Tonga's Blue Water Festival - and Whales!!!

[Kyle]The Blue Water Festival was a lot of fun, but also quite exhausting. Every night, we would climb aboard after a very long dinghy ride, realizing we would have to be up early for the next morning’s thing.

The festival was jam-packed with events but the highlight for us was the Hosea Primary School Cultural show and Feast, the Kids were adorable and the teachers and parents we exceptionally welcoming
Cruising friends Cap'n Fatty was there, as was Sharon from Whangarei town Marina in NZ.

It was a great time. The event is sponsored by a group of marine businesses in New Zealand as a welcome to all of the boats who are about to make the journey. They know we’ll all be there soon to pay them back. The event were not only a way for a lot of the boats to meet each other, but to have fun together, which gave us all a real sense of community by the end.

Fakaleiti show (At the Dancing Rooster)

The Festival actually had one night where there was no party to attend. Maryanne and I decided to go to the Faka Leiti show at the Dancing Rooster restaurant. In Tongan, “Faka Leiti” means “Like a Lady”. It was a burlesque show of female impersonators, all of whom seemed to be making it their mission to make the audience squirm, blush or both. I did my best to sit away from the dance floor, but I still got the attention of the oldest one and a big kiss on the mouth from the biggest one. Oh, dear! We were invited to stay and dance, but we had stuff to do early in the morning, so we made a hasty exit.

One Blue Water Festival event Maryanne and I missed out on the next day was the big race. It sounded like a lot of fun. The start is at the end of the skipper’s briefing and the winner is the first one to run in and put their boat’s name on the board. There was no start or finish line for the actual boats involved. This made getting out to an already moving boat and leaving an already moving boat a significant factor in the overall result. Going out to the boat, hoisting the dinghy and upping anchor was a sure fire way to lose.

We missed the event because we chose to spend the day on our second whale watch tour. The weather was a bit rough for even the race and when our guides picked us up at Begonia, they immediately started making noises about staying in close to save us having to go into big seas. Neither us nor the one other guest was having any of it. She was an acrobat/stunt woman/free diver/lifeguard and we are us, so we eventually impressed upon them that if their boat could take it, we could take it. I didn’t get the feeling that was the answer they were hoping for, but they pressed on and soon we were bashing around in pretty steep chop looking for whales.

We found several, but each time we approached, they would dive and we wouldn’t be able to find them again. We finally found a mother and calf that came up right next to the boat and lingered for a while. As our guide went to put his mask on before going in, the strap broke. By the time he found a replacement and got it threaded into his mask and snorkel, the whales were gone. We spent the next hour or so fruitlessly searching for them. After a while, our guide started handing out food and the boat started heading in the direction of Neiafu again. After having such high hopes at the beginning of the trip, we were starting to accept the reality that we were probably not going to swim with any whales that day.

There was plenty of entertainment, though. The other passenger, in addition to being quite interesting, also turned out to be completely nuts. She would do this thing when she would start off on a perfectly reasonable train of thought and then at some random point, the train would leave the tracks, roll down to the bottom of the canyon and explode. She seemed intelligent and very well educated, but her entire head was filled with too much nonsense for her to be ever able to get rid of it all in her lifetime. Most of her whale themed nonsense had to do with them being mystical beings that can sense our positive energy and are thus able to understand our deepest feelings. I half expected the conversation to veer into crystals as energy portals or ancient astronauts, but she stuck mainly to the whale woo. How come you never hear about people going into the forest to commune with warthogs? It was all I could do to not roll my eyes at each increasingly bizarre statement. Maryanne was conversing with her quite ably. I later found out she was doing it primarily as source of entertainment for herself; watching me suffer and struggle to keep from saying anything.

Just before I was about to lose my ability to keep quiet, we happened upon a mother and calf that seemed content to stay put. They didn’t do much. They just kind of floated there, occasionally surfacing for a breath. They seemed not the least bit bothered by us as we inspected them like swimmers circling a big boat. We stayed with them for half an hour, looking at them while they looked at us and then reboarded the boat to Neiafu.

We were only underway for about ten minutes when we spotted an individual Humpback. We were in the water as soon as the boat stopped, but all I saw was a giant fluke disappearing into the murk. Aww, we lost another one! I surfaced to try and locate it and saw a dorsal fin coming our direction. Yay! It’s coming back! With my head back under the water, all I could see was a faint outline disappearing into the depths. I was spinning around in slow circles, hoping to see the whale again when I heard our guide yell, “Aw, shit!!”

I popped my head above the surface to see the top half of the whale and a whole lot of spray coming at us. It had just breached no more than ten meters away – about ¾ of a whale length. Maryanne got a better view. She had her head above the water and she actually saw most of the whale leave the water. I expected a big wave to follow and throw us back, but it got lost in the general sloppiness of the sea and never arrived. Close up breaches look cool, but they’re kinda dangerous, so we called time on that encounter and headed back to the boat.

More fun with Humpback Whales

No sooner had we pulled our fins off than we found another mother and calf. Mom seemed to be taking a nap down there at twenty meters, but her calf was having all kinds of fun doing front flips and backflips and rolls and all kinds of combinations thereof. Several times, the little guy (little = 8m) came to within an arm’s length of each of us and gave us a good look with its dinner plate-sized eye. It was amazing! – Better than even the two previous encounters combined. We were all beaming when we climbed out of the water for the ride back to Neiafu. Our companion was convinced that the whale was not dancing, but dancing back. She had sent a vibe that she wanted to dance. As Carl Sagan used to say, “Well,…maybe.”

{Maryanne: Tonga is one of the very few places in the world where it is legal to swim with whales. We consider ourselves very privileged to be able to experience this. However we found Tonga not nearly so professional nor respectful to the whales as we experienced with he operators in Niue. There was no instructions about the whales, how to interact with them, how to entering the water, etc. There was no general whale information provided, and no attention being paid to making sure the whales get some time out between groups of snorkellers. Tonga only allows swimming with the whales when with an approved operator. These operators must get a license and agree to abide by the rules, and we just didn't see much of that going on.. Very sad. Also Niue was less expensive, so if you ever have a choice between locations - I'd say go to Niue!}.

The day after, one of the local schools put on a big show for all of the boaters at the festival. We were told it was their biggest event of the year and they had been practicing a long time for it. It was pretty fun. Most of the kids were under ten years old. At that age, they have plenty of enthusiasm, but almost no rhythm, which is kind of adorable. One of my favorites was when the pre-schoolers sung a song about a family of sharks (Baby Shark). It taught them to run, run, run from hungry sharks, sharks, sharks. Also to be avoided in different verses are Papa Shark and Grandpa Shark. The tune was too catchy to forget. Things you’ve gotta know when you’re a kid in Tonga, eh? When I was a kid, all of the songs were about how we were not to depreciate non-taxable items brought forth from a previous tax year. Okay, not really.

After that, a little kid grabbed each of us and made us dance until we were exhausted and dripping with perspiration, then they took us into the Head Mistress’ house for The Spread. EACH kid’s family made a dish for us. There was more food than we could ever taste, much less eat. I decided not to try to diversify too much and just made sure I was no more than an arm’s length or two from the guy handing out watermelon.

We returned to Begonia for the short break before the evening’s party began and found that we had lost Maryanne’s wetsuit bottoms. We had hung them up to dry after the whale watch tour and now they were gone, presumably blown away by the wind. Her top was still there, as were both of my pieces. I swam around for over an hour to search for them, but the water was very cloudy and I never could find them.

We had other problems, too. Our Torqeedo electric motor for the dinghy had stopped working. The moorings by the town were all taken and we had ended up anchoring waaay on the other side of the bay. There was no way we could row that far and we were depending on it to get us back and forth. Without it, our choices were to sail or just skip everything.

The problem seemed to be either the on/off button or one of the cable connections. After doing a little diagnosing, we decided it was most likely the button. It had been playing up lately, working about one time in three, but now it was down to one in fifty and we were worried it would soon not work at all. The thing is, if we could get the thing to turn on, the motor worked fine. If we couldn’t, nothing would make it work. I found myself (almost) wishing we had a regular gasoline motor with fuel lines to bleed or a spark plug to clean to get it working again. An electron disappearing into the magic box, but not coming out again leaves fewer options for a field repair.

We got lucky, though. There was one other boat in the anchorage with the same Torqueedo we have. It is owned by a retired German electrical engineer named Ludger (of the boat Green Duck). He didn’t have a spare motor, but he had taken his apart and reassured us we could do the same without having to know how to re-solder a printed circuit board. We followed his instructions and took the thing apart. Inside, the control box looked pristine except for a little rust spot on the start button. Bingo!

The button couldn’t be taken apart any further, but we were able to douse it in electrical contact cleaning spray and it went back to working once every two or three times again. Much better. Thanks, Ludger!

By the time we got it all put back together and mounted on the dinghy, it was back to once every Blue Moon again. After a gazillion tries, we finally got it started for the upwind bash to the evening’s party. I figured I could row us back if necessary with the wind to help push us. At the party, Ludger said he had found an old control panel that he had fixed and offered to exchange it for ours if it worked any better.

It seems we never get to take anything apart just once. You can’t get to expert level by taking something apart once. Maryanne had the new one in and the old one out in no time. It is MUCH better. The failure rate is now about one in a hundred, which should tie us over until we can get a new replacement from the factory. Thanks again, Ludger. We tried our best to make sure he never paid for any of the beer he drank at the party.

Fixing things in exotic locations
Maryanne swaps out the motherboard on the Torqeedo

That night, a squall went through at about 2 a.m. I went outside to look at it. The wind was howling and it was raining every direction at once, even up. It was so heavy, I could not see the shore or any other boats. At times, I couldn’t even see our anchor float. We got a good fresh water rinse that night and filled several buckets with extra water. At about 9:00, the skies cleared and the wind disappeared altogether. The water was the clearest we had seen all week, so Maryanne decided to have another go at finding her wetsuit bottoms. She returned an hour later to announce she had found them. They were lounging on the sand in the shallow water before the beach. Apparently, they were on vacation.

First few days in Tonga (Vava'u Group)

[Kyle]After clearing in with Tongan customs and immigration, we had the usual list of things to do on arriving in a new country. What was nice was that this time, we didn’t have to waste half of our time figuring out where everything was, since we had been here a year before. After only a day ashore, we headed out of the city bustle of Neiafu to the nice, quiet anchorage at nearby Mala Island for a couple of days of snorkeling and solitude.

Familiar sights in Neiafu (main town of the Vava'u group, Tonga)
And Kyle could not resist a little more sailing.

I remembered Mala as being a pretty spot to watch the sunset, but having relatively uninteresting snorkeling. This year, we got to see all sorts of hard to find sea critters. We went out for a quick look the second day to see if we could find anything new and arrived back at Begonia six hours later. We were having so much fun, we hadn’t even noticed the time passing.

Once we were sufficiently rested and recovered at Mala, we headed back into Neiafu for the annual Blue Water Festival. Our modest registration price entitled us to admission in a whole week of different events. There were breakfasts, dinners, seminars, races, parties and shows to attend. First however we’d booked in for a Tongan Feast at the botanical gardens. There isn't much to do on a Sunday in Tonga as everyone closes for the day. The feast was it! While not especially Tonga, and with no actual access to the gardens - it was still nice to hear the history and hard work of the Botanical Gardens development from the founder (the first person in Tonga to have a degree), and we got to enjoy some beach time too!

Feast Day at the Botanical Gardens (Ene'io Beach)

Passage to Tonga

[Kyle]Since we were at a mooring ball in Niue, all we had to do to leave was untie the lines and we were freely drifting in the ocean. We hadn’t needed the engines since repositioning closer to Ganesh back at Beveridge Reef (weeks prior).

The wind blew Begonia backwards. I put the helm over to one side to slew her sideways, then Maryanne unrolled the jib, cranked it in to make it bite, and we were off. What a lovely, peaceful departure – no noise, no fumes, just Niue slowly slipping behind.

We had two days of nice, strong winds from almost dead astern, which would have been perfect if there hadn’t been an annoying cross sea coming in from the north and tossing us around a bit. We curved north of the direct line in anticipation of a wind shift that was predicted for the morning of our arrival. I was really hoping to avoid any upwind unpleasantness.

My plan was working beautifully until 0210 on the third day. I was sitting at the computer, looking at the new weather forecasts when the jib started luffing. I went outside to find us heading directly into the wind and slowing rapidly. The rudders were losing their effectiveness and the autopilot was freaking out trying to keep us pointed a direction we could no longer go.

I shut it off and spun the wheel to get air back into the sails, but with the current also against us, we were now heading ninety degrees from where we wanted to go. Eighty-nine would have been better. I tacked and had the same problem on the other side of the wind. Suspecting the wind shift was due to a short lived squall, I gave up and hove-to in order to wait it out. That didn’t work either, because the wind was going crazy and shifting around faster than the boat reacted, so half of the time we were hove to and the other half, we had full sail pulling us fast in the wrong direction.

Maryanne took over and I was glad to hand my problems over to her. As I was falling asleep, I did a little calculating in my head and realized our only chance of getting into Tonga the same day was to start an engine now. We tried each tack again, as the little bit of speed the engine provides can often give us another knot and allow us to point ten degrees further upwind. That didn’t work, either, so we eventually ended up stowing all sail and just motoring the rest of the way.

We made it to the Customs dock right at the end of civil twilight, just as it was starting to get really dark. We had expected to have to raft up to all of the others that had left Niue before us on the same day we did, but we were the only other boat there. We suspected the others had been a bent the rules and anchored out on the way in (making our arrival much easier). They all mysteriously arrived as we were pulling away after clearing in the following morning.

We're back in Tonga!

Niue - 'The Rock'

[Kyle]In Niue again, after all of that time and all of those miles, it felt like we had only been gone a week. We cycled, and rented a car, snorkeled and generally relaxed. Occasionally we hitchhiked (or people would just pick us up if we looked lost), it was easy to get around. It didn’t take us long to revisit all of our old favorites: Limu Pools, the Talava Arches, Togo and Anapala Chasms and one trip to almost all of the island’s restaurants.

Back in Niue!

A few things had changed. The yacht club lost their space, so they have no physical presence. Mooring fees are paid to Harry at Gill’s Indian restaurant. In only his first week, Harry shows signs that he may well regret having volunteered for the duty. He makes the best Indian food on the island, though. The grocery and liquor stores moved into Zebignew building in the middle of the island, which is way nicer than the old one by the wharf, but way less convenient. Getting there requires renting a car or hitchhiking and buying enough stuff to convince them to give you a ride back. Bummer.

Cycling about warranted a fancy cocktail to aid recovery
And we shared a little time with some of the locals (Jeremiah and Inez)

At Limu Pools, we met a really nice local couple who we liked so much, we invited them to the boat the next morning. Neither of them had been on a sailboat. They had a million questions and it was nice to remember what it was like when it was all new and strange for us.

Talava Arches

Togo Chasm, and the Freshwater Anapala Chasm

Some snorkelling fun - Kyle has a baby octopus on his wrist
(he found it in our speed wheel)

At the parking lot at Togo Chasm, Maryanne went to check out a piece of litter someone hadn’t bothered to put in the nearby bin. It turned out to contain two tiny abandoned kittens. They were Silver Tabbies no more than a week old. We stopped at the first house in the next village that looked like it had activity. We were hoping to find directions to a shelter or the Wildlife Agency. A woman reluctantly opened the door for us just before we were about to give up. I think she thought we were going to try to sell her something. When we showed her what was in the box and explained the situation, she offered to look after them herself. She had a little boy of about seven who got a peek in the box and from the look on his face, he was going to make sure his mom took care of his adorable new kittens. If only we didn’t have all of the international quarantine problems, we would have adopted them ourselves. They are going to be so cute in a few weeks when they get old enough to be clumsy, jumping balls of fluff.

We also managed to get in a visit to the Washaway Café, which is only open on Sundays. They have a great location, delicious food and a self-serve honor bar, where you can just go back and get whatever you want. Just write it in the little book on the bar when you do.

This year, mostly at Maryanne’s insistence, we went for a whale watching tour. We balked at the price last year, but ended up regretting it. Everybody we knew that went came back beaming with the excitement of their encounters. She went out twice with Oma Tafua (Niue’s local whale watching research organization) on their volunteer research boat in 2017, but had no luck then either. She was determined to do all she could to get an actual whale encounter this year.

We signed up with Magical Niue Adventures and promised each other not to think about the price. Once it was spent, it was gone and there was no use worrying about it. The fact that our visit coincided with Maryanne’s birthday helped to justify the expense, and Maryanne suggested that if I objected to the cost we’d save money if she went alone… Naturally we both went. {Maryanne: The price really was reasonable, $175NZ each, but just way more than we’re used to paying for the treats along our travels}.

We met Magical Niue Adventures at the pier at first light. We spent the whole morning searching and searching, but we found no hint of whales. The Spinner Dolphins that the tour often gets to swim with also seemed to be off of the island, so our guides took us to a few nice spots for snorkeling, including one really cool chasm near the mooring field that we totally missed.

It was hard not to be bummed out about forking over a bunch of dough to go snorkeling. We always knew we might not get lucky. It’s real nature, not a zoo, after all. We tried to imagine how many thousands or tens of thousands we have saved by snorkeling without guides all of this time. That only helped a little. The next morning, we swam from Begonia to the chasm (The Belly of the Whale) and made a point of lingering to get our money’s worth.

After settling up and eating a last meal at Gills, we cleared out of Niue and returned to Begonia to get ready for the passage to Tonga. As I was about to hoist the dinghy, Rami, the owner of Magical Niue, raced over in his big, orange dive boat. He said he just spotted some whales and told us to get in.

We evacuated Begonia. The hatches were open. The dinghy was under the davits. I didn’t find out until we got back that Maryanne had actually managed to shut the main door before we left. On the boat were Rami, two guides from his staff and us. We had an impromptu private tour!

After a little searching, they relocated the pair they had sighted before. We thought they were moving, so we went ahead after their last dive to have them intercept us (there are strict rules for approaching whales). When the whales resurfaced, they hadn’t moved. We went back. Mindy, the guide, went in and found them. When she gave the thumbs up, everybody but Rami went in.

When we first saw the whales, they were so deep that all we could see was a little bit of contrast between their dark bodies and the white leading edges on their pectoral fins and their flukes. They weren’t moving fast and if Mindy hadn’t pointed them out, I would have thought we were looking at strips of sand.

Then they slowly, imperceptibly surfaced. The contrast improved and slowly the strips of sand resolved into two giant whales. Actually, for whales, they were normal sized, but they were by far the biggest things with which we’d ever swam. They pirouetted around one other in a big helix, gently caressing each other with their long fins. They seemed quite aware and unconcerned that we were at the surface watching them. We had to back out of the way to let them surface. They leveled off and gently broke the surface just enough to get their blowholes above the waves. I’ve never seen the below water part before. It’s big. Then they pumped their flukes and effortlessly pulled ahead of us.

Just after we lost sight of them, we spotted them circling back to us. It was as if they were saying “Why didn’t you follow”. Yay! They did some more showing off for us and even did a few fin and fluke slaps for us. Then they started to get a little bit breech-y and Mindy had us back off. You do not want to have a boisterous whale land on you.

We returned to the boat and shadowed them for a bit. When they calmed down, we went back in with them and got to spend the few minutes before sunset just hanging out with them. Then they effortlessly pulled away and went wherever whales go at night. Back in the boat again, Rami raced us back to Begonia so he could get the dive boat out of the water before it got really dark.

We're finally in the water with Humpback Whales!

Wow! We had gone ashore for the last time and were less than 20 hours from leaving and we finally saw whales! All of it was because Rami was kind enough to speed over at the end of the day and collect us on his own time. We couldn’t thank him enough.

We found out where those whales went. At 0330, I was in a brief period of wakefulness when I heard a very large spout right next to our berth through the open hatch above our heads. Then there was the dripping of water, presumably off of the flukes and then the gurgling sound of the water closing in behind.