Tonga 9 – Niue

May 30, 2019 Wow! We arrived in Niue at 5 am and woke up to an island unlike any other we have visited. It is an “uplifted atoll” which I think means that it was sinking and then got pushed back up. I need to brush up on my geology before commenting further. Apart from […]

Tonga 8 – Niue

May 29, 2019 It’s a beautiful night with consistent winds and calmer seas. Charm is quite happy and therefore so are the rest of us. It isn’t quite champagne sailing but at least I’m only getting drenched by the odd wave once an hour instead of every 20 minutes. We did have another sail mishap […]

Tonga 5

May 24, 2019 Everything went fine last night, at least until the end of my watch. After that, I went to sleep and someone else (Joe) worries about things. You can see the radar image – the squall just kept reforming on top of us but never really did much. Griselle said she got rained […]

Tonga 4

May 22, 2019 It’s Wacky Wednesday! This is just a way to distract the children (or maybe just me) from the fact that our destination is arriving more slowly than we had hoped. Oddly, unlike car or plane trips, the kids almost never ask “When are we going to get there?” Maybe because, at least […]

Tonga 3

May 22, 2019 We are motorsailing. It’s rare for us on a race leg but the winds are continuing to be light and at some point, we have to decide if we want to spend our time gazing at the sea or being in it.  Also, the forecast shows that a large swath of zero […]

Tonga 2

May 21, 2019 Good evening! Once again, I am writing from my 9 pm – 12 am shift. Conditions are still light with only 8 knots of wind floating around. We’re managing to convert that into a blistering 6 knots of speed which feels very slow. Many of the boats we travel with would consider […]

Tonga 1

May 20, 2019 Greetings fair reader! I have missed you. I picture you as a delightful person, face obscured in the shadows, with a congenial expression that I can just make out. Occasionally I hear a faint cough from your direction, to keep me on track. Otherwise, you just listen politely. You are kind, curious, […]