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Hello!
We
spent almost three months enjoying the Ha'apai and Vava'u Groups in
the Kingdom of Tonga, where celebration of the Royal Family neatly
bookended our season: there was a holiday when we arrived for the
King's birthday, and a holiday at the end for the birthday of the
Crown Prince :)
While
we were in Tonga, we had a bit of a summer holiday feeling on the
boat, with less maintenance and chores, and more emphasis on
exploring, kiting, swimming with whales, and meeting other kid
boats. For once, we did the things that *we* assume that *you*
assume we do all the time!
Given
that it's now Hallowe'en, I feel a bit like I'm late with my
stereotypical "what we did on our summer vacation" project
... but after daily notes while we were on passage, I thought it was
high time for an update. You'll want a big cuppa for this one,
as it's admittedly long, but I thought you might like to know some of
the stories behind the photos.
If
you followed Max's updates on Yachts in Transit you would have noticed us travelling from
the Ha'apai Group up to Vava'u, back again to the Ha'apai, then back
to Vava'u before heading to Fiji. When we cleared into
Tongatapu, we were told that we could extend our 30-day visa in the
Ha'apai. Of course, you know what comes next: we arrived there
and found that we could *not* extend our visa, and that we would need
to go to Vava'u within 31 days. The fines for overstaying made
sure that we headed north with time in hand! As it turned out,
this was fortunate, as it meant that our return to the Ha'apai was
during the height of the whale season; had we simply stayed longer at
the beginning, we would have missed the majority of our whale
experiences.
One
of the things we loved about the Ha'apai Group was the lack of other
boats, so we were pretty happy that two of the first boats that we
met had kids aboard: SV Forever had a 13-year-old boy with many of
the same interests as Johnathan, while SV Kitenga had a
seven-year-old boy, so there was lots of running around on the beach
and playing with sticks !
Five
years after our last significant use of our First Aid kit, we were
especially grateful that the 'Kitenga mum' was a nurse! As I
was finishing a sunset yoga practice ashore, a quiet but firm voice
said, "Mom, it's time to go. Benjamin has hurt his head."
Johnathan was just off the beach in the dinghy, and Victoria had come
to fetch me. When we arrived at Fluenta, I was surprised that
the first thing I heard was laughter, but Max had Benjamin watching a
cartoon and playing a video game while "applying pressure"
to the place on his forehead where his "blood was leaking out".
He had tripped while crossing the cockpit to greet the kids who were
returning to Fluenta in Trickle, and he had hit his head on one of
our main winches. He hit the top edge of the self-tailer track with
enough force to make a 3/4" slice in his forehead and for the
bottom edge to make a parallel groove on his skin 1/2" below.
Yikes. The moment he saw me, the tears began again with gusto.
The
kids and Max had already started him on every-10-minutes homeopathic
Arnica, so I scooped him up to apply the other universal remedy of
motherhood (i.e. nursing), and endeavoured to calm him back down.
Our friends from Kitenga were already planning to come over for the
evening, but Max went and asked them to come over straight away, as
this was the first time that we had needed to use our Steri-Strips,
and I figured that we should solicit any help available! The
combination of the Steri-Strips and Johnathan being Benjamin's own
personal comedian soon had Benjamin back in stitches, and once he was
'taped up' that was the last we saw of tears over his forehead.
[An
interesting side note is that he seemed to have a lower pain
threshold for any minor bumps and scratches for a few weeks, but this
now seems to have returned to normal.]
The
Steri-Strips took exactly two weeks to fall off, and Benjamin was
quite fascinated to look at his forehead in the mirror several times
a day to judge the progress of his skin at "knitting itself back
together". The number of times we have had to open our big
medical kit has actually been quite small, but this is why we carry
it! Thankfully, the rest of our many evenings together with
Kitenga were much more uneventful!
One
of the things that I love about Victoria and Johnathan is that
regardless of how much or how little time they have with new kids,
they will find something in common and make the most of their time
together. Whenever possible, this will involve camping ashore,
or at the very least building a structure out of palm fronds and a
camp fire. Time for s'mores is an added bonus. They
didn't end up camping with the kid boats in Ha'apai, but when we got
to Vava'u, even though the overall pace of socializing moved a little
faster, and we often only had a couple of nights together, they
managed to fit in several camping expeditions.
One
morning in Vava'u, while on our way to pick up fruits and vegetables
at the market before going out to anchor, we stopped to say hello to
a rare Canadian boat, and discovered that they had 15-year-old
daughter. Since they were also heading out overnight before
leaving for the Ha'apai, and we wanted to visit their preferred
anchorage eventually, we decided to change plans and join them.
We packed an entire season of visiting into one evening and one day
with SV Element, with an impromptu potluck (somehow I knew that if we
didn't include meal preparations in the grownups' plans, we might
never feed our kids ...), beach day (complete with thatch hut and
bonfire with sausages and s'mores), and moms' tea break; it was kind
of fun to think that we might all meet up in Canada sometime after
our return :) Victoria was especially happy to meet a girl her
own age, as we had only met boys for Johnathan and Benjamin to play
with at that point in the season.
On
another occasion, a boat hailed us on VHF because they had heard that
we had kids (SV Beach Flea). Imagine our delight when we
invited them to join us at our anchorage and found out that they had
coincidentally pulled in a few boats away the previous evening!
We spent an enjoyable couple of days together: the kids camped on the
beach in a combination of tents and palm structures, while the
parents enjoyed a potluck meal and socializing. It was
especially fun for Victoria and me to do mother-daughter yoga with
Lisa and Abby, as they had recently been practicing with my dear
friend Allison in Mexico! It can certainly be a small, and
well-connected cruising world :)
When
we returned to Vava'u to clear out at the end of the season, one of
the first things we heard was the sound of teenagers on the radio,
and the very first morning we were at anchor in Neiafu, one of the
moms excitedly stopped by in her dinghy because she had heard that we
had a 14-year-old girl on board, to let us know that her daughter
would stop by later. Stop by, she did, with two kids from other
boats in tow; we had gone from drought to flood with teenagers, and
soon found ourselves swept up into the social scene of the fleet of
kid-boats that had just come across the Pacific. As usual, we
didn't have long together, but the kids made the most of it with
potlucks, dinghy raft-ups (our first in six years of cruising), and
excursions ashore. Unfortunately, by this time, we were gearing
up to make the jump to Fiji, so as usual, we just had to enjoy our
time with the other families while it lasted.
These
stories really give you the up-side and the down-side of cruising in
a nutshell: we become quick at packing an intense friendship into a
short period of time, but then we *have to* pack all our visiting
into little bursts. We are always saying Hello and Goodbye, and
I have to say that even after over six years, it doesn't necessarily
get any easier. Thank goodness for email and online
connectivity :)
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Stay tuned for the remaining parts over the next few days while we have internet.
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