Thursday 17 November 2016
The latest edition of ‘The Pacific Crossing Guide’ written by Kitty van Hagen and published by the Royal Cruising Club Pilotage Foundation has hit the shelves. We were pleased to be able to contribute to this voluminous work which not only covers places to visit in the Pacific but provides a wealth of information on…
Monday 6 October 2014
After having spent two weeks sailing in the most idyllic islands of the Ha’apai, Susie and I headed south to the final group of Tongan islands called Tongatapu which includes the country’s capital, Nuku’alofa. It’s taken us some weeks to get our heads around the Tongan names and how to pronounce them. The people who…
Monday 22 September 2014
After nearly two weeks in the company of fellow sailors in the northern islands of Vava’u, Tonga, it was time for Adina to head off and explore the middle group of Tongan islands known as the Ha’aipa islands. We’d added these to our itinerary a long time back when another boat we know had written…
Monday 8 September 2014
The Vava’u island group in north Tonga is famous with sailors for a number of reasons: the main town of Neiafu provides an opportunity to relax, catch up with friends and provision; then there are numerous beautiful islands to explore with easy sailing in between and good anchorages; but the real draw card is that…
Tuesday 26 August 2014
As Susie and I tied Adina up to a mooring buoy in Neiafu, Tonga we were tired but happy that we’d crossed the stretch of Pacific Ocean nicknamed ‘the Dangerous Middle’. We’ve mentioned before we belong to a radio net for yachties called the Isabela Net. We’ve met a lot of the participants but one…
Monday 25 August 2014
The wind never stopped and we never slowed. It gusted and died down and gusted and calmed down and so on. The sea state picked up and, while a little lumpy with 2-3m swells on the beam, Adina tore through it. Come 6pm we started applying the brakes and got rid of sail to time…
Sunday 24 August 2014
Friday 3pm local time we left the wonderful little country of Niue. Five days there, we’ll write more on it later, save to say we had a fabulous time. But some big seas are forecast to come in which would make sitting on the mooring buoys in Niue very uncomfortable. Five boats left, all timing…