It’s 11:30 am and we are in final preparations to raise anchor and leave our anchorage in Tongatapu, Tonga to make way for New Zealand. We’re feeling excited and a bit anxious—excited to make our last passage of the season, eat the meals I’ve spent the last two days preparing, see what adventures the sea holds hidden in her waves, peruse to farmer’s markets in New Zealand; anxious because the passage itself can be tricky. Especially as we move south of the trade winds, the weather is known to oscillate between calms and storms with a signature unpredictability.

For the last three days Dominic and I have been seriously workin’ it. We’ve checked out, refilled the diesel tanks, and reprovisioned our fresh food supplies (a few treats: green apples, spinach, zucchini, and mushrooms). We’ve changed the fuel filters, done laundry, and touched up our pedicures. We, along with the nearby armada of boats in the same phase of departure preparation, have been engaged in careful weather study to predict an optimal date of departure.

We hooked this meter long beauty as we pulled into Nuku’alofa this afternoon. She was our second mahi mahi of the day. The first snapped the fishing line just as Dominic was about to pull him into the cockpit. This lady put up a good fight once she got onboard—she required a fair amound of bludgeoning and knifing to subdue before Dominic was able to slice up some delectable fillets we’re going to roll into sushi this evening.

If only I could upload audio—this bird sings three dashing trills, followed by the whistling equivalent of a pole vault, a high peak then a plunging fade: tweet tweet tweet tweeeooop, the bird book might say.

An ideal day in the life of cruising:

7:30 am: Dominic wakes up, makes coffee, listens to the SSB net, and checks the weather updates. I wake 30 minutes later, frying up toast and eggs for our first meal in the cockpit. We soak in the view, the island, the turquoise waters, the design features of our neighboring boats in the anchorage, and consider the outline of our day.

All of our fishing efforts paid off as we sailed across Ha’apai. We caught two fish—both black skipjack tuna, about two feet long—within ten minutes of each other.

And today, we’re off. We have another lovely day sail on the agenda, making passage eastward from Ha’afeva to one of the barrier islands in Ha’apai, Uonukuhahake (which is Tongan for Lobster Island). Light winds and calm seas are in the forecast, so despite being an upwind passage we’re expecting another gorgeous, easy day of sailing in the tropics.

Waiting out the terrible weather for a week in Ha'apai was totally worth it as our weekend was one for the record books. The weather has been spectacular, full of clear skies with just a few puffy clouds, and ten to 15 knots of wind to keep the temperature comfortable and the sails full.

Dominic and I have an ongoing discussion as to which beach is the best we’ve visited since leaving Mexico. We rank them according to width and length, softness of sand, swimmability and temperature of water, presence of garbage and glass.

In the last two days, we have spent four and a half hours trolling and six man hours spearfishing (Dominic with the speargun, me with the Hawaiian sling), and all we have to show for it are a few scales falling listlessly through the water. We had two solid bites on the line, one as we left the pass in Foa, one as we entered the pass in Uoleva. We got a few good shots off on parrot fish and a job fish hiding in the coral, but all fish lived to tell the tale. Mother Nature 4, Dolcis 0.

Dominic has stepped up his snorkel status from keen observer to fierce hunter. The reef around Foa provides the ideal seascape: ample coral, water that is shallow enough to dive comfortably (10-30 feet), and exposure to deeper waters that keeps larger, pelagic fish in the area.

Readers of the blog, rejoice! The sun is out! Gone (for now) are the days spent down below, cooking, cleaning, and watching Dominic’s beard grow.

We made good use of our time confined to the boat—taking care of some projects we wanted to complete before our passage to New Zealand, having pizza parties with our neighbors aboard Arbutus—but we were ecstatic to wake Sunday morning to a sun dappled galley and breakfast in the cockpit. The winds subsided over the course of the day, so we spent the afternoon exploring a coral village about a quarter mile off our stern. The reef was active with fish, colorful reef dwellers at the surface and larger, more appetizing swimmers 40 feet down under.

Two days of twenty-five knot winds, rain, and steel to black skies have even the whales hiding in the depths of the warm water. Did I say warm? I meant the chilly water, because according to Bob McDavitt (our weather guru out of New Zealand), there is a 'cool finger' of water extending from Fiji to Niue.

We spent our first weekend in the Ha’apai group of Tonga in Ha’ano, a northerly island with fantastic ocean and seashore views as well as a little roll in the anchorage. The underwater delights made any discomfort from the rocking boat well worth it. The island is fringed with a universe of coral more vibrant and expansive than any reef we’ve seen yet. There were mountains and ravines of pastel colored hard corals and many softer anemones housing Nemo-esque clown fish families. There were whales just a mile or two offshore, so we could hear their strikingly loud singing while we were in the water. There were a moderate number of reef fish and a four foot grouper in the area.