of stopping for a night or two every time we pass by.
By now, we were getting close enough to our departure for New Zealand that both our minds were filled with concern over the increasingly difficult biosecurity requirements for entry, particularly the ones regarding bottom fouling.
This meant that the bulk of our snorkeling time in Langito'o was spent going over every inch of the bottom and re-scrubbing accordingly after our big clean at the last anchorage. We even took to scrubbing all the tiny crevices with a toothbrush. When the whole thing was over, Maryanne swam the whole boat taking still photos and video to send with our application as proof of our compliance. Then she had to spend a bunch of time organizing and labeling them for the attachment.
Once we were satisfied that there really was nothing left to clean, we did go out and have a look at the sea life, which is quite good.
Cleaning the boat, then photographing every bit of it to the required specifications, and documenting/labelling those photographs took DAYS!!!! Then we had to upload them which took a whole extra heap of time - all in the hope we'd get approval for NZ biosecurity before we even departed Tonga; it was all wasted effort as they didn't get to look at our files until long after we'd departed
We did manage some fun at Langito'o Island
After a few days, which finally included some loafing during rainy spells, we returned to Neiafu for a last shop and our outbound clearance. We had been told that we could just walk over and get it, but that turned out to be only for inter-group clearance within the country. The Customs woman insisted that we would need to go back to our mooring, get our boat, and bring it back to the Customs dock for inspection. That changed our whole day around because we would now need to get everything else done first in case we couldn't find a free mooring to return to afterwards.
Once we finally got Begonia tied up at the Customs dock, we walked over to the office to complete our paperwork. No one came to the boat, although I suppose they could at least see that we were moored there from the office, which must meet the minimum requirement for them to be able to tick the "Vessel Inspected" box on the form. Groan.
At least they're not super-strict about the departure time. That let us have one more evening in the relative seclusion of the Mala Island anchorage before it was time to set off properly at dawn.
And back to Nieafu for some last minute provisioning and the official clearing out of the country
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