Late September/Early October, 2012
After we arrived in Tonga, both Rich and I suffered from a bout of cruising/travel burnout. It was no reflection on Tonga, which was wonderful. In fact, being in Tonga gave us the safe and comfortable place we needed to weather the burnout. I would compare it to fighting off a virus as you tackle some huge project in your life, where you don’t succumb to it until you finish the project and are safe at home, then bam!
Actually, a lot of the cruisers seemed to be struggling with various degrees of this syndrome. We’ve all come a long way over a lot of ocean to be here, and nearly everyone had to endure at least one difficult passage. I think if Tonga had a good all-weather marina, there would have been a few people leaving their boats and heading home for a break from cruising. But Tonga does not have such a marina, and now we all had the scariest passage ahead of us: the dreaded passage to New Zealand.
Everyone is afraid of the New Zealand passage as there are low pressure systems carrying high winds and rough seas that pass regularly between it and Tonga. The guy who gave the first talk about New Zealand was answering anxious questions and got a bit exasperated with them, finally grabbing the mike and saying that Opua is not in the body bag business! New Zealanders are an enterprising people, and if there were a good business for body bags for cruising sailors, they would be selling them. He added that we would be hard-pressed to find a funeral home in Opua. (Note: Opua is in the Bay of Islands in north New Zealand and is where most of the cruisers will be checking into the country).
Rich and I felt bad about being burnt out as we were in such a beautiful place and felt so blessed to be here. But I thought about it and realized that no matter how you travel—by plane, boat, car, train, or on foot—the thrill of novelty can only last so long before it starts to wear thin. There comes a time when you just have to take a break for awhile, and so we did. I could always tell who in the fleet was suffering the same sort of burnout: the boats that stayed put in the harbor and didn’t sail out to the nearby islands. For a long time, we were one of those boats.
I will say after a week or so in Neiafu we both were feeling better. Still, we stayed put, just living life in town, hanging out at the Aquarium Cafe, and spending more time “being” instead of always “doing.” Rich later overheard a conversation where someone said, “Legacy’s been here three weeks!” Yes, it was true. But it was also true that by that point we were finally making plans to get out to the islands.
The most appropriate picture for this blog post would be one of Rich and I drinking an afternoon beer at the Aquarium. Since I don’t have a photo of that, I will instead put in some of my favorite pictures of our time at the Neiafu harbor. -Cyndi
