November 11, 2012
It was interesting to see the effect of the weather delay on the fleet. Instead of being intimated or wanting to wait for really optimal conditions, being thwarted in their plans made them desperate to go! The storm had come through only yesterday, but today the town was packed with people doing a last-minute re-provisioning of fresh goods.
Boats planned to start leaving as soon as tomorrow (Saturday), then the bulk of the group would follow on Sunday. At this point, there was a weather window for New Zealand, but the conditions weren’t all that good. One of our friends planned to leave in the Saturday group, and Rich talked him out of it by pointing out that it will take two or three days for the seas to calm after the blow. He agreed and decided to hold off as long as possible–Sunday!
Aside from that feeling of being totally ready and then getting delayed, there were other factors causing this group restlessness. One of course was that they had all checked out of the country and if they stayed they’d have to check back in, which is a hassle. The other was the feeling that even though this wasn’t a named storm, it was a reminder that cyclone season was starting, and it was almost as though there was a feeling of having dodged a bullet – you’d better go now because the next one could be here any minute!
We ran into a friend in town, and when we told him we weren’t leaving Tonga yet, he looked at us sadly and said not to wait too long, he wouldn’t want to see anything happen to us. Of course the herd mentality was huge right now: I felt like a buffalo watching the herd stampede away and opting not to join in – you just feel like everyone is going; you must go, too!
And so over the next few days, we watched nearly everyone go in spite of the fact the weather here was terrible: windy and rough, and a low was predicted to be passing under the fleet as they neared New Zealand. The herd was stampeding and nothing would stop them! By Monday night, the harbor was nearly cleared out once again.
Rich and I, too, felt restless and ready to head on, but we were sticking to our original plan to wait and do the crossing at the end of the month or early December. Our plans now were to do an overnight passage to the Ha’apai Group of islands south of the Vava’u. After spending a few days there, we would head on to Nuku’alofa to provision, check out of the country, and wait for a weather window to New Zealand.
There were a just a few boats left with similar plans, I think seven in all (and three of them were still here only because outside circumstances had delayed them). Rich and I had gone from generally being at the front of our “pack” (the people we started with in the Marquesas) to being at the tail end of the entire fleet. Our hope was now to enjoy roomy anchorages in the Ha’apai Group and a reasonably gentle passage to New Zealand and not get ambushed by any early-season cyclones. -Cyndi
Here is another collection of sunset pictures from our time here.
